Steven Johnson on Commonplace Books

Sticking with the themes of my initial posts, I will continue redefining the mission of this site through the lens of Steven Johnson (the author I focused upon in my last post).

From the transcript of Johnson's lecture entitled The Glass Box and the Commonplace Book 
"Each rereading of the commonplace book becomes a new kind of revelation. You see the evolutionary paths of all your past hunches: the ones that turned out to be red herrings; the ones that turned out to be too obvious to write; even the ones that turned into entire books. But each encounter holds the promise that some long-forgotten hunch will connect in a new way with some emerging obsession."

To just add on to this trajectory, below is an additional talk by Steven Johnson (again, derived from concepts covered in his book: Where Good Ideas Come From).  This TED talk focuses on his concept of liquid networks.  By isolating the reason why 'coffee houses' were such hotbeds of innovation during the Enlightenment as his launch (fun fact: its not the coffee), this video presents an idea that mirrors social constructivism.