![]() He introduces us to the colorful innovators of leisure: the explorers, proprietors, showmen, and artists who changed the trajectory of history with their luxurious wares, exotic meals, taverns, gambling tables, and magic shows. Throughout history, he locates the cutting edge of innovation wherever people are working the hardest to keep themselves and others amused. Here history of popular entertainment, arguing that the pursuit of novelty and wonder is a powerful driver of world-shaping technological change. A staggering amount of the landscape of modern life is populated by environments and technology designed to entertain and delight us. Steven Johnson argues that if you want to understand how we got to now, you have to understand pleasure and play. ![]() This is a different kind of history book. Johnson wrote a superb book called ‘How we got to now’ that had a limited number of key inventions that he says lead to the modern world. History is the serious business of war, treaties, governments and monarchs. Wonderland : How Play Made the Modern World (2016) by Steven Johnson is an interesting read about the impact of how luxuries and amusements have had on history. Most history books don't concern themselves with delight. "Everyone knows the old saying "necessity is the mother of invention," but if you do a paternity test on many of the modern world's most important ideas or institutions, you will find, invariably, that leisure and play were involved in the conception as well." ![]()
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