#24 Innovation Chat: Clive Thompson, science/tech writer, WIRED/NYTM, author

We discussed a number of things including: 1. Psychology and worldview of computer programmers 2. Beneficial ways technology has affected our cognition 3. How tech is helping and hurting society 4. Technology and the election I'm a computer geek from way back. I got interested in them as a child in the early 80s in Toronto, when machines like the Commodore 64 arrived. My parents wouldn’t get our family a computer (my mother worried I’d just “sit around playing games all the time”), but I devoured every book of BASIC programming I could find at the library, and whenever I could cadge some time on a computer at school or a friend’s house, I’d try to do some programming. I created little games, databases, primitive chatbots, digital music, and gradually realized that computers were going to change everything. In high school, though, I decided I wanted to be a journalist. I studied English and political science at the University of Toronto, and after graduating in 1992 I worked as a street musician, a receptionist for a driving school, a bookkeeper, and an administrative cog for the League of Canadian Poets (the country’s most awesomely-named literary organization) — before deciding to become a freelance magazine writer. This was around the time the Internet hit the mainstream, so I began writing long pieces about how it was changing politics, shopping, art, culture, and everything in between. In the late 90s I moved to New York and began writing for magazines including the New York Times Magazine, Wired, Fast Company, New York, Mother Jones and Smithsonian. My work has won several awards, including an Overseas Press Council Award, a Mirror Award, and in 2002/2003 I was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. My most recent books include Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World, and Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better. In my spare time I write, record, and perform music in the band The Delorean Sisters.