How We Got Here: A Slightly Irreverent History of Technology and Markets (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This pasted-together romp through 300-odd years of technological advancement and financial development reads as it is billed: material cut from the manuscript of Kessler's 2004 book, Running Money. Per the brief foreword, Kessler's aim is to provide a list of "five simple creeds" that have helped him "explain the explainable" and "peer into the fog of the future": lower prices drive wealth; intelligence moves to the edge of the network; horizontal beats vertical; capital sloshes around seeking its highest return; and the military drives commerce and vice versa. His proof is delivered in a whirlwind tour of the industrial and digital revolutions. The first half of the book is a game of hopscotch through the Industrial Revolution and the evolution of early capital markets. The second half tells the story of the computer era and the growth of today's capital markets. Sandwiched between the two is an oddly abbreviated two-chapter section, 10 pages in all, that covers the development of the telegraph, telephone and power generation. Kessler returns to his "simple creeds" here and there, but the only real unifying force is hokey, techy wisecracks. The result is rehashed history often bewilderingly unconnected in theme and chronology, though many individual anecdotes are well told. (June)
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Product Description

Best-selling author Andy Kessler ties up the loose ends from his provocative book, Running Money, with this history of breakthrough technology and the markets that funded them.

Expanding on themes first raised in his tour de force, Running Money, Andy Kessler unpacks the entire history of Silicon Valley and Wall Street, from the Industrial Revolution to computers, communications, money, gold and stock markets. These stories cut (by an unscrupulous editor) from the original manuscript were intended as a primer on the ways in which new technologies develop from unprofitable curiosities to essential investments. Indeed, How We Got Here is the book Kessler wishes someone had handed him on his first day as a freshman engineering student at Cornell or on the day he started on Wall Street. This book connects the dots through history to how we got to where we are today.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks (June 14, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060840978
• ISBN-13: 978-0060840976
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #156,589 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining stories that teach principles of economic growth, June 25, 2005

By	Craig Matteson (Ann Arbor, MI) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

In his last book, "Running Money" Andy Kessler underscored his arguments with breezy historical accounts that demonstrated the quirks of history and what made the industrial revolution go. "How We Got Here" is a book length version of that history and pulls it more fully what has been happening to intellectual property and capital markets during the past decade.

Kessler tells these stories because he wants his readers to understand the importance of intellectual property, of scaling those ideas to serve the needs of large populations, and of free flowing capital markets to find and support the best ideas. A by-product of these is lower prices for everyone, which leads to an increased standard of living. The author notes that he wishes he had been taught these things as a young man, and I agree that every young person (and everyone else, for that matter) will be better off taking these ideas into their bones. Why? Because we human beings don't always understand specific events all that well. We need broader principles to see our local life as part of a larger whole and the principles that are governing what is happening. Our untrained instincts are quite bad in assessing statistical outcomes (hence the thriving business of casinos).

This is a very entertaining read. It is similar to James Burke's famous "Connections", but this actually has a more focused purpose that Mr. Burke's wonderful vignettes. Kessler is strongest at the end when he is telling about the development of our computer based world because he is talking from his personal experience. Not only does he bring the world of Wall Street into sharp focus, he demonstrates the role of the military in funding the development the networks we use everyday.

For me, the thing I would hope readers would take away from this book is how unpredictable the future is and how things come along that confound all experts, bureaucrats (whether private or public), and projections. Industries are born, they grow, and then they are killed off. Just as there are no old animal homes in the wild (despite what "Bambi" has been telling folks for decades), it is the natural order for people to find work doing new things and people to be put out of work that should no longer be done. These dislocations are hard and painful, but these changes are vital in the improvement of the standard of living for everyone.

One of Kessler's complaints about our current economy is its risk averse allocation of capital into less efficient and less productive portions of the economy. It baffles him and he thinks it has more to do with out of date accounting practices than reality. For example, we don't give a fig about the trade deficit between North Dakota and California, but are losing our minds over our trade numbers with China. Yet, we don't properly account for the value of the intellectual capital we send to China that gets put into the products they ship back here. In fact, the value of that intellectual capital is likely the most profitable aspect of the product and yet our accounting assigns all that value to China incorrectly.

The more widely this book is read the better off we will be. So, please read it.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Crucial narrative on how the world worked, June 16, 2005

By	David Keirsey (Carlsbad, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Andy Kessler tells it like it is and was. This book is one of the most enlightening and entertaining books on the history of technology. But more importantly he combines technology and finance - you get a much more clear understanding of why and how things evolved. It is a must read for anybody interested in how the world works, and how it might evolve in the future.

I was pleasantly surprised that I learned some things I didn't know about the history of the industrial revolution and the computer revolution. That is saying something, since I have read a great deal of history about the industrial revolution and I participated in the computer revolution besides reading a lot about it. Andy Kessler makes all these details interesting and relevant, including not well known facts and connections.

Kessler has a unique and insightful perspective on finance which he includes as a crucial part of the story. I have seen interesting technology stories or interesting financial stories, but to put them together gives us a unique and valuable non-PC narrative.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The First Tech Bull Market, June 21, 2005

By	J. Allen - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

There is a tendency by people today to believe that IT revolution of the last couple of decades is without precedence. Kessler's history shows that entrepreneurs during the industrial revolution made productivity gains that would embarrass today's IT industry. (Eli Whitney's cotton gin produced a factor of 50 productivity gain!)

"How We Got Here" is an short and entertaining history of the industrial revolution. I think that most people have learned about the industrial revolution in a piecemeal fashion without really understanding what it was and how it impacted society. By integrating technology, markets, finance, etc., Kessler's book does a good job of describing the revolution and showing how it changed society.

This book is a must for anyone who thinks the IT industry in the 1990s was an anomaly. The revolution will continue in the 21th century, although the technology and key applications will be different.