Steven Johnson

Born on June 6, 1968, popular scientist and media theorist Steven Johnson was raised in Washington, D.C. where he attended the prestigious St. Albans school. Upon graduation, Johnson matriculated at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. While at Brown, Johnson focused his studies on semiotics, the theory of meaning made vis-à-vis signs and symbols. Johnson did his post-graduate work at Columbia University where he earned a degree in English literature. Johnson's first book Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate was published in 1997. His sophomore effort Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software was published in 2001. In 2005 Johnson published Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter. The book expounds on Johnson's theory that popular culture, particularly elements like television shows and video games-are becoming increasingly complex, and thus has fostered a new kind of intellectual development, analysis and thinking in the populace. In August 2013 Johnson announced that he would be hosting a six-part miniseries on the history of innovation for PBS. The series was called "How We Got to Now" (PBS 2014), and aired on PBS and the BBC in the fall of 2014. In 2009 Johnson was awarded the Newhouse School Mirror Award for his TIME magazine article "How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live."