Innovationen und Erfindungen: Eine kurze Geschichte des Hypes und des Scheiterns

by Vaclav Smil

Welche Erwartungen sind realistisch? Was dürfen wir hoffen?

Erfindungen wie Luftschiffe, Kernspaltung und Überschallgeschwindigkeit galten bei ihrer Geburtsstunde als bahnbrechend und sollten das Leben auf der Erde maßgeblich beeinflussen. Diese Innovationen konnten ihrem Hype jedoch nie gerecht werden und wurden längst von Alternativen überholt.

In seinem neuesten Werk untersucht der weltweit angesehene Umweltwissenschaftler und Energieexperte Vaclav Smil einige Technologien, die trotz enormer Investitionen an Aufwand und Kapital nicht das gehalten haben, was sie versprachen, oder gar katastrophale Auswirkungen mit sich brachten. Er bietet ein klares Korrektiv zu den überzogenen Versprechungen, die mit Entdeckungen und Erfindungen einhergehen, von neuen Heilmitteln für Krankheiten über Kernfusion bis hin zu künstlicher Intelligenz. Er erinnert uns daran, dass wir selbst dann, wenn wir auf dem Weg von der Erfindung über die Entwicklung bis hin zur Anwendung recht weit gekommen sind, vielleicht nie etwas wirklich einsetzen können. Abschließend stellt er eine Wunschliste von Erfindungen auf, die wir am dringendsten benötigen, um die gewaltigen Herausforderungen des 21. Jahrhunderts zu bewältigen.

Angereichert mit spannenden Beispielen und pragmatischen Ansätzen ist Innovationen und Erfindungen eine ernüchternde Darstellung der Torheit, die dem menschlichen Erfindungsreichtum so oft anhaftet, und zeigt, wie wir unsere Erwartungen besser mit der Realität in Einklang bringen können und müssen.

Vaclav Smil geht auf drei verschieden Arten von Erfindungen

Erfindungen, die erst willkommen und später unerwünscht waren

·verbleites Benzin

·DDT

·Fluorchlorkohlenwasserstoffe (FCKW)

Erfindungen, die unser Leben bestimmen sollten – und es nicht tun

·Luftschiffe

·Kernspaltung

·Überschallflug

Erfindungen, auf die wir noch warten

·Reisen im (Beinahe-)Vakuum (Hyperloop)

·Stickstoffbindendes Getreide

·Kontrollierte Kernfusion

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Science, Technology, Business, Economics, Audiobook

325 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 14, 2023

About the author

Vaclav Smil is a Czech-Canadian scientist and policy analyst whose work spans energy, environment, food, population, economics, history, and public policy. Educated at Charles University in Prague and later at Pennsylvania State University, where he earned his Ph.D. in geography, Smil emigrated from Czechoslovakia to the United States in 1969 following the Soviet invasion, before beginning his long academic career at the University of Manitoba in 1972. Over the decades he established himself as a leading voice on global energy systems, environmental change, and economic development, with particular attention to China. Smil has consistently argued that transitions to renewable energy will be gradual rather than rapid, emphasizing the persistence of coal, oil, and natural gas and highlighting the difficulties of decarbonizing critical industries such as steel, cement, ammonia, and plastics. He has also been skeptical of indefinite economic growth, suggesting that human consumption could be sustained at much lower levels of material and energy use. Widely admired for his clear, data-driven analyses, Smil counts Bill Gates among his readers, while colleagues have praised his rigor and independence. Known for his reclusiveness and preference for letting his books speak for him, he has nonetheless lectured extensively worldwide and consulted for major institutions. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a member of the Order of Canada, Smil remains a highly influential public intellectual.

Reviews

[Amin · Rating 4 out of 5]

واسلاو اشمیل در این آخرین کتابش رسالتی جالب برای خودش قائل است و آن تعیین مرزهای امید به تکنولوژی به زبانی علمی و بر مبنای تاریخ پیشرفت تکنولوژی است. بنابراین به همین دلیل در عنوان کتاب بازگو میکند که قرار است به خوش بینی ها یا توجهات بیش از حد به تکنولوژی و از طرفی به شکست های رخ داده از زوایای مختلف بپردازد.

بر این اساس کتاب با توصیف انواع شکستها آغاز میشود و در بخش اول به سه تکنولوژی می‌پردازد که در ابتدا فراگیر و مفید بودند اما به مرور معلوم شد فاجعه‌بارند. بنزین حاوی سرب (برای ایجاد خاصیت ضدکوبشی)، د.د.ت (برای مبارزه با آفات کشاورزی) و کلروفلوئروکربن یا همان سی‌اف‌سی که برای خنک‌کردن و در یخچال استفاده می‌شد و همه ممنوع شدند. اما نه به سرعت و با فهم ضررها، بلکه بخاطر منافع متعدد زمانی زیاد طول کشید و فهم تاخیرها اهمیت دارد

دسته دوم از شکست‌های تکنولوژیکی مربوط به ایده‌هایی بودند که فکر می‌کردند دنیا را تسخیر خواهند کرد اما هیچ‌وقت به موفقیت نرسیدند و نکته مهم‌شان این بود که تا مدت‌های فراوان به دلایل سیاسی و ... همچنان سرمایه‌گذاری روی آنها ادامه یافت: کشتی هوایی (هواپیمای سبک‌تر از هوا)، شکافت هسته‌ای برای تولید انرژی، و هواپیماهای سوپرسونیک (که سرعتی بیش از سرعت صوت دارند)

از بخش سوم کمی جهت گیری تغییر میکند و نگاه به آینده است آنجا که بشر برای مدتها منتظر تکنولوژی هایی است و روی آنها سرمایه گذاری میکند بدون اینکه متوجه مرزها و هزینه ها و جنبه های واقعی آنها باشد و این انتظار با خودش نوعی شکست به همراه میاورد. اولین تکنولوژی سفر در فضای خلا یا همان تکنولوژی هایپرلوپ برای حمل انسان یا کالا است. سپس به کشت غلاتی میپردازد که قرار است خودشان نیتروژن مورد نیاز برای کشت خودشان را تامین کنند تا نیازی به کشت گیاهانی که به خاک نیتروژن اضافه میکنند پیش از کشت آنها نباشد. سرانجام از همجوشی هسته ای به صورت کنترل شده برای تولید انرژی صحبت میکند که از زمان جنگ جهانی دوم بر سر زبان هاست.

