we're not. and market forces can be ruthless. in the face of that ruthless insure the face of ruthless market forces we have to have similar live ruthless public policieses that pivot people to what will be very substantial areas of job creation and wealth creation in the future. which you can read about in the industries of the future. thank you all. if you have additional questions, please ask them as you come up for a book signing now, and i want to thank lisa and politics and prose again and remind you, buy my book and then also buy another book. thank you. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] >> book tv is on twitter and facebook. and we want hear from you. >> military force is one of the things think the american public very often gets impatient about because they really believe they have this trump card, this great military that can defeat anyone. but it's not true. it is an extraordinary military, very powerful, but can only win in certain situations and can only real request destroy things. can't build a new order in its place. >> sunday night, journalist and professor mark danner talks about his career and the challenges facing the u.s. war

on terrorism in his latest book "spiral" we don't want to produce more militant organizations. they want us to overreact. they want us to occupy muslim countries so they can build their recutement. they want us to torture people. the want us to do things that is going to allow them to make their case against us. >> sunday night at 8 eastern on c-span's q & a. >> next week, beginning monday, december 26th we'll look at national security and defense issues, including challenges facing president-elect trump's national security team in the year ahead and the closer look at the career of secretary of defense nominee, james mattis. then on tuesday, december 27th , it's trade and

job issues, examining how congress and the trump administration could change current trade laws in an effort to eeither creating or save johns. on wednesday, energy and environmental policy and discuss our are in and climate issues my be affected. thursday, we'll talk about immigration and how president-elect trump and the new congress might change immigration policy. and on friday, the december 30th, take a look at the future of the affordable care act, now and how the republican congress and the trump administration will repeal and replace the aca and the key players to watch. >> joining us here on our booktv set is author, steven johnson. before we get into your book, what did -- you were listening to what james flick lad to say.

>> guest: one of my favorite hows. his book chaos, which i reasoned when way yes college what juan the first doppler science books i read that really start me thinking it could potentially be a science writer. i had not been interested in science. if he were talking i would say we need to listen to him. >> host: your most recent backe is called "wonderland. "what were you trying to explore in this book? >> guest: it's a history of somethings that human beings have done for the fun of it, for the delight in it, for the feeling of play or amusement. and it came out of the book, how be we got now and the pbs series which is a history of innovation and things in the modern world we take for granted and trying to tell the 500 year or thousand

year history behind these things. so what a greet format to work in. i love that kind of historical work. a lot of interesting stories and you can write that book a thousand times over because there's so many things to write about.es i wanted for this book to have an actual argument about history, theory how change happens in society, and the argument of wonderland is that the history of things we do to are fun, actually ends up triggering much more serious and momentous changes in science and politics and start us as privilege louse change the world. >> host: where did the concept of this come from? >> guest: well, one of these books where i've been kind of researching it for 20 years. this -- it opens up with a chapter after the introduction

about the history of fashion and shopping, and i had heard when i was in grad school, more than 20 years ago, well more than 020 years ago, i'd studied the 19th century metropolitan novel and so it was raiding dickens ands could there's an a story about the first department stores, the bon marche, immense, shopping wonderland. this extraordinary thing happens where all of these well to do women, who don't need to do this for economic reasons, come into the store and they start dealing from the story. there's this wave of klepto manian of women in praise from the bon marche and no one can figure it out. these women could pay for the got but to some reason the store environment is causing them to steal and so this provokes this huge moral panic and discussion about it, and it becomes known

as the department store disease. and eventually the whole theory of mind develops out studying this women which is to say it appears hat newphone figuration of modern life, new commercial environments is actually messing with people's brains, and at the beginning of the line of talking about the brain when we think but how video games affect the brain or whatever, so i had stories like that, that i have been accumulating for the last 20 years, and once i started to research i could put it together. >> host: steven johnson, you call this our endless quest for delight. >> guest: yes. if you think about what you learned when you were in school about the forces that drive history. right?u you would think, okay, there's the quest for power, there's tribalism or nationalism, religious beliefs, there's survival, money. those are the big fors that

