Innovation Watch - History Bookshelf

Digital Wars: Apple, Google, Microsoft and the Battle for the Internet. By Charles Arthur. KoganPage.

iw — Mon, 14 May 2012 22:35:58 +0000

It’s 1998 and the digital world takes shape. Into this maelstrom of change came three companies: Apple, Google and Microsoft. They were radically different companies and they would subsequently fight a series of pitched battles for control of different parts of the digital landscape: search, technology, mobile music, smartphones and the tablet market. Their weapons would be hardware, software, and advertising. At stake were their reputations — but equally, our future. Starting in the late 1990s and ending with the death of Steve Jobs, Digital Wars looks at each of these battles in turn. Accessible and comprehensive, it analyses the very different cultures of the three companies and assesses exactly who are the victors on each front. … Read more

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Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. By Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. Crown Publishers.

iw — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 04:10:37 +0000

Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Korea, to take just one of their fascinating examples, is a remarkably homogeneous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The south forged a society that created incentives, rewarded innovation, and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities. The economic success thus spurred was sustained because the government became accountable and responsive to citizens and the great mass of people. Sadly, the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions — with no end in sight. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created these completely different institutional trajectories. Based on fifteen years of original research Acemoglu and Robinson marshall extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today. … Read more

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Creating the Twentieth Century: Technical Innovations of 1867-1914 and Their Lasting Impact. By Vaclav Smil. Oxford University Press.

iw — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 01:08:36 +0000

The greatest technical discontinuity in history took place between 1867 and 1914. This era was distinguished by the most extraordinary concatenation of a large number of scientific and technical advances the synergy of which produced bold and imaginative innovations as well as ingenious improvements of older ideas, by the rapidity with which these innovations were improved after their introduction, by their prompt commercial adoption and widespread diffusion, and by the extent of the resulting socio-economic impacts. No post-WWI period ever equaled the epoch-making impact of pre-1914 technical advances that created the very foundation of modern civilization. This interdisciplinary book systematically traces and explains the genesis, evolution and lasting consequences of this great technical saltation. … Read more

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Prime Movers of Globalization: The History and Impact of Diesel Engines and Gas Turbines. By Vaclav Smil. MIT Press.

iw — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:24:30 +0000

In Prime Movers of Globalization, Vaclav Smil offers a history of two key technical developments that have driven globalization: the high-compression non-sparking internal combustion engines invented by Rudolf Diesel in the 1890s and the gas turbines designed by Frank Whittle and Hans-Joachim Pabst von Ohain in the 1930s. The massive diesel engines that power cargo ships and the gas turbines that propel jet engines, Smil argues, are more important to the global economy than any corporate structure or international trade agreement. Smil compares the efficiency and scale of these two technologies to prime movers of the past, including the sail and the steam engine. The lengthy processes of development, commercialization, and diffusion that the diesel engine and the gas turbine went through, he argues, provide perfect examples of gradual technical advances that receive little attention but have resulted in epochal shifts in global affairs and the global economy. … Read more

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Turing’s Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe. By George Dyson. Pantheon Books.

iw — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 22:13:09 +0000

“It is possible to invent a single machine which can be used to compute any computable sequence,” twenty-four-year-old Alan Turing announced in 1936. In Turing’s Cathedral, George Dyson focuses on a small group of men and women, led by John von Neumann at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, who built one of the first computers to realize Alan Turing’s vision of a Universal Machine. Their work would break the distinction between numbers that mean things and numbers that do things — and our universe would never be the same. Using five kilobytes of memory (the amount allocated to displaying the cursor on a computer desktop of today), they achieved unprecedented success in both weather prediction and nuclear weapons design, while tackling, in their spare time, problems ranging from the evolution of viruses to the evolution of stars. Dyson’s account, both historic and prophetic, sheds important new light on how the digital universe exploded in the aftermath of World War II. … Read more

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Language: The Cultural Tool. By Daniel L. Everett. Pantheon Books.

