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tv   Interview with Steven Johnson  CSPAN  December 23, 2016 1:31am-2:12am EST

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>> steven johnson's book wonderland of the history of entertainment and has driven scientific and technological progress. we talked to the author of this year's miami book fair. >> joining us here on our booktv set is offered steven johnson. before we get into the most recent book, you've are listeninlistening pretty intento what james click had to say.sc >> athis was the first book that got me thinking i couldd potentially be a science writer.
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i would say we should go back you have to listen to me now. >> the most recent book is called wonderland. what were you trying to explore? >> a history of things human beings have done for the fun of it. it came out of the book i did a few years ago which was the history of things of the modern world that we take for grantedan and try to tell the thousand year history behind all these things so that was a great format to work and. i love that kind of historical works. a lot of interesting stories and you could write the book a thousand times over because there are so many things you could write about but this book
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as an actual argument about history because i fear how change happens in society. so the argument of wonderland is that the history of things we do for fun and delight actually ends up triggering much more serious momentum changes innando science and technology orthat sa politics. so things start out as frivolous amusements and will change which were significantly.gn >> where did the concept of this come from?e >> guest: i've been kind of researching it. it opens up about the history of fascism and shopping. i had heard when i was in grad school more than 20 years ago, more than 20 years ago, i studied the 19th century metropolis in novel and so i was reading an if there was an
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incredible story that it was the first in men's, spectacular wonderland really. this extraordinary thing happens where this is a true story. there is a wave of kleptomania even these other grand depar department stores. no one can figure it out. they can pay for the goods but for some reason the store environment is causing them to steal so this provokes a moral panic in the discussion and it became known as the department store disease and eventually the whole theory of the mind develops which is to say it appears the new space is our
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messing with people's brains. i had stories like that but have been accumulating for years before they started to research, i could put it all together. >> call this the endless count for delight. >> if you think about what you learned in school you think ther request for power of the tribalism or nationalism. those have this other side of being human. we have to be surprised and delighted by new experiences so that's a lovely sight of our
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history and it turns out to be filled with all these great stories. >> if you've read steven johnson in the past to know what kind of books he writes. the most recent is called wonderland help laid made the modern world. we will put up the phone numbers so you can call and participated 202 is the area code. (202)748-8201 for those in the mountain and pacific time zones. go ahead and file and we willl get to your calls very quickly. a best-selling author hes referenced his book how we got to now got around to be cut innovations. the ghost map, everything bad is good for you. in wonderland you talk about hoc its letter to exploration and
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stock markets and computers and probability-based insurance policies. >> affair or to raise. one was an italian mathematician and chronic gambler who basically spent his whole life gambling. by the end of his life he kind of figured out a way to understand mathematically the likelihood of the games and what is the likelihood that you will rule 1207. no one did the math to understand what the less likely than a seven but no one knew how to explain it so he wrote this book that was kind of a cheatndo
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sheet and very advanced math and it became the basis for the probability theory and that god modified over the years and became the basis of a whole host of. it's not a business without probability and math but the other side that connects to the theme is the first modern insurance firm which was lloyd's of london took place in a coffeehouse and i have a whole other chapter where this space is designed for sitting around drinking coffee you're drinking beer so they had a coffeehouse called lloyd's coffeehouse. so dice games and coffee houses. >> public spaces how do we get to public spaces. >> the tavern is the beginning of this.
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the world is now filled with just countless -- look around you and think how many spaces are engineered specifically for you to have fun in some fashion from movie theaters to par as, bars and coffee houses and shopping malls. it's filled with these things most of which didn't exist 300 years ago but alone a thousand. and there was a space that wasn't work or home just a space you coul could code of a semi private, semi-public and that alone is nice but bars and taverns have played a momentous role in the history of politics so you cannot tell the history of the revolution without
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politics. they were kind of the key information in the anti-english sentiment in the period. it's possible he had bars and taverns not been invented that it would have required a different set of meeting places for it to have been. >> what do we do with the information that you've shared with us or >> guest: it's a reminder when we are being unused were delighted by something that leads to more innovation.fu that's fine, that's interesting what if we do this or change this and this something that's really powerful and as we alluded to there is a whole chapter about the history of games. think about the context they think it's an interesting field
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when you watch kids playing games for there they are video games or board games. i play these of my kids who were seven or eight and they will be building an entire geopolitical empire learning about the legal. systems. it's the nature of the game to teach them about tax reform and industrial development that the game structure pulls you in and makes you want to learn in spite of yourself. >> host: let's begin with wayne in san diego you are on the steven johnson. go ahead.