drive history, but there's this other side of being human, which is we're mused by things. we like to play, like to have fun, like to be surprised and delighted by new experiences, and so that is -- i think it's a lovely side of our history, and it turns out to be filled with all these crazy stories that are fun to read jive you read steven johnson in the past you know what kind of books he writes. his most recent is it called "wonderland." we'll put up the phone numbers so you can call in and participate. 202-2748-8200, east and central time zone, 202-748-82801 for those in the mountain and pacific time seasons. go ahead and dial in and'll get to your calls very quickly. steven johnson is a best, selling author, referenced hishe book, how we got to now, six innow vacations that made the

modern world and also future perfect, the ghost map, everything bad is good for you as well. now in wonderland you talk about how our so-called endless quest for delight has changed or led to exploration and stock markets and computers and probability-based insurance policies. >> guest: yeah. >> host: explain that. >> guest: well, actually two ways in which the modern insurance business. the first is there was a crazy vigor from 500 years ago, the italian mathematician and and c chronic gambler who had basically spent his whole life doing dice games and -- near the end of this police officer we figured out a way to understand math that include the likelihood of various games of chance outcomes issue like a game of

dice. the likelihood you can rowell three-sixes in a row, or a 12 versus a 7 and now one has done the math. they understand if you're reeling two device. so he wrote this back that was cheat sheet for how to win at dice and also very advanced math.ow it became the basis for probability theory and that theory got refined and modified over the years and that became then the basis of a whole host of elements of mow modern world. the insurance been iowa probables can't do anything. but the other side of it that connect to the book's themes is that the first modern insurance familiar, lloydss of london, took place in a coffee house. have other wheel other chapter about coffee house culture and tavern culture and spaces designed for leisure and hanging

out and drinking cover fee or boy so lloyds of london was called lloyds coffee house. so both dice games and coffee houses came together to form the modern insurance system. >> host: public spaces. >> guest: in a way, the tavern is the beginning of this. the world is now fueled with just countless -- look around you and think how many spaces are engineered specifically for you to have fun in some fashion. all around the world. from movie theaters to parks to bars and coffee houses and shopping malls. the world is filled with these things most of which didn't exist 300 years ago even. much less a thousand years ago.. and one of the first spaces to do that was the bar, the tavern. there was this space at wasn't work, wasn't home, it wasn't just nature, it was a space where you could go and its swipples my private and second

september public and designed to let you pace a few hours. bus bars and tamps have played a really momentous role in the histories of politics, in the history of at the country. cannot tell the history of the american revolution without taverns.th every step of the way they were the key information node in the network of anti-english sent. during that period. it's possible we ooh have had an american revolution had bars and taverns not -- but it would have required a dust path, different set of meeting places for it to happen. so it's a big part of our history. >> host: what do we 2005 in the -- with the information you shared with it us? >> guest: it's remainder how creative they playful state of mind is. when we are being amused, being delighted by something, it seems to lead to more and more innovation. people just get into that state

and they're like, that's fun, what if weaved this or changed this, and there's something about that state that is really powerful, and as we alluded to with the dice game story, there's a chapter about the history of games, and think about games in the context of education. this is a really interesting field. when you watch kid playing games, whether they're video games or board games or offed educational games the concentrate the mind. i play these kind of simulation games with my kids, who play them when they were seven or eight and they'll be building an entire geopolitical empire and learn about history and taxation rate when their seven and aim not saying they're gifted, just the nature of the game. if i tree to teach them about tax reform and industrial development, when they're seven they would never pay attention but the game structure pulls you in and makes you want to learn.

