My writing on culture, science and technology has been published widely, including The New York Times, Slate, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Wired, New York Observer, Elle and Salon.com. I've written on everything from bathroom graffiti to evolutionary psychology, computer games to starchitects, and celebrity sex tapes to city planning. Here are some samples.
May 23, 2006
Carpe Diem Notebook
A mouse stirring in my heart. I'm off to New England the end of this week: to get out of the NYC hubbub, to relax and recharge, and to get better acquainted with the book project.
So yes, books are not the dominant cultural form they were in the 19th-century, and yes, some of these new forms have amazing complexity to them that we'd do well to understand and appreciate. But books still matter in this culture, and if you're trying to change the way people think about a complicated issue, the advice is the same as it was two hundred years ago: write a book.- Steven Johnson
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.-Herman Melville, Moby Dick
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