در نهایت کتاب به بحث مفصلی درباره نوع نگاه به آینده تکنولوژی میپردازد. این که خوش بینی های بیهوده یا صرفا کلماتی مثل رشد نمایی در تکنولوژی همچون قانون مور که صرفا برای تراشه های کامپیوتری معنا داشته و الان همه جا حتی در سازمانها درباره آن حرف میزنند صرفا انتظارات ما را غیرواقعی میکنند و احتمالا باعث اتلاف منابع یا عدم توجه به نیازهای واقعی انسانها میشوند. از ایده هایی تخیلی مثل تسخیر مریخ یا رابط بین مغز و کامپیوتر تا تکنولوژی هایی که زمانی بسیار طولانی تر از انتظارات ما میبرند حتی اگر فایده داشته باشند مثل ماشین های کاملا خودران یا دنیایی به طور کامل بدون کربن تا تاریخ مشخص و بعد به تکنولوژی هایی میرسیم که فوایدشان برای انسانها در مقیاس وسیع روشن نیست مثل فضای سه بعدی مجازی مانند متا. از اینجا بحث را به سه مثال ملموس از تلاشهای مفید میکشاند که ایده های مربوط به تکنولوژی های آینده درآنها پیشرفتهای خوبی داشته اند اما نگاه ما به آنها غیرواقعی است. کشف داروهای جدید، پروازهای بسیار طولانی و هوش مصنوعی.

خود نویسنده بر اساس این بحثها می گوید درس اساسی این کتاب این است که رشد نمایی میکروپروسسورها در دنیای کامپیوتر یک استثنا در دنیای ما و تاریخ تکنولوژی است و تلاش برای نشان دادن اینکه این یک هنجار قابل بازتولید در سایر صنایع است نه تنها نادرست و بر مبنای اطلاعات غلط است بلکه میتواند خطرناک باشد. یک نمونه اش تا حدی خنثی شدن سالهای عمر به دست آمده از تلاش برای مبارزه با سرطان با مرگهای حاصل از سومصرف مواد مخدر است که در نسل جوان رخ میدهد و رو به افزایش است. یا وقتی به جمعیت دنیا و نه یک میلیارد نفر در کشورهای توسعه یافته مینگریم بسیاری از نیازهای آنها توسط تکنولوژی های درحال پیشرفت یا حتی تکنولوژی های اخیر برآورده نمیشود و برای آنها تکنولوژی های دهه ها قبل همچنان مفیدتر هستند کمااینکه برای دنیا بسیاری از تکنولوژی های قرن پیش به مراتب رادیکال تر بوده اند و این نشان میدهد که برای دنیای ما صرف پرداختن به تکنولوژی کافی نیست.

[David Wineberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vaclav Smil is guaranteed interesting. He is a numbers man, a scientist and an analyst. His take on any topic is carefully thought out, and so has impact. His latest book, Inventions and Innovations was going to be a bit iffy, because there are already so very many books laughing at failed inventions. I didn’t know how he was going to do anything different or better. I should not have worried.


There are, unfortunately, millions of inventions, fully patented for future embarrassment, that proved to be disasters or just never lived up to their hype, I mean potential. Smil does not wallow there. He’s not in it for the quick laugh. Instead, he divided his book into five chapters along these lines:

-Inventions that turned from welcomed to undesirable
-Those meant to dominate, but did not
-Inventions we’re still waiting for
-Misplaced techno optimism
Thanks to this framing, suddenly, not-so-great inventions are worthy subjects.


So, for example, inventions that were once welcomed include leaded gasoline, DDT and CFCs, while those meant to dominate include airships and supersonic flight. An example of something we’re still waiting for is microbiologists getting grains to manufacture their own nitrogen out of the air, like legumes do. It’s a very thoughtful selection that has implications for all of society. I would expect no less of Smil.


For each one, he explores its origins, applications, and how failure began nibbling at its edges. Eventually, they all failed completely, some by legislation and some by the weight of their unforeseen problems. This is all to the good, except that Smil gets too technical. Between chemistry and electricity, he will probably lose many readers along the way. That, and the unfortunate choice of using only metric measures, will not help make this book attractive to the American market. I would have expected Imperial/US measures in brackets at very least.


His approach is always technical. Take just one example from the book: passenger airliners. The Boeing 707, back in the 1950s, established the best cruising speed to be about 550mph. It turns out that between the drag coefficient, the shape and dimensions of the passenger tube, and the lift to drag ratio which decreases as you add weight beyond the sweetspot, you have an unarguable airspeed target. Everything is worse both above and below that speed.


This was why the much lamented Concorde had a tiny cigar tube of a cabin, unsuitable for claustrophobics on transatlantic trips. It had to trade off space for speed. As it was, it burned three times as much fuel per passenger mile as the gigantic Boeing 747, which could carry five times as many passengers. This meant Concorde could not even cross the Pacific without stopping to refuel. Other Super Sonic Transports have been drawn up, but they all fail. The bottom line in commercial flight is .85 of Mach 1 (the speed of sound) is the ideal speed for airliners, and that is why there have been no increases in it since 1958. That is correct: despite all the innovations over the past 60 years, ideal flight speed was achieved in 1958 and remained unchanged. Science will do things like that.


Smil’s point in all this is that supersonic flight is not the “next natural step” in ever-increasing speed that people think it to be. Pursuing that goal has proven totally fruitless. This kind of perspective changes everything. That’s what readers come to Smil for.


Similarly, Smil attacks Elon Musk’s Hyperloop transporter as a worthless idea. As he shows in a cartoon by William Heath, the vacuum tube transporter goes back to at least 1829, when Heath portrayed it as a failed invention in a drawing crammed with them. In the cartoon, London passengers are boarding the tube for quick hop over to India/Bengal.


Sealing the tube to accommodate all the changes in temperature as well as in air pressure, is currently not possible. Nor is digging a tunnel from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Just the approvals needed would by themselves prevent it from ever happening. And we have lots of examples of digging tunnels for metros. It is incredibly slow and massively expensive. Going from city to city is simply out of the question. Maintaining the vacuum with all the stops, comings and goings and changes in weather and climate is not yet feasible. Dealing with heat generated and keeping passengers comfortable at the same time, is shall we say, challenging. This did not stop Elon Musk from bragging he could do it all by himself in 2013. And yet, in November 2022, he quietly (!) gave up, dismantled his lab and scale model test Hyperloop, and restored the parking lot they occupied. Musk just never gave it proper (Smil) thought.