>> host: let's hear from our coolers. wayne in san diego, you're on tv with author steven johnson, go ahead. >> caller: yes, mr. johnson has read the -- [inaudible] -- if he has read the only transition i've been able to find, what he thinks about the irony of what the bar insists the -- [inaudible] -- so... beginning of world war ii. you have this extraordinary thing writing this epic book

about the history of play to the human species as the nazis are marching across europe. can a tragedy in the middle of a very powerful book. with this approach the basic idea is that obviously we share that. it's a little bit more abstract and kind of philosophical if you get the chance to see wonderland it's filled with specific examples of how this instinct or appetite for play came to pass in all the kind of crazy stories of people trying to amuse themselves in ever more inventive ways. the approaches of the book philosophically are very much aligned with the practice. >> host: let's hea but here frod in rochester new york. >> caller: thank you. how are you doing?

i wonder if you know here in rochester we have a museum that is a history of all play items throughout history, all different kinds of and if bookte ever comes you can visit. >> guest: i have heard of it but i haven't been. this is the thing. how do we think about the role of these objects that play, where do they go and do you think of them something just at the margin but the real history happenetheir realhistory happene battlefield or the parliament or do we recognize these objects that we made have been for thousands of years a reallyars.

important part of the march on progress in advance of civilization. it's good that we have some museums out there celebrating so everyone should go to rochester new york. >> host: was just a technological innovation? >> guest: it was a conceptual innovation that led to technological innovation because it was central to the early days of computing. if you look back the first essays written about the idea of artificial intelligence for all anchored in this idea could you teach a computer to to play chess. it would be possible. in a way he was a bit pessimistic about it and how they are better than humans but it took a long time and so it's a great example of the power of play. all alone in the history of artificial intelligence, games

have been the way that we've measured and trained theh checke machines. there's no way to get the computer to play chess and then it turned out they got good. but look at the ibm supercomputer which is arguably one of the most intelligent artificial competitions out there and how did they trained watson, by having it play jeopardy and then eventually when we neede so we need to figa way to train this machine. i think that a game show would be different perfect way to do it. so the connection between gaming and digital technology is very rich. >> host: we were looking at the iphone a little bit earlier. do you use siri? >> guest: i do sometimes.

someone should we make space odyssey like i'm sorry dave, i didn't understand what you saidd >> host: how advanced is siri, and she is kind of a play toy and ascend. >> guest: we are just at the beginning. there is a chapter in the book on evolution and about how much time we spend trekking our eyes into perceiving things that are not their starting with the perspective and painting and going through these magic lantern shows independent cinema. one of the arguments that i needed the chapter is there isat something about just as with an optical illusion, you can't -- you know that it is an image that you still see the three d. square and you can't tell your brain otherwise. that's just the way that we are wired.

>> host: once you get more than 12 per second and a close-up of a human being talking with audio, you feel like you know that person. you feel like there's some kind of an emotional connection. that's why we have celebrity culture in the age of tv and movies and stuff like that and i think what we are going to experience pretty soon it's a similais asimilar kind of emotil illusion where we have these virtual systems only they know us a little bit and can engage in real conversations and they change over time adapting to what we say. so after you've been with the system for a year they will have a unique personality and i can guarantee people will develop very intense emotional connections to these devices like the movie her. lot eas voice is a lot easier to do than facial expressions so we may

have these very complicated in the next five years maybe relationships with completely artificial characters. >> host: kimberly in new york you're on with steven johnson. >> caller: yes, i was calling to see perhaps if his book touches on the philosophy of realism and eli segal because based on the discussion of theou work i look forward to reading they are more so focused with art but you seem to have some similar things going on. >> guest: it's an interesting question in the book how i was going to handle art, because there is a chapter on music, and there is a chapter on illusion

which gets into cinema and animation but other than that, i try to steer away from the artar that was representational. it speaks to the higher faculties in a way. those didn't seem playful enough. we already accept the idea thatp the narrative fiction is an important part of the cultural history so i didn't feel the need to make the case for that since others there is a mystery

about music we have no idea what it's good for. think about how much music moves us and why it has no functional value at all there are these forms waiving through our earsfo and should produce these strong feelings. so that was an opening that allowed me to write about music in this book, but i didn't cover the scent of realism and things like that but maybe in another one. >> host: albert is in texas, go ahead. let's move on to royal oak michigan.

my question is on technology and i just want to know how can we make social media better for the next generation and making it safer for children and kids. before we hear from steven johnson what would you like to see change? we would like to see the social media work faster. what kind of technology do you use?

