The Spaces of Innovation - Near Future Laboratory

At the Microsoft Research Social Computing Symposium 2010, it was a pleasure to hear Steven Johnson drop a few tidbits on his soon-to-be-released book Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation he described an interesting perspective on the history of ideas — or in a more marketable, business-type book-y way — the history of innovation, as coming from places and related to time and the pace of things. What I got from his short engaging talk then was a bit of a thoughtful debunking of the myth of the solo innovator, sitting alone and channeling brilliance from wherever. I’m looking forward to reading the book. There was a nice little animation that serves as a kind of networked-media-age jacket blurb in the video below.

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

var so = new SWFObject(“http://www.db798.com/pictobrowser.swf”, “PictoBrowser”, “500”, “500”, “8”, “#EEEEEE”); so.addVariable(“source”, “sets”); so.addVariable(“names”, “SCS2010”); so.addVariable(“userName”, “julianbleecker”); so.addVariable(“userId”, “66854529@N00”); so.addVariable(“ids”, “72157623066738659”); so.addVariable(“titles”, “on”); so.addVariable(“displayNotes”, “on”); so.addVariable(“thumbAutoHide”, “off”); so.addVariable(“imageSize”, “medium”); so.addVariable(“vAlign”, “mid”); so.addVariable(“vertOffset”, “0”); so.addVariable(“colorHexVar”, “EEEEEE”); so.addVariable(“initialScale”, “off”); so.addVariable(“bgAlpha”, “90”); so.write(“PictoBrowser100929065753”);

Some more images from the MSR Social Computing Symposium last winter.

Why do I blog this? Mostly because I was drawn into the video, which is a cool example of these sorts of graphic note takings. There’s a bit of theater attached to it of course.

(via @jmcaddell)