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readhikerepeat 's review for:
How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World
by Steven Johnson
What does the printing press have to do with germ theory? How did glass give rise to the selfie? And what’s the deal with time? If you are wondering about the answers to these questions then you’re going to want to pick up How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World. It’s a brief but comprehensive book, covering a wide range of topics in just enough depth to give the reader a glimpse into how the technology of today is rooted in some pretty basic and amazing discoveries.
The book’s premise is that there is a thing called the hummingbird effect. According to the author, the hummingbird effect is defined as, “An innovation, or cluster of innovations, in one field ends up triggering changes that seem to belong to a different domain altogether. Hummingbird effects come in a variety of forms.” He goes on to say that, “This may sound, at first blush, like a variation of the famous ‘butterfly effect’ from chaos theory……. But in fact, the two are fundamentally different. The extraordinary (and unsettling) property of the butterfly effect is that it involves a virtually unknowable chain of causality…..” but with the hummingbird effect the link is clear.
So basically, things are linked in a linear fashion and one discovery has led, through a chain of events, to what we have and use in the modern world. There actually aren’t that many “lightbulb” moments in the world of discovery. Instead, most inventions are made using the networks/systems model. So, if person A didn’t discover something, then chances are someone else would have because most technologies were being worked on and tinkered with by many people, not just one. Not only that, but many inventions that “made it” are a result of a good invention and good marketing – some inventions actually came a lot earlier than we thought, only never heard about them because their inventors were terrible at promoting the product or finding a market for it at the time. As for the “lightbulb” moments, they were generally accidents and not intentional, so those people were just plain lucky in that their mistakes worked out.
I must say, I learned a lot from this book. It’s broken down into six chapters – glass, cold, sound, clean, time, and light – and each starts with a simple invention that was revolutionary at the time and follows its direct links to what we have today. It blends both the fun and weird backstories of the inventors themselves with the science that went into into their products (whether intentional or not). Each chapter is independent of the others so you can either read the entire book or read one chapter at a time over a longer period. Either way, it’s a fascinating and fun read.
For the full review, visit The Book Wheel.
The book’s premise is that there is a thing called the hummingbird effect. According to the author, the hummingbird effect is defined as, “An innovation, or cluster of innovations, in one field ends up triggering changes that seem to belong to a different domain altogether. Hummingbird effects come in a variety of forms.” He goes on to say that, “This may sound, at first blush, like a variation of the famous ‘butterfly effect’ from chaos theory……. But in fact, the two are fundamentally different. The extraordinary (and unsettling) property of the butterfly effect is that it involves a virtually unknowable chain of causality…..” but with the hummingbird effect the link is clear.
So basically, things are linked in a linear fashion and one discovery has led, through a chain of events, to what we have and use in the modern world. There actually aren’t that many “lightbulb” moments in the world of discovery. Instead, most inventions are made using the networks/systems model. So, if person A didn’t discover something, then chances are someone else would have because most technologies were being worked on and tinkered with by many people, not just one. Not only that, but many inventions that “made it” are a result of a good invention and good marketing – some inventions actually came a lot earlier than we thought, only never heard about them because their inventors were terrible at promoting the product or finding a market for it at the time. As for the “lightbulb” moments, they were generally accidents and not intentional, so those people were just plain lucky in that their mistakes worked out.
I must say, I learned a lot from this book. It’s broken down into six chapters – glass, cold, sound, clean, time, and light – and each starts with a simple invention that was revolutionary at the time and follows its direct links to what we have today. It blends both the fun and weird backstories of the inventors themselves with the science that went into into their products (whether intentional or not). Each chapter is independent of the others so you can either read the entire book or read one chapter at a time over a longer period. Either way, it’s a fascinating and fun read.
For the full review, visit The Book Wheel.