>> i use my cell phone. >> that's an important question and i've written about this in some of the other books but even going back to the book emergence when you move to social media as you move from a system where you have a bunch of gatekeepers andd editors and folks that are controlling the flow ofho are information deciding what's true and what's not, what's appropriate and what's newsworthy and what's not and we distributed the system where the whole network is how everybody is essentially generating news and sharing ideas. i think this has worked pretty well for a while, but we have seen in the last few weeks some significant cracks beginning to appear. so i think because my concern right now is predicted with something like facebook,

facebook is the size of an entire media. it's almost as big as the web itself and get that medium that has a huge impact over what we read and consume in our children experience, we don't really have any control over how that worksr the web is an open platform people can modify and expand and push in different directions and facebook is owned by a private company yet it is the size of the internet or the web in many ways so when we want to change something, for instance something like facebook less vulnerable to take news for instance that the topic on the tip of everybody's time we have to go and ask facebook to change it. it's not an open standard we should change that is something we have to wrestle with over the years. >> host: we have a president

elect that flex his twitter account. >> guest: i have been a longtime user of twitter and i think there is an argument that without twitter he wouldn't have won.. he wouldn't have been able to, i think he might not have won the republican race because it gave him this kind of mouthpiece. >> host: so why does he need a filter today? >> guest: i think in many ways he decided he doesn't. it's going to be fascinating. as you know, there are very reflected in the race apparently people took his phone away from him so he couldn't anymore. but they think they've given it back to him. apparently they will just keep going from the oval office. he puts it in a whole new worldf >> host: he will get thece account, and mrs. trump will get

xt the flotus account. >> guest: just as the founders intended. >> host: do you think they had any idea? >> guest: though, they werete interested in the communication and one thing we talked about many years ago and be adams jefferson letter the famousth correspondence between the two, and they've fallen out as most people probably know they start this epic correspondence and the way they begin the conversation for the first few letters is basically how fast they are getting to each other which was the state-of-the-art at the time and they are like your letter only got here from monticello that was impressive you have very high bandwidth. so they would have been shocked but then they would have figured it out. >> host: david, you are on with steven johnson. the newest book is called wonderland. >> caller: good afternoon.

my grandfather started with a toy company in 1920 [inaudible] i would have argued that we need to keep play. we need to give actual things. his work is in the smithsonian and we went through a lot of trouble to make this toy is so real. it's playing with a real object and therefore becomes more realistic and goes on to read

the corporations and do practical things and i wouldulda have argued within the play should be open-ended and not connected and making childrenag. more pragmatic. >> guest: that is a great family history. the lines between reality is interesting and just in the history of games, there' there a divide between the games that s are strictly limited when the rules are defined. i remember when my kids were young and i would play candy cad with them and finally it's crazy about this game, there is no choice. you literally cannot make a decision. you have to move your piece no matter what it says.

so that's the ultimate kind of constraining. it's ruining the kids and then you go to the other extreme and they have games like dungeons and dragons or something where you are inventing a whole world. i think developmentally they are different games at different times. the other question that you raise is the boundaries between the real world and the play world and that is something that we are going to see more and more an of and we saw that this summer with pokémon go. you have a game on some level that is not that important and in any functional way, that it's possible these people out into the world exploring and looking for these imaginary creatures. my kids were begging to go for a walk for the first time in thei lives because they're screened for the capture things outside

but they were still getting exercise. this was one of the biggest arguments with wonderland whentt we look at what people do for fun it's often a predictor of more serious changes coming to society. so you will find the future wherever people are having the most fun. i think we will look back and in ten years or so when we are walking around with this reality and virtual information is being superimposed we will say this started with kids running around chasing these creatures but now he dwe do it as a part of ordiny life but it began in a game. >> host: virtual reality has kind of taken off. a couple major devices have come out and i wrote a piece for the. times magazine adapting some of the material in the evolution chapter thinking if we went back

and looked at these shows like this haunted house show and then there was the 360-degree painting called the panorama in all different kind of shows indo think those are a preview of the kind of coming attractions that will come to us and virtual reality. and what those shows hav have tt interesting as they were not about stories or characters. you wouldn't go to follow a plot or feel empathy for a character. they were about being thrown into space and immersing yourself in the sensory overload and feeling that you were i transported to somewhere butlf they were not narrative, and i think when people look at virtual reality they try to r figure out how to translate movies to this new form and i think actually going back and looking as i try to do in early forms that might be instructive.