Another of Smil’s points is that numbers of inventions are actually decreasing, not increasing. Totally new ideas are getting harder to come by. There might be lots of activity inventing new dispensers for old products, but dramatic breakthroughs have slowed to a crawl. Moore’s Law, the doubling of computer chip capacity every 18 months to two years, is coming to its natural end as transmission is now down to one atom’s width in a channel ten atoms wide. This obviously cannot go on much longer. But a totally new concept to replace it is nowhere to be found.


In medicine Smil’s stats indicate that we aren’t making the dramatic breakthroughs the drug manufacturers brag about. For example, the five year survival rate for pancreatic cancer patients has tripled thanks to new meds. But it has tripled from three percent to nine, he says. The curve on that graph is not particularly hopeful. And nothing to brag about.


Similarly, the so-called war on cancer shows results in the range of pitiful. Cancer is much more complex and varied than we give it credit for, and wiping it out is nowhere in sight, despite the bleatings of politicians over the decades. It remains the number two killer of people. Smil simply says “It is unwise to specify outcomes by dates.” It will always cost more, take longer, and change directions unpredictably. When a startup announces it will have a new battery ready in five years that will be an order of magnitude more powerful than anything on the market today, you are permitted to laugh.


The concluding chapter contains all the fireworks. Using the same sorts of calculations and reasoning as on all the other inventions, Smil goes after climate change. He shows irrefutably that Man does not possess the inventions, the history, the resources or the capital to implement the changes needed to avoid disaster. The historical pattern of carbon reduction, which continues to be an annual increase, shows no hope of plunging 30-50% in the next 15 years, any more than airliners will routinely pass the sound barrier or that batteries will store more energy that petroleum of the same mass.


Improvements in batteries, currently in fractions of one percent, give no hope to multiplying storage capabilities in this century, something that both solar and wind systems require, and promise. Smil says “Even if we got batteries whose energy density was an order of magnitude higher than today’s best lithium-ion batteries, their energy density would still be less than a quarter of the energy density of the refined fuels (gasoline, kerosene, diesel).”


Same goes for living forever and uploading a human brain into a computer. We are nowhere near the goals, and are not making anything like the progress needed to imagine them ever being real. Target dates like 2045 are meaningless.


What this means for climate change is that all the international conferences and country pledges will not have the promised effects. There is no precedent for their numbers, and no plans filed that could possibly achieve them. When they return home, delegates will find no one at all who can implement them.


It’s a very dramatic conclusion, because all the stories that precede it give no hint of their relation to the future of the planet itself. Pure Smil, undistilled.


David Wineberg


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[Frank Reiff · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't really enjoy this book much.

The bulk of the book is made up of detailed, if hardly neutral, descriptions of a (to my mind) fairly random selection of "inventions", such as leaded petrol, faster than sound commercial flight, refrigerants, fertilisers, the quest for higher grain yields, fission power, fusion power, super-sonic travel in vacuum tubes, etc..

These chapters are written in a very dry manner without much literary style and little attempt at eliciting the reader's interest. There are a few quips here and there, but they are universally of the can-you-believe-how-dumb-these-people-are fashion, directed at some behind-the-scenes targets that are presumably highly important to the author, but all that manifest anger is weird when you have never even heard the claims being debunked, much less heard of the people making the claims.

The argumentation in the book takes a faux-academic tone, but with none of the fairness and balance requirements one would expect from an academic text. The usual mode of operation is:

- introduce the topic and set some highly specific, pretty unintuitive success criteria that feel a little strange
- provide some historic information, sprinkled with authoritative, if highly selective numbers
- evaluate the innovation, or the claim highlighted by the author, against the aforementioned success criteria and find it utterly lacking
- belittle everyone who dares to think differently

Rinse and repeat with the next random invention that deserves the author's ire.

It wouldn't be so bad, if it didn't all feel so rigged towards proving the author's point.

The success criteria are always set so that they eliminate any chance of a counter argument. Numbers are always chosen only to bring home the fact that the author is right and absolutely so.. and there are a quite a few blatant omissions that make it clear that the author is not interested in fully exploring the subjects, but is instead hell bent on "being right".

It's my first book by this author and as I grew ever more alarmed at how biased the entire book felt to me, I googled him and quickly came to the following quote:

"I have never been wrong on these major energy and environmental issues," he says, "because I have nothing to sell."

Well, the book reads very much like it was written by somebody who has never been wrong about anything. I would argue that this is very unlikely, especially for an octogenarian who has made predictions for his entire life, and that a failure to recognise when you're wrong is not a badge of honour.

Below is an examination of Smil's older claims about solar panels (spoiler he was entirely wrong):

https://cleantechnica.com/2020/11/13/...

I also found out that Bill Gates' enthusiasm for micro-fission reactors and many other 80s boondoggles stems from reading Smil's previous books.

The age of the author also explains why all the solutions seem to be straight from the 1980s and everything that has happened since can easily be discounted.

The discussion about the complete worthlessness of what the author describes as "solid state electronics" is more understandable with this bit of context. As far as I recall, the internet is not even mentioned, but there is a quick nasty aside against "social media". (Smil does not have a smart phone).

The free and generalised access to information, and therefore education, is not never mentioned as a benefit of "solid state electronics". Education is not mentioned until the last few pages, but then given tremendous importance; you'd think you'd mention access to information as a benefit in that context.

The final chapters are dedicated to a rant about climate change being unavoidable. Some weird claims are made about "less than half of the necessary technology being available yet" and funnily enough, the proof for this is that Bill Gates said so! He does not even mention that Bill Gates says this because Smil said so.. so he is in fact quoting himself as an expert witness.

So after rubbishing climate technology, he then comes to completely unrelated conclusions about the world having to be fairer and wealth having to be distributed more evenly.. and crop yields and the abuse of antibiotics.. and other stuff. Not that I disagree with the sentiment, but the chain of logic is a little obscure.

In the final few paragraphs, there is a small acknowledgment that he might have "preferences" and he acknowledges that new inventions are less important than just using the technologies and resources that are already at our disposal more wisely and perhaps more widely too.

I can heartily agree with that last sentiment. It remains, however, that Smil is not prepared to apply that same reasoning to other subjects that he has a special dislike of, such as climate change: we DO have the technology to very significantly reduce our carbon output, both in the highly industrialised world and the developing world.

