Authors Julio Mario Ottino and Bruce Mau Present Their New Book, The Nexus

On Tuesday, June 21st at 6:30 PM, authors Julio Mario Ottino and Bruce Mau visit The Book Stall to talk about their new book, The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World–The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. This program is free and open to the public.

About the Book: Today’s complex problems demand a radically new way of thinking—one in which art, technology, and science converge to expand our creativity and augment our insight. Creativity must be combined with the ability to execute; the innovators of the future will have to understand this balance and manage complexities such as climate change and pandemics. The place of this convergence is the Nexus. In this provocative and visually striking book, Julio Mario Ottino and Bruce Mau offer a guide for navigating the intersections of art, technology, and science.

The Nexus brings together word and image to prepare individuals and organizations alike for the challenges and opportunities of the twenty-first century. Compelling historic examples illuminate the present, from the Renaissance, when the domains were one, to the twentieth century, with intense, collective creative outpourings from places as different as the Bauhaus and Bell Labs. Leaders must be able to grasp simplicity in complexity and complexity in simplicity—and embrace the powerful idea of complementarity, where opposing extremes co-exist, and our thinking expands. Innovation needs more than managing. Managers use maps; leaders develop compasses.

About the Authors: Julio Mario Ottino is an academic thought leader, author, artist, and internationally recognized researcher whose work has been featured in Nature, Science, and Scientific American. A Guggenheim Fellow, he is the founding co-director of Northwestern University’s Institute on Complex Systems.

Bruce Mau is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Massive Change Network (MCN), a global design consultancy based in the Chicago area. Across more than thirty years of design innovation, Bruce has worked as a designer, innovator, educator, and author on a broad spectrum of projects in collaboration with the world’s leading brands, organizations, universities, governments, entrepreneurs, and renowned artists.