the example is if james cameron were making titanic for vr, the whole storyline of the stowaway with the well-to-do lady that would be a waste of time. you would just want to be on thu ship and run around and try to survive. you wouldn't care so much about the character. it would be about the environment and i think that is what we are going to learn. but again looking back at the older forms of play i think it is illustrative. >> host: go ahead we arend in listening. >> caller: i have a background in mathematics and also taught introductory mathematics to adult and i've become convinced first of all that the mathematical talent requires in part a spirit of play with conceptual worlds and manipulating them.

children have long times exhibited when they are not poisoned by adults a willingness to play with mathematical ideas when they are first introduced to so they play with members.at what can you do with members? i would be interested in your comments on this relationship between mathematics and play and how to teach it and the rest of that. >> guest: thank you. that's a great observation. there is a story in the book about the first wearable computer, a computer small enough you could put it on your body. it was developed by claude shannon, a kind of genius mathematician and early advocate for computers and was involved in a lot of fields. fields. they built this device to beat the house at roulette in vegas. they figured out a crazy way of calculating when the ball is dropped and exactly how long it took before it started to settle

and you could make predictions based on that if you have an accurate sensor and a little computer on you. they successfully did it and it was so far from even being conceivable because this is when most computers were the size of a room with a loan fitting inine your pocket. it wasn't against the law because nobody imagined there could be a computer. but i talk about this in the book. he was this incredibly playful guy and almost kind of philosopher in a way. if you went over to his house, he had this kind of toy room and he would love to juggle and he a would talk about mathematical theories and stuff like that so there is a history about it and the other thing, children come into the world wired to play and the other thing they come into the world wired to do when they get at this stage is invent new

rules. anybody with young kids it's noi just like okay we are going to play the game according to the rules, they say okay what areccc the rules going to be this time. that kind of thinking is a very high-level form of cognition. let's define a system, let's figure out what the rules should be and how they are going to affect our behavior and whether it will be fun or engage in more challenging enough, and let's modify the rules as we go as we get feedback from the game and learn whether that worked well or made it too boring or easy for one side or the other. that's almost like the scientific method in some sense to build a hypothesis about this and test it and modify it based on feedbac the feedback we get e system so that is another wayys that i think the context is just incredibly important. >> last call for steven johnson comes from austin texas. austin texas, one more time. we are going to try sacramento.

fill in n. korea kansas, third time is a charm. >> caller: i think so. how are you today? to preface my question, my wife and i worked for many years for fedex which most people think i was there as a transportation company but in reality when people would talk to us we are really management information company particularly accurate information. we found that with real-time information if you know where things are at all times, thing is well worth the right way and you deliver the kind of service people need. that is a preface to when you talk about different platforms that people rely on it used to be traditional media that peoplh have trusted them less and less so they've gone to platformsthat like facebook i have that i don't use.use.

i wonder for my wife and myself most of our information we get from c-span, not to tout you guys but i know if i watch c-span i'm going to get accurate information right from the people that are the source of what i am trying to find out. so i wonder how all of this stuff fits together.ther. >> guest: first off, i agree with your endorsement of c-span. [laughter] c-span and the tv but also the broad purview, this idea that the technology will give you kind of a direct access to what's going on and that would lead to more democratic participation and what's happened is the social media has gone up around all that and so you have almost less direct access to your leaders were speeches he made in order walz passed on the house floor and

more to people talking about it on social media which makes it more personable and built into the network but also it creates a possibility for distortion and we probably need to get that balance a little bit. >> host: here's the book it's called wonderland, help, how ple made the modern world. as you can see, it's a veryhow l interesting and colorful and busy cover. steven johnson is the author. thanks for being with us on booktv. >> guest: it's great to be back.