iw — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 19:16:00 +0000

For years, the prevailing opinion among academics has been that language is embedded in our genes, existing as an innate and instinctual part of us. But linguist Daniel Everett argues that, like other tools, language was invented by humans and can be reinvented or lost. He shows how the evolution of different language forms — that is, different grammar — reflects how language is influenced by human societies and experiences, and how it expresses their great variety. Combining anthropology, primatology, computer science, philosophy, linguistics, psychology, and his own pioneering — and adventurous — research with the Amazonian Piraha, and using insights from many different languages and cultures, Everett gives us an unprecedented elucidation of this society-defined nature of language. In doing so, he also gives us a new understanding of how we think and who we are. … Read more

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Debt: The First 5,000 Years. By David Graeber. Melville House Publishing.

iw — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 03:29:18 +0000

Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems — to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it. Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods — that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors. Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. Without knowing it, we are still fighting these battles today. … Read more

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On the Origin of Tepees: The Evolution of Ideas (and Ourselves). By Jonnie Hughes. Free Press.

iw — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 01:24:21 +0000

Throughout history, we humans have prided ourselves on our capacity to have ideas, but perhaps this pride is misplaced. Perhaps ideas have us. After all, ideas do appear to have a life of their own. And it is they, not us, that benefit most when they are spread. Many biologists have already come to the opinion that our genes are selfish entities, tricking us into helping them to reproduce. Is it the same with our ideas? Jonnie Hughes, a science writer and documentary filmmaker, investigates the evolution of ideas in order to find out. Adopting the role of a cultural Charles Darwin, Hughes heads off, with his brother in tow, across the Midwest to observe firsthand the natural history of ideas — the patterns of their variation, inheritance, and selection in the cultural landscape. … Read more

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I’m Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59. By Douglas Edwards. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

iw — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 17:06:57 +0000

Comparing Google to an ordinary business is like comparing a rocket to an Edsel. In its infancy, Google embraced extremes — endless days fueled by unlimited free food, nonstop data-based debates, and bloodletting hockey games. The company’s fresh-from-grad-school leaders sought more than old notions of success; they wanted to make all the information in the world available to everyone — instantly. Google, like the Big Bang, was a singularity — an explosive release of raw intelligence and unequaled creative energy — and while others have described what Google accomplished, no one has explained how it felt to be part of it. Until now. Douglas Edwards, employee number 59, offers the first inside view of what it was like to be a Goolger. … Read more

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Mechanization Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous History. By Siegfried Giedion. W. W. Norton.

iw — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 02:06:37 +0000

A study of the evolution of mechanization in the last century and a half, its effects on modern civilization, and its historical and philosophical implications. … Read more

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Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control. By James Rodger Fleming. Columbia University Press.

iw — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 21:07:58 +0000

As alarm over global warming spreads, a radical idea is gaining momentum. Forget cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, some scientists argue. Instead, bounce sunlight back into space by pumping reflective nanoparticles into the atmosphere. Launch mirrors into orbit around the Earth. Make clouds thicker and brighter to create a “planetary thermostat.” These ideas might sound like science fiction, but in fact they are part of a very old story. For more than a century, scientists, soldiers, and charlatans have tried to manipulate weather and climate, and like them, today’s climate engineers wildly exaggerate what is possible. Scarcely considering the political, military, and ethical implications of managing the world’s climate, these individuals hatch schemes with potential consequences that far outweigh anything their predecessors might have faced. … Read more

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On the Grid: A Plot of Land, an Average Neighborhood, and the Systems That Make Our World Work. By Scott Huler. Rodale.

iw — Sun, 29 May 2011 23:16:30 +0000

In our daily lives, we’re surrounded by wires, pipes, utility poles, cell phone towers, and a myriad of other infrastructure that facilitate almost everything we do. Even though these systems are essential, when was the last time you gave them much thought? Not only is infrastructure shrouded in mystery, much of it is woefully out of date — bridges are falling, public transportation is overcrowded, and most roads haven’t been updated since the 1950s. In On the Grid, Scott Huler sets out to understand all of the systems that shape our society — from transportation, water, and garbage to the Internet coming through our cable lines. … Read more

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