How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World Reprint Edition

I found this book to be well written, entertaining and very informative. I have not previously read any of Stephen Johnson's books, but now I will be on the lookout for them. This book reminded me of the books by James Burke, "The Day the Universe Changed" and "Connections", which discuss the complex evolution of technology, and the interactions of events leading to our modern world. "How We Got To Here" focuses more on innovation than Burke's books, but like them it is also written for a general audience and requires little or no technical background.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in history, science and technology and to anyone interested in the strange interconnected tales of how the things that we take for granted were developed. My only minor quibble is that the book is a bit light on technical details. For instance, it discusses pendulum clocks and then pocket watches, but does not describe the difference in their operation, or anything about the development of naval chronometers. I would have liked a bit more technical detail, but this was not a big enough problem to reduce my rating from 5-stars.

What is in the book -
The book describes six innovations that follow the author's contention that - "An innovation, or cluster of innovations, in one field end up triggering changes that seem to belong to a different domain altogether." This idea can best be understood by examining the six innovation chapters and the short conclusion chapter that make up the book. These chapters are as follows:

1. Glass - The first innovation, the development of glass and how it impacted society, starts with the natural pieces of glass found in the Libyan Desert, and goes on to how men eventually learned to make glass. This required the concurrent technology of furnace building and the segregation of the Venetian glassblowers to the island of Murano because of the fires that these furnaces tended to cause. These glassblowers arrived from Constantinople when it fell to the Turks and their segregation led to the cross fertilization of ideas and techniques. The concept of one innovation leading to another in a different field is discussed in terms of the development of the printing press, which made books readily available, which in turn resulted in many people realizing that they were farsighted and could therefore not read them. Previously, Johnson contends that this deficiency was not readily apparent because people did not require the ability to see small things close-up, although I personally find this a bit of a stretch since tasks like sewing would have also required this skill. Books resulted in the development of spectacles and spectacle makers who experimented with the lenses resulted in the invention of the microscope and telescope, which in turn altered our concept of the microscopic world and the cosmos. Glass also led to better mirrors, which in turn altered one's view of self.

2. Cold (as in refrigeration) - Here the story begins with Fredric Tudor's idea (obsession) to bring ice from the frozen lakes and ponds of New England to the tropics, and how this ultimately led to a very highly profitable business, but not before he first went broke trying to perfect this scheme. Ice eventually led to refrigeration and to changes in the living patterns in the US and now in much of the rest of the world because tropical climates were now made more habitable. Cold is also the story of frozen food and how this has changed eating habits.

3. Sound - This chapter discusses the importance of sound and how it led to the concepts of recording it. The different field discussed was how recordings led to the acceptance of Jazz music, and to ultrasound and how this has changed the ratio of male to female children in China.

4. Clean - This chapter deals with sanitation, chlorination of water, and how this has led the development of mega cities. It has also led to the development of advertising through the need to sell soap and to advertising of soap through soap operas on the radio.

5. Time - This chapter discusses how Galileo's observation of the swinging of a pendulum in a church led to clocks, and how accurate clocks transformed navigation and promoted trade. It also goes on to discuss how the development of railroads led to the need for better time keeping and eventually to time zones, atomic clocks and to the GPS system.

6. Light - This is about lighting, from candles to light bulbs to neon signs. One of the concurrent technologies that are discussed is the ability to remove Neon gas from the atmosphere and the need for signage in Las Vegas.

7. Conclusion - This is a short chapter devoted to what Johnson calls "time travelers", people who anticipate a need that so far has not developed. Contrary to the discussions in the rest of the book, these "time travelers" are not influenced by concurrent technologies, but anticipate them.

Random knowledge is sort of my thing. I am somewhat fixated on knowing a little about a lot. The world is so vast and there is so much information out there.

Though we may deem some knowledge as random, no knowledge is truly random when you pull back far enough. Everything is interconnected in some way and many times they are connected in very unexpected ways.

In How We Got to Now by Steven Johnson you get a fascinating image of our world. The butterfly effect is a popular notion used to describe how one seemingly arbitrary event can have a significant impact across the planet. Johnson, however, uses a more accurate and more powerful notion: the hummingbird effect. As he puts it, we can understand a world with flowers but no hummingbirds, but we cannot comprehend a world with hummingbirds but no flowers. The anatomy of a hummingbird exists because the flower exists, the flower does not depend on the hummingbird.

Technology is similar to a hummingbird, most technologies could not exist without something else. Ideas for computers, batteries, and engines have been around for ages but without existing technology the ideas had to stay dormant.

This book is flat out one of the most interesting books I have ever read. It is amazing how simple ideas have given way to technological revolutions. It is amazing to see how much technology has evolved in a matter of two centuries. For millennia light only came in one form: fire. For millennia information only travelled at the speed of a man’s gait. For millennia a man never saw his reflection. Today, that and so much more has changed.

It is so easy to forget how simple innovations have changed the world, and it is easy to forget how much the world has changed.

As a scientist and inventor, I found "How We Got to Now" to be a delightful book on invention and innovation. The author focuses on six area of innovation: glass, cold, sound, clean, time, and light. For instance, he describes the accidental discovery of glass in the desert and traces the development of lenses, eyeglasses, telescopes, and microscopes.

The stories of invention and how society has been changed is fascinating. For instance, ice cutting from frozen lakes leads to cooling machines to population growth in areas of hot climate. Clocks and railroads give us time zones and standardized time based on atomic transitions, not on the rotation of the Earth. The author does miss the role played by glass (silicon oxide) in integrated circuit chips, where the glass is used as an insulator. There are few other omissions in this book.

In the section on light, the author reveals a little-known secret about invention. Edison's most important innovation was the organization of groups of scientists and engineers to find solutions to technical problems. Of my 118 issued United States patents, there are a small number for which I am the sole inventor. These represent the flash-of-genius type of invention. The majority were inventions-by-committee, where typically three or four people of different backgrounds combined their knowledge to come up with new solutions.

The final chapter deals with the work of Ada Lovelace (software), and Charles Babbage (hardware), who designed the first programmable computing machine. This short section could easily have been expanded into a complete chapter on calculation. However, the author uses the story to illustrate an unusual invention that preceded its enabling technology.

The book is full of illustrations and interesting anecdotes. It does a good job of telling the story of technology development and how it can transform the way we live.