Portraying every challenge as unsurmountable, every new technological foray as either doomed or too-little-too-late is unduly negative. An aggregation of small improvements can make a huge difference and perfection is neither possible, nor necessary.

All in all, unfortunately, this book is not a balanced investigation of anything, and provides few deep insights into either innovation or invention.

[Nelson Zagalo · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Invention and Innovation: A Brief History of Hype and Failure" (2023) é o mais recente trabalho de Vaclav Smil (1943, Professor Emérito da Faculdade de Ambiente da Universidade de Manitoba, Canada), depois do brilhante “How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We're Going" (2022). Neste novo livro, Smil trabalha um conjunto de tecnologias falhadas — Gasolina com Chumbo, DDT, Fusão Nuclear, Aviação Supersónica, Hyperloop, etc. — que permitem depois suportar toda uma argumentação no último capítulo a propósito do insuflamento das conquistas da invenção humana das últimas décadas. Quero, no entanto, frisar que por vezes o discurso de Smil se torna um pouco negro, parecendo quase apresentar-se contra a própria inovação, algo que sabemos não ser sua intenção, mas que acaba ficando latente. Smil procura com esta obra remar contra a corrente do endeusamento da inovação atual, oferecendo um lastro histórico e fundamentado da invenção humana e seus impactos, mas ao fazê-lo roça por vezes o quase descrédito dessa mesma invenção que tanto preza. Desde logo, um dos maiores problemas é que não pode existir inovação, menos ainda radical, sem muito falhanço, é uma condição obrigatória. Pelo que apontar promessas falhadas, não pode ser visto como algo completamente negativo, já que por cada falhanço é dado mais um passo no avanço no conhecimento. Ainda assim, temos de reconhecer que quando a repetição desse falhanço deixa de trazer novidade é necessário seguir em frente, e Smil aponta várias áreas onde isso não tem acontecido.

Assim, duas das conclusões que mais me impactaram foram o facto dos exageros à volta da inovação poderem estar ligados ao crescimento da Comunicação de Ciência dos últimos 20 anos, que na sua ânsia por apresentar resultados, ganhar créditos para os grupos de investigação, laboratórios e universidades, tem insuflado resultados, que depois acabam sendo exacerbados pelos média. A segunda é que a inovação das últimas décadas está longe de ser tão avassaladora como se apregoa, existindo a necessidade de reconhecer a história prévia das tecnologias, nomeadamente a do final do século XIX e início do século XX, que é por nós hoje completamente ignorada.

Vários excertos no blog:
https://narrativax.blogspot.com/2024/...

[Pablo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short, sobering book about some of the more egregiously overhyped innovations of the last century, how they got that way, and their outcomes. I'm an innovation cheerleader so it was hard to swallow, but yes, it's accurate. Smil covers leaded gasoline, DDT, and supersonic transport as three examples typifying the 20th century, then touches on current topics like controlled fusion, AI, cancer research, and carbon reduction. It's all very factual and is a good eye-opener for people who blindly support innovation at all cost (or just expect it).

What Smil doesn't offer is advice on when to take on high-risk, high payoff ventures like these. Certainly there's value in pursuing big advances for the knowledge gained, for the possiblity of success or spinoffs, or just for their own sake. Near the end he suggests that resources should be redirected to improving the quality of life everywhere in the world, which means redirecting resources to places where populations are growing the fastest. Surely that's as pie-in-the-sky as any technological topic in the book, and seems to encourage that kind of growth while discouraging support of high-tech R&D with very longterm payoffs, the kind of work that can only be undertaken in the affluent, population-stable countries.

The book portrays the media as the bad guys, with governments and research institutions as overly optimistic, misguided, or poor decision-makers. Fair enough, but again, no solutions are offered. How do we course-correct, if we can at all? Do we vote differently, do we pursue different careers or change our daily habits - what will it take to fix the problems identified here? Pointing them out is only half the battle.

I really enjoyed teh book, challenging as it was to hear all the negativity about things that excite me. I will be looking into other Smil titles next.

[Cassia Attard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid 4.25. At first I was like “Vaclav why r u writing this book?”, and then I was like “ok these stories are interesting”, and at end I was like “oh shit this man has quite the thesis!!!”
It was actually quite an interesting read, and his main point is somewhat novel IMO.
Worth a read.

[Ryan Georgison · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good book to reinforce a realist’s perspective of technology development. Hopeful in a steady-Eddie kinda way.

[Bernie Gourley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is about technological failures, the various ways in which technologies fail, and what lessons can be learned from these failures when hearing about new “world-changing breakthroughs.” The author explores nine technologies in depth, three for each of three varieties of technology failure.

The first group are those technologies that came online as promised, fixing a major problem, only to later be discovered to have side-effects deemed disastrous. The examples used are: leaded gasoline, DDT pesticide, and CFC (Chlorofluorocarbon) refrigerant. These technologies have come to be associated with health defects, air pollution, ecological collapse, and ozone depletion.

The second group (like the first) came online, but then never became competitive with existing technologies. The technologies presented as examples are: airships, nuclear fission for power production, and supersonic flight. Airships died out not only because of the Hindenburg disaster, but also because people preferred airplanes to a craft with the combined slowness of a boat and the crash potential of a plane. Nuclear fission became untenable for new commercial power plants due to a risk premium on build costs even though it doesn’t contribute to global warming and (once powerplants are paid for) is exceedingly cheap per kilowatt-hour. Supersonic flight was just too costly and short-ranged to compete with subsonic flight.

The final group are those technologies that failed to come online at all, despite intense efforts. These include travel by vacuum tube (i.e. Hyperloop, and, yes, like at the bank but with people inside) nitrogen-fixing grains (negating the need for fertilizer,) and nuclear fusion. Despite the celebrity billionaire love of Elon Musk and Richard Branson, hyperloop isn’t advancing because of challenges of maintaining vacuum over large distances. Making cereal grains that feature the nitrogen-fixing capabilities of legumes has also proven more difficult than expected. Nuclear fusion recently experienced a moment in the sun when, for the first time, they got more energy out of it than was needed to achieve it. (This wasn’t written about in the review copy I read, but I suspect will be mentioned in the finished book. At any rate, it doesn’t negate the author’s point as it’s still just one breakthrough of several that would be needed for the technology to be commercially viable.)

