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Where Good Ideas Come From

This book delves into the various environments and circumstances that foster creativity and the birth of groundbreaking ideas. more

Author

Steven Johnson
Steven Johnson

Steven Johnson is a renowned author, born on June 6, 1968. His works cover a range of topics including innovation, urban development, and technology, and have been well-received by readers. more

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“How could so many intelligent people be so grievously wrong for such an extended period of time? How could they ignore so much overwhelming evidence that contradicted their most basic theories? These questions, too, deserve their own discipline: the sociology of error.”

PeopleTheoryDisciplinePeriodsEvidenceDeserveIntelligentErrorsOverwhelmingSociology
Book:The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World
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“Keeping a slow hunch alive poses challenges on multiple scales. For starters, you have to preserve the hunch in your own memory, in the dense network of your neurons. Most slow hunches pass in and out of our memory too quickly, precisely because they possess a certain murkiness. You get a feeling that there's an interesting avenue to explore, a problem that might lead you to a solution, but then you get distracted by more pressing matters and the hunch disappears. So part of the secret of hunch cultivation is simple: write everything down.”

WritingMatterFeelingsProblemMightCertainChallengesMemoriesSimpleInterestingSecretAliveSolutionsDisappearScalesPreservesMultipleDistractedAvenuesOur MemoriesCultivationDenseHunchesNeuronsStarters
Author:Steven Johnson
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“Most new movements start this way: hundreds or thousands of individuals and groups, working in different fields and different locations, start thinking about change using a common language, without necessarily recognizing those shared values. You just start following your own vector, propelled along by people in your immediate vicinity. And then one day, you look up and realize that all those individual trajectories have turned into a wave.”

PeopleThinkingWayLooksDifferentValuesIndividualLanguageRealizingCommonGroupsMovementFieldsOne DayWaveFollowingLook UpLocationRecognizingTrajectoryCommon LanguageVicinityShared ValuesVectors
Author:Steven Johnson
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“One of the stories I love is how Gutenberg’s printing press set off this interesting chain reaction, where all of a sudden people across Europe noticed for the first time that they were farsighted, and needed spectacles to read books (which they hadn’t really noticed before books became part of everyday life); which THEN created a market for lens makers, which then created pools of expertise in crafting lenses, which then led people to tinker with those lenses and invent the telescope and microscope, which then revolutionized science in countless ways.”

PeopleWayFirstsBookStoriesLove IsInterestingNeededFirst TimeEuropePressesEverydayReactionsChainsMakersPoolEveryday LifeLensesExpertisePrintingTelescopesMicroscopesSpectaclesPrinting PressChain ReactionsGutenberg
Author:Steven Johnson
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“Who is giving the orders to ants? No one. They are self-organizing. Each of our immune systems get smarter over the years as its biochemical parts share information, and it responds with individualized defenses, but it isn't conscious and it has no memory. The host of that party didn't decree that everyone would gather in the kitchen, but it happened anyway. Emergence means we sometimes act in concert for better or worse.”

GivingYearsMeanSelfSometimesOrderMemoriesPartyHappenedShareInformationConsciousDefenseKitchenConcertsCollaborationHostSmarterAntsImmuneEmergenceDecreeImmune SystemNo Memory
Author:Steven Johnson
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