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>> the only translation i've been able to find into the author insists. >> it is a fascinating book. it was written right at the beginning of world war ii so you have this sociologist writing about the centrality of play ass the nazis are marching acrosscad europe so i close at the end of the final chapter.
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the basic idea and play is a little bit more abstract and it's filled with very specific examples of how it came to pass at all the crazy stories of people trying to any of themselves so the approaches of the two books philosophically are very much aligned. >> withdrew from david rochester new york. of the >> it's all different kinds of things and if booktv comes to visit i wondethis that i wondere
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heard of it. >> how do you think that the physical objects of play. where do they go and do you think of them just as something at the margins if history happens on the battlefield or parliament. for thousands of years it's been an important part of the march of progress. it's a conceptual innovation that van led to technological
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innovations because it was early to the computing. it's the artificial intelligence in this? can you teach a computer to play chess. it's a great example. it's in a wa the way that we boh measure and train. there is no way to get thechess. computer to pay a good look at the supercomputer which is
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arguably one of the most intelligent forms of artificial computation out there. n we need to train the machines and it would be the perfect way to do it. so the connection between gaming and digital technology is very rich. someone should remake the 2001 space odyssey so he's like i'm sorry dave i didn't understand what you said. i found this on the web. >> host: how advanced is siri, and she is kind of a play toy. >> guest: we are just at the beginning.
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one of the -- there's a chapter on evolution and how much time you spend perceiving things that are not there. there is something just as with an optical illusion. your brain has to make that mistake otherwise that's how they are wired. once you get to more than 12 frames per second and a close-up talking with audio you feel like you know that person. so we have that in the age of culture and i think what we are going to experience pretty soon
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is the similar kind of emotional illusion where we have the virtual systems. when you've been with the system for a year they would have a unique personality. voice is a lot easier to do than facial expression so we may have a complicated in the next five years may be relationships with completely artificial characte characters.y. >> you ar were on with author steven johnson. >> caller: i was calling to see if the book touches at all
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on the philosophy of the reali realism. they are more so focused with art rather than play but you seem to have similar things going on.hat is r >> guest: what is an interesting question actually in the book of how i was going tooo handle art, because there is a chapter on music and illusions which gets into cinema and animation. but other than that i try to steer away from what wasntationa representational.
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it's a painting where you have work that is trying to speak to our higher faculties in a way t address the sweeping questions of what it means to be human. those didn't seem playful enough. i didn't feel the need to make the case for that because others already made it more eloquently than i could. we have no idea what it's good for.. if you think about how much music moves us and how much passion we feel for music and there is no functional value atv all.
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so it allowed me to write about music in this book, but i didn't cover the set of realism and things like that.michig you are on with author stevenso johnson. >> my question is on technology. i just want to know how can we make social media better for the next generation making it safer
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for children and kids. >> before we hear from steven johnson what would you like to see changed? >> i would like to see the social media faster for the youth. >> host: what kind ofec technology to use? >> guest: i use my ipad and cell phone. >> it is a really important question. even going back to the book i read a long time ago you move from the system you have a bunch of gatekeepers and folks
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deciding what's true and what's not, we shifted and distributed system where the whole network is how everybod everybody on thk is generating news and sharing ideas and creating an editorial filter deciding if this is relevant or not. 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. my concern is predicted with something like facebook becauses the size of the media now. it's whathat's what we can readd consume and feel about what our children experience.