In the last chapter, the author gets into a number of other technologies with shorter discussions that are meant to illustrate specific issues with excessive technological optimism. He also investigates some technologies that he believes need to come down the pike, given our present and expected future challenges.

I found this book fascinating. The author seems to love being contrarian (he not only contests popular optimism by those overestimating technological progress but also contests the pessimism regarding the first group of failed technologies, so it appears that he enjoys pointing out how mass opinion [or the opinion of another smart person] is wrong.) That said, there’s a great deal of thought-provoking information in the book. And, I think it can help people more critically consider claims about up-and-coming technologies.

[Julius · Rating 3 out of 5]

Leer a Vaclav Smil siempre es estimulante, y el autor presume de no casarse con nadie (con ninguna ideología), sino ser uno de esos científicos todoterreno que se dedica a observar datos y a contrastar hipótesis, nada más. De hecho, no concede casi entrevistas, y las poquitas en que lo hace, responde a las preguntas por email. Para responder lo más preciso posible y sin ningún atisbo de duda ni de polémica.

Leí Cómo funciona el mundo: Una guía científica de nuestro pasado, presente y futuro, y me encantó. Tengo más obras de él pendiente. Pero este libro me ha decepcionado bastante. Más que un libro dedicado, parecen unos corta pegas de otros libros que tiene. Smil disecciona en varios capítulos el desarrollo y la posterior evolución, frustración o necesidad de eliminación de varios inventos: DDTs, gasolina sin plomo, aviación supersónica, clorofluorocarbonos, hyperloop, y unos pocos más.

La historia y los detalles son sesudos, cuesta leerlos en inglés. Pero no cuenta nada que responda al título de esta obra. Su conclusión básicamente es que el hype de algunos inventos puede que no se cristalice en una solución a un gran problema, y que los grandes desarrollos se consiguen poco a poco, y no de repente.

[Yuri Krupenin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Не очень понимаю, зачем это существует как книга. Не то чтоб это всё было как-то вызывающе плохо, но единственная структура, которая есть в этой книге — желание автора собрать рядом примеры технологий и отсортировать по группам: оказавшиеся провальными, не достигшие предполагаемого величия, и наконец до сих пор толком не материализовавшиеся.

Зачем? Не знаю.

[Daniel Gajardo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I work in innovation and gosh I needed this book. It’s a good remainder on how to navigate hype, eternal promises for breakthroughs, and too-good-to-be-true ideas. Vaclac Smil, in his usual realism and data-driven writing, grounds the analysis in numbers and debunks Moore’s law outside of electronics. His examples did feel cherry-picked, letting us with no choice but to trust they are good representation of the lessons he’s trying to convey.

[Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

Invention and Innovation : A Brief History of Hype and Failure (2023) by Vaclav Smil. Smil is the author of a number of Epic books with an incredible number of statistics that present a great overview of big changes in society including ‘Energy and Civilization’, Invention and Innovation is one of Smil’s more easily readable books.

Smil first divides inventions into four categories, simple tools, machines, new materials and new methods of production. The book then gets on to its main subject, that of inventions that have been disappointing.

There are sections on Inventions that Turned from Welcome to Undesirable, including leaded petrol, DDT and CFCs. Then there Inventions that were to dominate but did not, including airships, nuclear fission and supersonic flight. Next are Inventions that we Keep Waiting for that includes travel in vacuum tubes, nitrogen fixing cereals and controlled nuclear fusion. The final section is about Techno-Optimism, Exaggerations and and Realistic Expectations. It has sections on Breakthroughs that are Not, the Myth of Ever-Faster Innovations and What We Need Most.

In the final section Smil takes aim at optimism on Carbon Dioxide reduction targets and points out that what politicians are saying is not backed up by the rate of decarbonisation and that renewables are being oversold. Smil makes an interesting point that the with solar power only 15% of the cost of a residential system is now panels themselves. He also makes the point that spruikers of renewables who say they are the lowest cost form of electricity are making dubious claims and includes data to back up the point.

The book’s choice of inventions that Smil believes have failed are interesting. It’s not clear with all to what degree the inventions were failures and to what extent it matters overall. With DDT Smil does state that it helped to reduce malaria and that after it was shown to be damaging other insecticides were found. It is similar with CFCs. Nuclear fission, which didn’t deliver the promise that some people claimed for it did deliver a substantial amount of electricity as do renewables today. The section of nuclear fusion will hopefully also prove to be something that documented how hard fusion was to do. But it may well yet prove to be a success. Similarly, while supersonic travel hasn’t happened the price of jet travel at high speed has fallen dramatically.

Smil does acknowledge that there have been improvements, but that they are mostly of the order of improvement of half a percent or a percent per year in some process or other. But this is also significant. For billions of people around the world life has become gradually better and over time that has made a huge difference.

The book mentions the ‘war on cancer’ and also discusses the promises for net zero carbon dioxide emissions that world leaders are making. Smil includes data on how cancer treatments have improved. He also documents how carbon dioxide emissions in the rich world are decreasing but not at rates sufficient to reach net zero. This may say more about politicians than it does about overall progress.

Invention and Innovation is a very readable Smil book. Smil will be 80 in December 2023. His output is remarkable and Invention and Innovation is well worth reading.

[Rick Burcik · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read some of, but not all, Vaclav Smil's wonderful books, and this one is also well worth your time, but it is a little more detailed than I would have preferred. For example, I didn't need to know the tail numbers for all of the German Zeppelins That said, you should invest the time to read "Invention and Innovation." Btw, Dr. Smil and I were likely both students at Penn State in the late 1960s, and while we never met I may have taken one of my father's courses.

[Miguel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smil’s latest is an overview focusing on the shortcomings of innovation looking at nine different inventions ranging from the highly regrettable, the flops, and the ones that were supposed to happen by now but have not materialized (and we’re not talking jetpacks). It’s an illuminating discussion throughout and well worth the read. Smil is always strongest on energy related developments and shines in the final chapter on why we're dependent on continuous innovation.

