Literacy Divide

This short piece focuses on Johnson's earlier (and very popular) work on how pop culture--and especially those elements which critics say is making us dumber--is making us smarter.  He points to a re-definition of literacy (his own) and points of an increase in IQ in the last several years, an increase that he attributes to video games and the like, which--he argues--make us smarter.

OK, sure.  Johnson is a provocateur.  But what he says here also has a lot to do with democracy and innovation.  Traditionally, in our print-based society, some have access to public conversations (which usually go on in print--newspapers, magazines, etc.) while many do not.  So perhaps the decline in traditional literacy--I mean, the rise in non-traditional literacy--brings us to an historical moment when many more can participate in public discourse. 

I wonder, though: who, really, is still participating in public discourse?  I'll bet it's the same group of professors, think tank-ers, and the like who have always dominated this space.

Twitter and the current political campaign

While this piece isn't strictly limited to Johnson, it does explore the relationship between Twitter (and social media in general) and politics, which IS Johnson's focus.  The piece makes a number of interesting points:

1.  Twitter can't easily be used to deliver ads, making it one of the few media that are content-focused.

2.  Twitter allows for more instantaneous conversation; it's two-way, making it hard to use for cheap propaganda.

3.  Twitter has risen in status to the point that what happens on Twitter gets reported as news (on CNN in particular).  Thus, Twitter conversations must be attended to.  (The Romney campaign's slowness in responding to Twitter posts has allowed Obama supporters to get more of their own views out, leaving the R campaign to respond hours later.)

Twitter as Game Changer

In his Time Magazine piece, Johnson writes about how Twitter (relatively new in 2009, when he wrote the article) will change the nature of academic discussions.  What most intrigued me was the way (as he described it) outsiders could join into ongoing discussions.  Two scholars were arguing back and forth during a conference presentation (they were on twitter, as a back channel to the conference) and others in the room--and then others outside the room--joined in, creating the type of discussion that would take weeks and weeks to unfold on the editorial page of a newpaper, for example.

But how do we find out about these conversations?  How does one tune in to what is being discussed?  Sure, if the conversation is trending (with hundreds of hits), it will pop up on Twitter's list of hot feeds.  But that seems like a high threshhold to meet.

Using Twitter

In Johnson's blog post, he describes his own process of research--of coming up with innovative ideas--and I'm especially interested in his mention of  for research.  Johnson explains how he frequently posts queries on Twitter, allowing him to access a huge a wide array of readers in a short period of time.  Of course, this goes along nicely with his idea of the importance of the social in the process of innovation, but it also reminds me of how many in the public realm are actually interested in helping out and participating in intellectual processes.  Of course, it helps that Johnson already has a huge following, which means that many, many people are reading his queries and interesting in responding to what he has to say.  But if more of us can harness this possibility.....

The Commonplace book

Commonplace book

This is the transcript of a lecture that Johnson gave at Columbia U.  In it, he talks about the importance of the commonplace book in the 18th century.  The commonplace book was where thinkers (Thomas Jefferson, for example) recorded quotations from books they were reading along with their own thoughts as a way of educating themselves and keeping track of what they were learning.  More importantly, for Johnson, these thinkers would often review their commonplace books randomly, stimulating new ways of thinking and identifying new, unexpected connections between ideas.  Unexpected connections (serendipity), Johnson explains, is the key to innovative thinking.  The web now works this way, he says, because, with a simple click or a key word search, browsers (and other software) can bring up information that's connected in all kinds of ways.

social nature of new ideas

TED talk:

Johnson's most recent work focusing on how much innovation is social, that is, that it occurs in locations where sharing is possible.  More innovation happens in cities than in non-urban settings, he explains.  And now that we have the huge community made possible by the web, the web is the new locale for innovation.  The web allows an easy and quick sharing of resources, and it allows participants to transcend time and distance.  Johnson is incredibly optimistic about the future that the offers, leading to his notion of "microdemocracy," a system in which small groups of individuals, empowered by the web, will be able to take on problems and challenges that larger governmental bodies have not been able to solve.

Steven Johnson, Interface Culture

To find out more about Steven Johnson, a technology writer who currently fascinates me, I started by checking Gale's Biography in Context database.  His bio entry from Contemporary Authors online introduced me to an early work of his, "Interface Culture," which sort of sounds like the Marshall McLuhan manifesto of this age.  Whereas McLuhan focused on writing and communication in the age of mechanical reproduction, Johnson is clearly focusing on the post-mechanical age--that is, google rather than Guttenburg.  One thing that strikes me as cool: whereas McLuhan has only one tool to focus on (the printing press...though, later, mass media), Johnson points out that new tools for handing/process info on the web are released every single day.  The web is constantly changing, so the effects that the web has on us are constantly changing, especially as our tools for interacting with it are constantly changing.