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the way that we do over the lab is an open platform people cann modify and expand and push different productions. it's the size of the internet or the size of the web so we wantan to say for instance it is less vulnerable to the fake news as the topic that's on the tip of everybody's tongue the last week or two. we have to ask facebook to go and change it so that is something we have to wrestle with over the next few years. >> i think there is an argument that without twitter he wouldn't have one. i think he might not have won
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the republican race because it gave him this kind of mouthpiece for $0 basically. >> host: why does he need a filter today? >> guest: i think in many ways he decided he doesn't. in the whitand the white house e fascinating. in the race apparently his people took the phone away from him and said he couldn't anymo anymore. apparently he will keep doing it from the oval office and he putt the cynical new world.ly he is >> host: he will get the account as it transfers over. >> guest: just as the founders intended. they were very interested in communication. one of the things we talked about many years ago, the atom
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jefferson letters, they hadfall fallen out as many people know they didn't speak for many years and then they started a correspondence in the way theyhi begin the conversation the first few letters is noting how fast the letters are giving to each other which is to state the infrastructure the time like yours got here in six days from monticello. so they would have been shocked but quickly figured it out. >> host: david uri must steven johnson. he wrote a lot about bringing reality into the land of make-believe and if h he wasn't alive i would have argued that
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the by giving children actual things this work is in theithsoa smithsonian and they went to a lot of trouble to make the choice so real they seconds to f playing with a fantasy object would now be playing with a real an object and therefore become more realistic and go on to lead corporations and do practical things that i would have arguedl with him the play should be open-ended and not directed. i think we got the plaintiff.n y
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the reality and the play space just in the history the rules are defined you literally cannot make a decision. you have to move your piece no matter what it says then it's all about changing the rules and i think developmentally there are different cases but the other question you raise is the
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real world and the play world. we saw the first explosion of it this summer with pokémon go. it brought people out looking for these imaginary creatures. my kids were begging to go for a walk for the first time. they were still going for a walk and getting exercises.. this is one of the biggest arguments when we look at people playing it is often a predictor of the more serious changes coming to society.he
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i think we are going to look back with the augmented reality where it is superimposed in the real worl world we can say this started with pokémon go where kids change maker chasing imaginary japanese creatures. yes a couple of major devices have come out. thinking that if we went back and looked at the early 19th century illusion shows like this haunted house show. and there was a 360-degree painting. and hundreds of other kinds of shows. i think those are a preview of coming attractions that will come to us in virtual reality.
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and what they have they weren't really about characters you went to the movie. or to feel empathy. they were about being thrown into a space and immersing yourself in the sensory overload of that space and being frightened or amazed or feeling you are transported somewhere but they were narratives and i think when people look at virtual reality they think how do we translate video games to the new form. they might be instructive. the example is if james cameron were making a titanic the whole story line of the stowaway with the well-to-do lady. you just want to be on the ship. you want to run around and jump off the edge.
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you and care so much about the characters it would be about the environment and i think that's what were to learn. but again looking back at the older forms of play and it's very illustrative. >> i have a background in mathematics and i will have also taught introductory mathematics to adults. and i've become convinced first of all that the mathematical talent requires in part a spirit of play and playing with conceptual worlds and manipulating them. a willingness to play with mathematical ideas when they're first introduced. they play with numbers and what can you do with numbers. and i'd be interested in your comments on the relationships between mathematics and play and how to teach it and the
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rest of that. >> that is a is a great observation. there's a story in the book about the first wearable computer can of us computer small enough that you could feel it on your body. the computers and a lot of fields. they built this device they figured out the crazy way of calculating about how long it took before it started to settle and you can make predictions based on that. and they successfully did it and it was so far from being conceivable because this was in the late 50s when they were it wasn't against the law.
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i talk about that in the book. he was just incredibly playful. and almost kind of a philosopher in the way. if you went over to his house you have this toy room and he would love to juggle and he would get on his unicycle and he would juggle and he would talk about mathematical theorems. there is a rich history in that. children come into the world wired to play in the other thing they come into the world to do is invent new rules this is a beautiful thing about young kids. it's not just like her to to play this game according to the rules there and say what are the roles can be this time. that kind of thinking is a very high level form. let's figure out what the rules are to be. whether it will be fun or not.
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let's modify the rules as we go. that's almost like that. based on the feedback we get from the system. as another way. val and austin texas. we will try ashland in sacramento. the third time is a charm. i think so. preface my question. my wife and i work many years
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for fedex and most people think of as a transportation company in reality when people talk to us about it were really not where management information company. we found that with real-time information if you know where things are at all times things will work the right way. that is profits that you talk about the different platforms. they used to be traditional media but people have trusted them less and less and so they've that got to platforms like facebook which i have and i don't use. most of our information we get from c-span. i know if i watch it i'm in to get accurate information right from the people who are the source of what i'm trying to find out. so i'm wondering how all of that stuff fits together.
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i agree with your endorsement. i hope it. the ideas that they were to give you direct access to what was going on. it would lead to more democratic participation it has gone up around that. it was the access to the data -- to the leader. and more people talking about it on social media which makes it more personable. it also creates a possibility for distortion there. and we probably we probably need to get that balance a little bit .
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here is a book. it's called wonderland. how play made the modern world. it's very interesting and colorful and busy
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