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

The modern American home is a veritable wonderland of technical innovations: clean water on demand, central heating and air conditioning, wireless Internet and telephony, flat screen electronics, and inexpensive lighting, to name just a few. “How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World” by popular science writer Steven Johnson describes, at a high level, how that wonderland came together over the centuries.It is important to note that “How We Got to Now” does not explore six discrete technical innovations. Rather, Johnson provides a basic synopsis of events across a half-dozen areas, such as sanitation, lighting, and food preservation. Early on, he introduces a fascinating concept: the hummingbird effect. Put simply, an innovation, or cluster of innovations, in one field that ends up triggering major changes in a different domain altogether. He coins the term from the sexual reproduction strategies of plants (e.g. flowers supplemented pollen with even more energy-rich nectar to attract insects) that ended up shaping the design of a hummingbird’s wings (i.e. evolving an extremely unusual form of flight mechanics enabling them to hover). The best example, in my opinion, is how the Gutenberg press generated a demand for eyeglasses that led to a broader experimentation with glass lens that led to the microscope and the subsequent discovery of microscopic cells. Or how the advent of air-conditioning had a “long zoom” impact on American politics. Or how the development of sonar to listen to sound waves bouncing off icebergs led, a few generations later, to ultrasound and the abortion of tens of millions of female fetuses in China and India.The content of each chapter is relatively superficial but peppered with fascinating personal anecdotes about the discovery of important insights or commercialization of technical innovations. Here are some of my favorites.In the early 1900s, Clarence Birdseye was living in the frozen land of Labrador, Canada. He discovered that trout caught while ice fishing, which froze solid almost instantly in the minus 20-degree temperature of the Canadian winter, retained their flavor when later defrosted. Thus, the value of “flash freezing” was discovered and today we still enjoy “Birdseye” frozen peas for dinner.In 1908, New Jersey doctor John Leal surreptitiously added chlorine to the public water reservoirs for Jersey City. His patent- and licensing-free discovery of a simple way to provide clean drinking water may be one of the greatest public health contributions in history. A recent study found that chlorinated water reduced the total mortality in the average American city from diseases like dysentery and cholera by 43% and reduced infant mortality by as much as 74%.In the 1850s, Aaron Dennison, “the Lunatic of Boston,” mass-produced an inexpensive ($3.50) pocket watch, branded the “Wm. Ellery,” that was “the must-have consumer gadget of the late nineteenth century,” according to Johnson. Richard Sears, a Minnesota railroad agent, found that he could turn a nice profit selling the watches to other station agents. He partnered with Chicago businessman Alvah Roebuck to produce a mail-order catalog showcasing a range of watch designs, and Sears. Roebuck was born – and so was another example of the hummingbird effect.A major theme of the book is that Johnson is deeply suspicious of the “great man theory” and “eureka moment” of invention. Consider the case of electric light. People had been tinkering with incandescent light for more than half-a-century before Thomas Edison’s breakthrough at Menlo Park in 1879. More than ten different inventors had earlier hit upon the same basic formula of a carbon filament suspended in a vacuum. “There was no lightbulb moment in the story of the lightbulb,” Johnson writes. Instead, the lightbulb, like most other technical innovations, was the result of a “slow hunch” that took years, sometimes decades, to germinate and mature. In Johnson’s estimation, “Edison invented the lightbulb the way Steve Jobs invented the MP3 player.” He made it reliable, easy to use, and widely available. If anything, Johnson says, Edison should be remembered for his contribution to the process of innovation, his efforts to collect a cross-disciplinary team to conduct a wide range of related research and development. The “invention” of Edison’s lightbulb was thus mostly about sweating the details and what Johnson calls “a bricolage of small improvements.” He acknowledges that Edison was a “true genius” and “a towering figure in nineteenth century innovation,” but that he should most be revered for his ability to build creative teams: “assembling diverse skills in a work environment that valued experimentation and accepted failure, incentivizing the group with financial rewards that were aligned with the overall success of the organization, and building on ideas that originated elsewhere.”“How We Got to Now” is a fun, light read. Each chapter is colorfully illustrated and chopped up into several parts, each highlighting a part of the innovation chain that leads to the modern day. A week on your nightstand is probably all that it will take to enjoy this book.

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.

I'd like to share a personal anecdote that ended up totally elevating the experience for me of navigating this book.I recently joined an early-stage investor group (the Stateline Angels) here in Rockford, IL. Last week, I met up with Randy, one of the other members, for a coffee, and he told me about an entrepreneur that pitched his venture to the group some years earlier. I learned three things that afternoon I was totally surprised by: - packaged ice is one of the highest-margin products that a grocery or convenience store sells - there is a somewhat massive and highly labor intensive infrastructure and logistics involved with the production and distribution of these bags of ice - just 3 companies produce nearly all the packaged ice you are likely to purchase at a grocery or convenience location in the US, and these 3 companies have been investigated by the FTC for price fixingThe entrepreneur that pitched to Randy and the other Stateline Angels had developed a business to install large ice vending and bagging machines at grocery and convenience locations. The idea was to produce packaged ice on-demand and on-site, disrupting the staid - albeit profitable - entrenched oligopoly.Just that evening I started the "Cold" chapter in this book and I was struck by the recurring theme of an entrepreneur or innovator waking up to a insight into a process or reality that most others had accepted as "just is". That this theme should occur in ice and refrigeration, and even continue today was something wholly unexpected to me. This book has been a vivid and highly sensory pleasure, and this one somewhat direct experience with a concept you explored opened up an entirely new dimension for me.This was a truly satisfying read!

Steven Johnson examines six ideas that have shaped our world. Each appears basic and we take it for granted, but they also have unbelievably rambling connotations and far reaching impacts - way beyond their original concept.This is a fascinating journey of discovery as, together with him, we explore ideas and thoughts, re-evaluate preconceptions and learn loads of interesting stuff along the way.Well-written, immediately engaging and very enjoyable, this book gets us to reconsider the development of history through everyday things and look at life from a different perspective.I am all the better informed from having read it - great stuff.

I watched the first episode of the BBC series presented by Steven Johnson but I have now got nearly halfway through the book. I may buy this as a paper book as I find it irritating to need clicking on my non-touch-pad Kindle. Also, I'd like to see the pictures in colour, which of course they are not on a Kindle. NOT the fault of the Kindle version; I do know that this happens but I didn't take it into account when I bought it for the Kindle.

This was a present for my husband and he really likes it.

Clear style of writing. Very well illustrated. Recommended for secondary school reading. If you missed the TV version it's a good replacement. It helps the reader appreciate many of the products which we take for granted. The many strands of endeavour come clearly to the fore..

Arrived promptly. I can't really review the book as it was a gift for someone else, but they seemed very pleased wih it and have said it was a good read!