Where Good Ideas Come From --Steven Johnson

Steven Johnson speaks about the importance of collaboration for generating great ideas. He begins, not with a personal story, but with a story about the role of the English coffee houses five hundred years ago. See how this story leads to his main point and how he cleverly alludes to the introductory story in his concluding example.



Type your answers in Word and then print them. You may want to copy and paste the questions, but you don't have to. Only the answers to #14 and #15 need to be in complete sentences.

1.       How does  the English coffeeshop relate to the Enlightenment?

2.       What were people drinking in public places around 1650 and why?

3.       How did drinking coffee have an impact on the Enlightenment?

4.       Name a place Johnson has been investigating to find out where good ideas come from.

5.       What is the basic assumption of the concepts of a flash of insight, a stroke of insight, an epiphany, a Eureka moment, etc?

6.       What does Johnson say is really happening in your brain and how is it similar to the outside world?

7.       What is the traditional problem of expensive neonatal incubators in developing countries?

8.       How did the company Design that Matters solve this problem?

9.   In what sort of environment did ideas probably come together historically?

10.   What is the liquid network?

      11.   What is the slow hunch?

12.   What is wrong with Darwin's explanation of how the idea of natural selection came to him?

13.   What is the connection between launching the 1957 Sputnik satellite and today's technology?

14.   How do Johnson's concluding remarks enhance his opening story to give his lecture unity?
15.  Write a short paragraph in which you give a personal example of the speaker's last line: "Chance favours the connected mind."

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