[Raghu Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Politicians are not unique in hyping expectations among the public about their projects and their potential to transform society and the world in five years. Businesses and environmentalists do it, albeit in opposite directions. Scientists, researchers, and innovative technology companies too promise a new world within a generation or two. However, reality has been a lot more sobering. The rapid pace of growth of microelectronics does not translate to other domains. In this book, Prof. Vaclav Smil applies his critical, data-driven mind to the history of invention in the past two centuries, shows how we can balance expectations and reality. He classifies the modern infatuation with invention under three types. They are, ‘inventions that turned from welcome to undesirable’, ‘inventions that were to dominate - and do not’, and ‘Promised inventions we keep waiting for’. Towards the end, he presents a wishlist of where we must spend our money and effort because they are the ones we need in the twenty-first century.

The book begins with explaining the terms invention and innovation. They have a large overlap. Innovation is introducing, adopting and mastering new materials, products, and ideas. Hence, numerous inventions happen without innovation. Then, the book turns to the first category - inventions that turned undesirable after being welcomed with open arms when they arrived. Leaded gasoline, DDT and CFCs are some examples. Health complications, air pollution, ecological damage, and ozone depletion in the atmosphere were the fears that put a restraint on them. Exaggerated fear from environmentalists was one major cause that derailed DDT, for example. Prof. Smil contests many of those conclusions and brings a balance to the DDT question. The inventions that were ‘expected to dominate but do not’ include airships, nuclear fission and supersonic flight. Nuclear fission promised endless free energy through Fast Breeder Reactors, which never happened at the commercial scale. Last, the inventions we keep awaiting include the Hyperloop, controlled nuclear fusion, and nitrogen-fixing cereals. Hyperloop is an idea two centuries old and Prof. Smil points to problems which may never make it a reality. In nuclear fusion, the book discusses the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) project and its ever-receding horizons. An agreement among thirty-five countries to build it came in 2006 and it was to be operational by 2016 at a cost of about five billion euros. The optimistic date now is 2054, and it will cost $200 billion. The goal is to supply just one percent of global energy demand by 2060!

Hype and failure mark the climate change movement as well. Prof. Smil gives us a few examples of the wishful nature of many climate-change related targets. Global meetings like COP26 set fancy decarbonization targets. They shoot for 45% less global carbon by 2030, zero carbon emission from US electricity generation by 2035 and net zero global carbon by 2050. Facts tell us that in the year 2000, fossil fuels supplied 87% of the world’s primary energy. In 2020, it was 83%, an annual reduction of 0.2 percent. Net zero in 2050 means we move from 83% to zero in thirty years. This requires reducing global fossil carbon of 2.75% every year - fourteen times faster than what we achieved between 2000 - 2020. The author asks where the technical capabilities and necessary financing to realize instantaneously such a large annual cut and sustain it for thirty years are.

We hear at regular intervals about green hydrogen transforming all our transportation. At present, we make hydrogen by reforming fossil fuels like natural gas and coal. To move to carbon-free electricity from wind and solar and carbon-free fuels like hydrogen, ammonia and synthetic fuels, we need large-scale electricity storage. Lithium-ion batteries are the choice of storage. Let us assume we make batteries with energy density an order of magnitude higher than today’s best lithium-ion batteries. Even then, their energy density would be less than a quarter of the energy density of liquid fuels like gasoline, kerosene and diesel. These liquid fuels dominate all forms of transportation today. Making high-density batteries alone is insufficient. They need to be of unprecedented capacity. Megacities need them because of the intermittent nature of solar and wind power. For example, cyclones disrupt Asian megacities often and they need enormous levels of battery storage as backup.

What about the claim of decarbonizing the global fleet of cars by 40 percent by 2030? In 2021, the world had 1.2 billion cars, SUVs, pickups and vans, and 200 million buses and trucks on the road. Of these, 99% were gasoline or diesel powered. Assuming the total fleet remains constant (unlikely!), we need to make 570 million new electric or hydrogen-fueled vehicles by 2030 to get to 40% decarbonization. This means we must make 63 million vehicles a year. It is more than the total production of all cars in 2019. The electricity to produce them would have to come from zero-carbon sources. What are the chances of it happening?

The Glasgow Climate Pact agreed to cut aviation-related CO2 by 40% by 2030. This means we cut commercial aviation emissions, now dependent on kerosene, by two-fifths in another eight years through batteries. Our best batteries have an energy density that is 1/40th of kerosene. It would require a miracle to make batteries with half or a third of kerosene’s energy density before 2030. The other fantasy is hydrogen-powered aircraft. At present, there are no hydrogen-powered airplane in service anywhere. The challenges of storing liquid hydrogen cooled at -253°C are formidable for this to happen soon. A forty percent carbon cut means we must have 10000 electric or hydrogen aircraft in service by 2030 to fly 1.8 billion zero-carbon passengers a year. The global fleet now is 25000 aircraft. Prof. Smil concludes by saying even an unprecedented explosion of inventions will not make it happen.

Instead of pouring more money and effort into inventions which won’t happen, the author asks us to look at urgent problems. Suppose we strive for significant reductions in existing inequalities and for narrowing the health (recurrent morbidity and premature mortality), education and income gaps. That means narrowing the most conspicuous differences between one billion people in the affluent economies and the over three billion people in developing countries. Meeting water, food, energy and material needs would be the priority. We don’ t need to await new inventions to satisfy the water and food requirements of the poor. The same is true about electrification and raising the average levels of primary energy use. In the author’s words, ‘nihil novi sub sole’, meaning ‘there is nothing new under the sun’.

Prof. Smil's arguments have a deep resonance for people from developing countries. Poor people live in tropical countries where the average annual temperature is a high 28°C. They feel indifferent when global warming alarmists complain about the average global temperature going fractionally above 14.8°C today. The book isn't against investing in new inventions. Nor does it mock innovation. However, it debunks ideas like terraforming Mars and settling there as a pure fantasy at present. Prof. Smil informs us about how we should think about technology, its promises and pitfalls, energy and the future. Coming from a rigorous scientist and an expert on energy, we must pay attention.

[Arun · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating read!

In this book, Vaclav Smil takes a hard look at inventions and innovations that haven't lived up to their hype or promise. He covers inventions as varied as airships (lighter than air flying machines), hyperloop (travel in near vacuum tubes), nuclear fission and fusion for electricity generation, and AI. His views are quite contrarian and while one may not agree with his assessment of these innovations, he does back up his views with substantial research into the not-so-obvious reasons for their assessments as "failures". The book seems to have been written before the GPT/LLM wave of late 2022 and I wonder if his assessment of AI would have changed since then.

Well worth reading and appreciating with a critical eye.

