“ Every genuinely new technology has a genuinely new way of breaking – and every now and then, those malfunctions open a new door to the adjacent possible. Sometimes the way a new technology breaks is a… Steven Johnson
“ Most world-historic events - great military battles, political revolutions-are self-consciously historic to the participants living through them. They act knowing that their decisions will be chronicl… Steven Johnson
“ The larger question is, as virologist Jonas Salk once asked, Are we being good ancestors? Steven Johnson
“ If you look at history, innovation doesn't come just from giving people incentives; it comes from creating environments where their ideas can connect. Steven Johnson
“ The patterns are simple, but followed together, they make for a whole that is wiser than the sum of its parts. Go for a walk; cultivate hunches; write everything down, but keep your folders messy; emb… Steven Johnson
“ Bill Gates (and his successor at Microsoft, Ray Ozzie) are famous for taking annual reading vacations. During the year they deliberately cultivate a stack of reading material—much of it unrelated to t… Steven Johnson
“ The trick to having good ideas is not to sit around in glorious isolation and try to think big thoughts. The trick is to get more parts on the table. Steven Johnson
“ …it is the public sector I find more interesting, because governments and other non-market institutions have long suffered from the innovation malaise of top-heavy bureaucracies. Today, these institut… Steven Johnson
“ The wetland created by the beaver, like the thriving platform created by the Twitter founders, invites variation because it is an open platform where resources are shared as much as they are protected… Steven Johnson
“ Superstition, then and now, is not just a threat to the truth. It’s also a threat to national security. Steven Johnson
“ Calculus, the electrical battery, the telephone, the steam engine, the radio - all these groundbreaking innovations were hit upon by multiple inventors working in parallel with no knowledge of one ano… Steven Johnson
“ The second precondition is that the network be plastic, capable of adopting new configurations. Steven Johnson
“ That's the way progress works: the more we build up these vast repertoires of scientific and technological understanding, the more we conceal them. Steven Johnson
“ Diverse, horizontal social networks, in Ruef’s analysis, were three times more innovative than uniform, vertical networks. In groups united by shared values and long-term familiarity, conformity and c… Steven Johnson
