I’m old enough to not quite take it for granted that as I type this on a laptop, eventually to hit “send,” I am thus speeding written words to what could be a nearly limitless distribution. I once used “carbon paper” to make a single copy of work that was smudged with corrected typos. But until now I haven’t sufficiently grasped that the definitive innovation behind the computer is glass—the same stuff through which I look out my window. It is the cerebral fun of Steven Johnson’s new book, “How We Got to Now” (companion to a PBS series starting this week) that he peels back layer after layer of subsequent applications of original breakthroughs to reveal surprising invention trails. In additi
Last night I wrangled a Litquake event in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act made great by the writers who joined me and by a smart, engaged audience. As with the best conversations, there was some friction. I had an inkling of this when I was briefing Ken Brower on the other panelists. Ken Brower is the son of one of nature’s most effective protectors, David Brower, for whom the fabulous Brower Center in Berkeley is named, and a long-time, accomplished journalist. His most recent book Hetch Hetchy: Undoing a Great American Mistake deconstructs the dam in a literary way that Brower advocates making literal. I mentioned to Brower that Nathan Sayre, another panelist, is author