[Claudio Arato · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book, long enough to be densely packed with insights, mostly on point and agreeable. A professor emeritus inevitably brings little responsibility to their thoughts and can focus on facts. Here, Smil brings some context to his somewhat absolutist writings. Beware of charlatans and a dim view of so called modern innovations makes this a good, clear and excellent read. The advice he gives: nihil sub sole novum is essential to remember for those intent on innovation and our humanity. And sanity.

[P18 · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first three chapters were eh, his book in Energy and Civilization was much richer and more informative. The last section where he tries to extrapolate the learnings from the prior chapters is imo the best part

2.5/5 for the first three chapters, 5/5 for the last one

[Marga · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una visión con los pies en la tierra de los inventos actuales y de las verdaderas y urgentes necesidades. manual básico para políticos y gente con dinero y capacidad de decisión sobre hacia donde debe ir la innovación.

[Bruno Pascon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excelente livro para entendermos tempos e movimentos de processos “disruptivos” ou não e pq não devemos acreditar em modismos (hopes and hypes) de transformações na humanidade em espaço curto de tempo. Através de exemplos embasados em números e fatos a narrativa é muito bem construída e mostra, na minha área, porquê metas de descarbonização até 2050 estão bem distantes da realidade, enquanto uma série de problemas graves como desnutrição, falta de acesso à educação, cobertura básica de saúde já poderiam ser resolvidos a muito tempo com tecnologias e invenções conhecidas há décadas e séculos.

[Snorre Lothar von Gohren Edwin · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was no breakthrough thoughts but a good reminder of how difficult it will be to get rid of some of our core problems.

[Lucille Nguyen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A measured, thoughtful, and informed view on technological progress. Well worth the read.

[Marianne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly detailed and thorough: how I like to see non-fiction books. Smil takes three cases (inventions that either became undesitable or did not live up to the hype or are yet to be invented) and illustrates three examples for each of them. He clearly wants to be thorough in his assessments, which makes it hard to get through at points (I haven't seen an actual chemistry formula since high school), but at least you know he is not building on merely his own opinion! (I appreciated the small comment on Harari). I especially enjoyed his last chapter, where he formulates his own opinion and relates it to current popular topics.

[Blake · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smil’s book is sobering. The final chapter conveys the frustration of living in a world where global warming is a threat, and not knowing what can be done about it. While also being frustrated with the fact that the world does not, with capable resources already in possession, end homelessness and hunger.

Overall, the book is directed at the Silicon Valley VC’s and AI accelerarionists who believe that technology innovation will solve all problems. Smil dismantles this argument in three ways:
1) An exploration of how mass technological advancement almost always has secondary effects that need to be rethought later, often at economic disadvantage
2) That technologies with lots of momentum and hype around them end up being problematic in fundamental ways to ever reach mass adoption
3) That technologies we are waiting for breakthroughs on often never have their breakthrough moment, and it does not seem possible to just will the breakthrough into existence

Ultimately this acts as his treatise on mismanaged funds, that while breakthroughs are sexy, they are rare, and even breakthroughs don’t signal mass adoption, that policy needs to shift to tackling less shiny practical issues.

The hyper-skepticism from Smil is refreshing. However, it also comes across as overly pessimistic (though perhaps right). My criticisms of Smil’s arguments are mainly:
1) Underestimating startups vs incumbents- Smil, particularly in the chapter on Supersonic flight, is skeptical that a startup will be able to compete with Boeing and Airbus due to the fact that they are more resource constrained, however, historically, startups have a number of advantages of getting product to market. I agree with him on all his points of cost of flight, but I think that private supersonic flights for the ultra-wealthy is likely and untapped market that major players can’t serve well due to niche demand.
2) Nuclear Power- Smil considers this a lost battle, due to both economic and perception reasons. I understand that sentiment in this moment (especially since Germany shut down reactors right when they needed energy independence most). However, even in his view, despite the economic issues, this seems like the clearest path to carbon free power generation.
3) Economic Conservatism- I’m skeptical that replacing carbon emitting energy production with clean energy production would have unsolvable economic ramifications. Many of his points are about the difficulty of removing carbon emitting from steel production and the difficulty of replacing cars. But the first order needs solve first. Additionally, with regard to cars, while also a momentous task, rethinking cities to be more centralized and expanding high speed rail, in the US at least, is a much better permanent solution than replacing all the cars on the road. However, I realize this is perhaps more unlikely.

Smil is also particularly weak when talking about technology, which has been highlighted as a weakness of his in the past. With the discussion in AI, for instance, he’s effectively cherry-picking one end of the arguments (especially from someone who has economic and career incentive to downplay OpenAIs work)

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

On the pro side, the book is short and full of instructive examples. The insane unforced errors surrounding tetra-ethyl lead, and the pretty competent responses to unforeseen side effects of DDT and CFCs. Smil then details the mostly-failed dreams of zeppelins, supersonic flight, and cheap fission, which seems to have mostly-failed due to competition from planes, insufficient demand, and technical challenges + regulation, respectively. Finally, Smil talks about hyperloops, self-fertilizing cereals, and fusion, which seem to be silly, unexpectedly hard, and even harder than expected, respectively.

On the con side, I think I found the book somewhat unsatisfying. What I wanted was a dissection of whether these failures were plausibly foreseeable in advance or not, and what kind of mistakes the techno-optimists of the past made. Alternatively, some heuristics for what kinds of technical challenges are tractable and what kinds are unexpected swamps like nitrogen fixation. Smil doesn't really seem to make that sort of thing his mission, but some lessons are extractable nevertheless.

