About:
The Innovators: How Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson is the story of the people who created the computer world we live in. Mr. Isaacson is a best-selling author known for his biographies and non-fiction works.
- 560 pages
- Publisher : Simon & Schuster
- Language : English
- ISBN-10 : 147670869X
My rating for The Innovators –5
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Thoughts:
The more I read about the history of technology, which I lived through, the more I’m amazed at the revolution I lived through – and knew about it. It was a great time to be alive, where almost every other week and new and exciting idea or technology which would change our lives was introduced. As a techie, on the other hand, we had no idea on what will stick and what won’t, as to where aim our time at.
In The Innovators, Walter Isaacson goes back to the 1850s, when Ada Lovelace (Lord Byron’s daughter) thought of an “analytical engine”. Almost one hundred years later, the geniuses who would become legends, worked for the military to calculate artillery firing tables and decipher German codes.
The narrative follows the progression of technology from weapons to toys/civilian tools. From punch cards fed into clunky machines, to the machines we have in our pockets which are far more powerful than all the computing power NASA had when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon.
Walter Isaacson writes about collaborative governments, academia, and even hackers to create what we now know as the Internet. I especially love his example that a single architect can’t build a Cathedral since it takes thousands of specialized workers. In our case, visionaries and technocrats working together.
This is a very optimistic book, which ignores the proliferation such uses as Internet porn and the dark web. It does, however, celebrate the ideology of open source software, collaboration, standing on the shoulders of giants, and, of course, Ada Lovelace and inventors lost to history.
I’m sure that this book would, and should be revised. It is, however, a defining and amusing narrative of an incredible time in human history.
Buy The Innovatorsfrom Amazon.com*
More Books by Walter Isaacson*
Zohar — Man of la Book
Disclaimer: I bought this book
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