The tech giants whose shoulders we now stand on
A great look back at the individuals (and their ingenuity) who brought us much of the technology we enjoy today.
The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution
By Walter Isaacson
Grade: 90
I started and completed five books in the last three weeks, with The Innovators—which takes a comprehensive look at the history of innovation, from the early days of the printing press to the present day—being the last of the bunch. As expected, the author details the roles played by many prominent figures, including Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, but he also highlights lesser known but no less significant figures such as Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing, and William Shockley, the controversial Nobel Prize-winning physicist
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What I enjoyed most
I found this book to be very well-written and engaging. Isaacson does a great job of weaving together the stories of these innovators and their inventions. He also provides a lot of interesting historical context. For example, I learned that the printing press was actually invented in China centuries before it was invented in Europe.
One of the things I appreciated most about this book is that it shows how innovation is not a linear process. There are often many false starts and dead ends along the way. But through perseverance and creativity, innovators eventually succeed in changing the world.
It was also great to once again read a quote I first saw in Isaacson’s book on Jobs more than a decade ago regarding a quarrel between the Apple founder and Microsoft’s Bill Gates, who Jobs labeled a copycat.
Gates shot back with:
“Well, Steve, I think there's more than one way of looking at it. I think it's more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.”
There are many, many more such nuggets in The Innovators, a book I highly recommend for anyone interested in the history behind much of the technology we enjoy today.