Farsighted

The hardest choices are also the most consequential. So why do we know so little about how to get them right? Big, life-altering decisions matter so much more than the decisions we make every day, and they're also the most difficult: where to live, whom to marry, what to believe, whether to start a company, how to end a war. There's no one-size-fits-all approach for addressing these kinds of conundrums. Steven Johnson's classic Where Good Ideas Come From inspired creative people all over the world with new ways of thinking about innovation. In Farsighted, he uncovers powerful tools for honing the important skill of complex decision-making. While you can't model a once-in-a-lifetime choice, you can model the deliberative tactics of expert decision-makers. These experts aren't just the master strategists running major companies or negotiating high-level diplomacy. They're the novelists who draw out the complexity of their characters' inner lives, the city officials who secure long-term water supplies, and the scientists who reckon with future challenges most of us haven't even imagined. The smartest decision-makers don't go with their guts. Their success relies on having a future-oriented approach and the ability to consider all their options in a creative, productive way. Through compelling stories that reveal surprising insights, Johnson explains how we can most effectively approach the choices that can chart the course of a life, an organization, or a civilization. Farsighted will help you imagine your possible futures and appreciate the subtle intelligence of the choices that shaped our broader social history.

Praise for Farsighted:

“Riveting... As a deep thinker and gifted storyteller, Johnson is the right author to tackle the topic. He’s at his best when analyzing impossibly complex decisions... One of Johnson’s thought-provoking points is that [people who excel at long-term thinking] read novels, which are ideal exercises in mental time travel and empathy. I think he’s right.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Johnson is explicitly focused on real-life decisions that (ideally) involve serious deliberation... [He]reminds us that, fundamentally, choices concern competing narratives, and we’re likely to make better choices if we have richer stories, with more fleshed-out characters, a more nuanced understanding of motives, and a deeper appreciation of how decisions are likely to reverberate and resound.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Johnson is well-placed to dig into these dilemmas of decision-making, as he gracefully serves up examples ranging from 17th-century urban planning to contemporary artificial intelligence.” —Financial Times

“[An] excellent book... altogether insightful.” —Brain Pickings 

“An anecdote-packed, insight-laden exploration of what works, and what doesn’t, when it comes to our most complex decisions, Johnson’s latest book makes a convincing case for adding more storytelling to the C-suite and beyond.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“Johnson is a succinct, colorful, and skillful writer, and this book is one of those rare works that is highly relevant to the daily functioning of just about everybody.” —Publishers Weekly **
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Praise for Steven Johnson:

“Mr. Johnson’s erudition can be quite gobsmacking.” —The Wall Street Journal
“A great science writer.” —Bill Clinton, speaking at the 2013 Clinton Foundation Health Matters conference

“A first-rate storyteller.” —The New York Times

“A maven of the history of ideas.” —The Guardian

“Steven Johnson’s mind works in wondrous ways.” —Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“[An] excellent book… altogether insightful.”

Autorentext

Steven Johnson is the bestselling author of thirteen books, including Where Good Ideas Come From, How We Got to Now, The Ghost Map, and Extra Life. He’s the host and cocreator of the Emmy-winning PBS/BBC series How We Got to Now, the host of the podcast The TED Interview, and the author of the newsletter Adjacent Possible. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, and Marin County, California, with his wife and three sons.

Leseprobe

Mapping

"If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity."

—George Eliot, Middlemarch

Long before Brooklyn became one of the most densely populated urban regions in the country, back when it was a modest hamlet on a bluff overlooking the prosperous harbor town of New York, a long ridge of thick woods ran through the center of the borough's current borders, stretching from present-day Greenwood Cemetery through Prospect Park all the way to Cypress Hill. Locals had given it a name straight out of Tolkien: the Heights of Gowan.

As geological formations go, the Heights of Gowan were hardly unusual. At their peak, they rose only two hundred feet over the glacier-flattened plains and tidal ponds of Long Island. Yet in the summer of 1776, the Heights found themselves at the center of world history. Just months before, the British had endured a humiliating retreat from Boston. Capturing New York, the trading center of the colonies and the gateway to the mighty Hudson (then called the North River), was the obvious countermove, given the British dominance in sea power.

Perched at the tip of an island facing a vast bay, New York presented an easy target for the king's armada. The problem lay in holding on to the city. From the fortified bluffs of modern-day Brooklyn Heights on Long Island, downtown New York could be continuously bombarded. "For should the enemy take hold New York while we hold on to Long Island, they will find it almost impossible to subsist," American general Charles Lee wrote. To hold on to the city without heavy casualties, British commander William Howe would ultimately need to capture Brooklyn. And Brooklyn was protected by the Heights of Gowan. It was not the topography that created the natural barricade but rather the dense canopy of eastern deciduous forest that covered the ridge, with its towering oaks and hickory trees and heavy thicket on the ground. An army could not hope to move a large mass of men and equipment through such an environment, and besides, if the battle turned into the forest, the Revolutionary forces would have the upper hand.

The Heights were not a perfect barricade, however. Four roads cut through the woods from south to north: Gowanus, Flatbush, Bedford, and a small gorge that went by the name Jamaica Pass. If the British chose not to make a direct assault on Brooklyn or Manhattan from the water, they would likely have to move their troops through these narrow conduits.

From the moment word spread in early June that the British ships had left Halifax, headed south, it was clear to everyone that the British would attempt to take New York. The question was how they would go about doing it. That was the crux of the decision that confronted George Washington in the long, quiet summer of 1776, as an imposing armada-the "four hundred ships in New York Harbor" that appear in the opening minutes of Hamilton-took anchor off the shores of Staten Island. Should he defend Manhattan or Brooklyn? Or, perhaps, should he concede that New York was beyond defending, a hopeless cause, and move the fight to more promising ground?

Washington was confronting a classic example of a full-spectrum decision, one that required him to think simultan…