REVIEW: The Innovators, Walter Isaacson

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Large-scale ideas, the most important achievements of the digital age and, of course, people without whom the progress and development of technology would be impossible - this is what you can expect from the new book by Walter Isaacson, the author of the acclaimed biography of Steve Jobs. The Innovators will be published by Corpus in September.

Walter Isaacson knows how to tell even complex things in a simple and interesting way. This time he drew attention to a multifaceted topic - the invention of the computer and the Internet. They did not appear at one moment, it is a long and painstaking work of many people over the decades. Isaacson begins his story from the 19th century - from the very, very origins.

What is this book about

This is a story about people who were pioneers in this area. How they worked, how their idea developed. The heroes of Isaacson's book are not lonely geniuses, but living people, active, inquisitive, with all their advantages and disadvantages.

This is a story about technology. The answer to the question of why they are exactly the same, how they changed and why they so strongly influenced our lives.

This is a story about collaboration. Without interaction, cooperation, healthy rivalry, our world would hardly be what it is now. The computer itself is a device for one. But in combination with the Internet, this invention allowed thousands of users to exchange information, create something new together. Computers with the Internet were able to revolutionize not only life, but also in the minds of people, as the Gutenberg book press once contributed to a new breakthrough.

People who felt free at the crossroads of the humanities and technology made it possible to create a symbiosis of man and machine, which formed the basis of this story. Like many features of the digital age, the idea that innovation is born where art and science meet is not new. Walter Isaacson

Ideas and heroes

In the first place for Isaacson - ideas that are not born from scratch: the emergence of one invention is impossible without the emergence of another. So, if Bell Labs had not invented a small transistor built from strips of gold foil, chips of semiconductor material and paper clips, computers would have remained giants, devouring energy and occupying an entire room, and, therefore, would not be accessible to ordinary people. … "Innovators" allow you to look at the development of technology as a single holistic process. You involuntarily admire the global nature of human designs.

Each chapter is devoted to an important step towards the digital revolution: Computer, Programming, Internet, Transistor, Video Games … But two chapters - the first and the last - are devoted to Ada Lovelace, the first among the first. Her ideas about the symbiosis of man and machine became the impetus for a breakthrough and the beginning of the world's movement towards innovation. Lovelace's ideas serve as links throughout the book. Isaacson did not pass by the heroes of our era: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Larry Page and many others. Thanks to Isaacson, the reader will learn about the people who have had a strong influence on the development of technology.

Such innovations can only be created by those who can combine the beautiful and engineering, humanitarian and technical, poetry and machines, that is, the spiritual heirs of Ada Lovelace, creators who can get the most out of the union of art and science, rebels who are open to new and amazing and therefore they will find beauty in everything. Walter Isaacson

Whom to read

In general, I would advise everyone to read The Innovators - every modern person comes into contact with technology in one way or another. The book is alive, written in an accessible and interesting way, so even people far from IT will master it. And if in particular, then those who are professionally connected with the IT-sphere. Without understanding the whole process, one cannot talk about further development.