Every now and then, I come across writing by Steven Johnson. It happens often enough that I notice. Recently, a friend told us about The Villages, which seems to be an organization to assist elderly people to make themselves available to help each other. That conversation led to books like "The Longevity Economy" and "The Longevity Project". People are clearly living to greater ages than they used to. Being interested in what greater longevity does to society, I looked for other items of interest and I found Steven Johnson's "Extra Life" in both book and PBS show formats.
I have been interested in brain science since I retired more than a decade ago. Looking at Johnson's books, I see "Mind Wide Open". I was sent in the direction of Johnson by "Libby", an app for computers, tablets and smartphones. Libby can allow me to borrow ebooks from libraries quickly and for free. I have been trying to limit myself to getting any new books only on Mondays. When I looked at what was available, I found "How We Got to Now" by, guess who?, Steven Johnson!
In his Now, Johnson looks at the history and development of six subjects:
Glass
Cold
Sound
Clean
Time
Light
He is very good at helping a casual reader learn about long interesting chains of development and change.
Gutenberg invented the printing press. But that led to more books and papers leading to more reading leading to more people finding that they had trouble reading because of being far-sighted leading to more lens making leading to the development of the telescope and the microscope leading to better understanding of our bodies being made of cells and what that means.
We are living in a new world and the old one at the same time and Johnson helps me understand them.