Notes:
• Discusses inventions that were promising but had unexpected problems, inventions that were hyped and didn't meet the hype, and inventions that were anticipated but never arrived
• Ethanol in gasoline was originally meant to be an anti-knocking agent! Not just blatant corn lobbying
• Tetraethyl lead was GM's patent, other anti-knocking additives weren't
• Smil suggests a pretty explicit campaign to cover up toxicity of TEL, tobacco style
• TEL was ultimately banned NOT because of the LEAD POISONING, but because the new and powerful EPA wanted to get rid of photochemical Nox smog, which required catalytic converters, which were poisoned by TEL emissions
• DDT was a unprecedentedly powerful insecticide but bad for the environment, most famously birds, and hazardous to humans in large exposures
• DDT played a pretty vital role in the eradication of malaria outside of Africa
• Smil suggests it might have worked out better if not for the overzealous crop spraying that led to massive environmental contamination and rapid development of resistance
• Refrigerants need to be volatile, nonflammable, nontoxic, nonreactive, lighter than air to not be an asphyxiant in the case of a leak, and cheap
• CFC ozone interaction not noticed empirically, but via theoretical concerns about chlorine-ozone reaction
• Replacements for CFCs were ~5-10x more expensive. Modern HFCs don't contain chlorine so ozone not a problem, but are greenhouse gases with 1000x-10000x the warming power of CO2
• Smil says people thought zeppelins were the future, but it's unclear if this was because of an overestimate of zeppelins or an underestimate of airplanes?
• Some zeppelins were used for recon and patrol in WWII!
• Hindenburg disaster was big because it was filmed, "first media event of the 20th century". Put an end to passenger zeppelins, but they were pretty doomed anyway, mainly because of speed and capacity.
• Fission power was originally thought to be uneconomical by Manhattan Project theorists, but initial development was pushed for standard Cold War reasons
• Discusses regulatory obstacles but doesn't discuss why those obstacles suddenly started being put in place (they were pre Three Mile Island and Chernobyl)
• Smil seems to also attribute a large share of the responsibility to the sudden collapse in electricity demand growth during the 70's, from decadal doublings to 1.5x, 1.2x
• Breeder reactors were supposed to be the future but didn't work out, apparently because the technical problems involved in separation were just difficult and expensive, and because the initial case for the importance of breeders thought U-235 would be rarer
• Supersonic flight was considered "the obvious next step in air travel" since the main salient fact about airplanes was their drastic increase in speed over previous modes.
• But it seems like the economics just basically didn't line up - supersonic flight means more drag, more fuel, narrower hull, fewer passengers, more expensive mechanical components. At the margins of standard subsonic jet liners, customers just preferred price and comfort over speed.
○ Classic "actual time saved goes as 1/x with increasing speed" sort of situation
• Potential lesson to be learned from fusion: the heuristic that makes people think it'll be good is "steady-state costs low", bc fuel is cheap and environmental externalities are low. But if the mechanisms required are super complicated, those probably require lots of expertise and maintenance, which is also a steady-state cost!
○ Intuitively, maintenance of sophisticated machinery seems like it has more "exposure to innovation" than fuel or emissions, which are more just "properties of the power source". And this is kinda true, kinda not? Innovation could definitely make fuel cheaper or mitigate emissions. But there are more obvious arguments that place bounds on those via energy conservation, whereas there's no obvious argument for why maintenance cost/complexity will be fundamentally constrained by physics.
• Man Smil just kinda comes across as jaded and bitter about innovation hype, which is fair, tech journalism sucks
• The last chaper makes the case that people think of innovation as like Moore's law due to availability, but that the material foundations of society are actually the limiting factor, and those technologies progress much slower / are much harder to innovate on
○ Smil says you can have electricity without microprocessors but not microprocessors without farming. Which is true but not relevant? The valid version of this argument is "you can dump lots of cheap electricity into expensive microprocessors to get more output but can't really dump lots of cheap microprocessors into electricity generation to get cheaper electricity"
○ Which seems semi-true, idk maybe you could eke out some improvements in power plants with arbitrarily powerful control systems
○ But mostly, oh BOY does this argument get fucked by AGI. Unless Smil wants to argue that AGI is impossible or that the current systems are near the physical limit and couldn't even be improved on by massive amounts of cognitive labor, then the possibility of AGI seems like it undermines the whole basis of Smil's "resource foundationalism" position. Like yes, those resources are important and hard to innovate on. But if we find a way to turn electricity into labor, doesn't really matter, line go up until physical limits.

[Adelyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was refreshing to read a book on scientific innovation and history that is fact-based and not sensationalist. Vaclav Smil does the research, lays out the facts, and connects the dots to support his view point. I especially enjoyed his break down of what it would take to become carbon neutral by 2050 --- surprise, surprise! It's basically impossible! AI and exponential growth bringing immortality in the next 2 decades? Also unlikely!

The writing is practical, methodical, and well researched. Fortunately for the reader, there is a bit of humor sprinkled throughout. Of course, there is a chance I took the author's impatience and exasperation with media and pop culture's glorification of scientific innovation a bit more humorously than he intended.

The book summary is very well written and lays out the book like an abstract. For that reason, I'd recommend this book to anyone who is still curious after reading the book summary. The sections are well laid out and you will learn an abundance of facts and history around the listed items.

Thank you MIT Press for providing me with an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Bill Leach · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smil looks at the history of human invention from the big picture and with the perspective of time. This allows one to see that invention is a process. Misleading news stories distort the view of invention, leading to unrealistic expectations and to predicable disappointment when the advancement of technology does not occur.

Chapter 2 - INVENTIONS THAT TURNED FROM WELCOME TO UNDESIRABLE

The use of tetraethyl lead (TEL) allowed the development of high compression engines, but eventually it was banned due to the toxic effects of lead. Today gasoline either contains either BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene, and xylene) or ethanol to inhibit knocking.

The initial success of DDT was eventually overshadowed by its affects on the animal ecosystem, primarily the birds. DDT is still used, but effective mosquito control depends on more than an insecticide.

When refrigeration was invented the refrigerants were dangerous. Chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) appeared to be an excellent solution but eventually their effect on the ozone layer resulted in agreement to end their use. Currently, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are used but they have a significant global warming potential. Better refrigerants are still needed.

Chapter 3 - INVENTIONS THAT WERE TO DOMINATE — ­AND DO NOT

Airships were a commercial success in the 1930's. The Graf Zeppelin flew 1.7 million kilometers, carried more than 13,000 passengers, and completed 144 intercontinental trips. They were displaced by aircraft as they provided greater speeds.

While nuclear fission power plants were built in the 1970's and 1980's, public fears lead to a move away from them. There is now a resurgence of interest under the guise of small modular reactors (SMRs).

The Concorde supersonic transport (SST) was very expensive to run, with every flight heavily subsidized by French and British taxpayers. By nature, any SST will be much more expensive than subsonic flight. Smil sees similar unrealistic expectations in the concept of electric and zero carbon fuel aircraft.

Chapter 4 - INVENTIONS THAT WE KEEP WAITING FOR

The idea of atmospheric railways has been around for some time, most recently in the form of Elon Musk's HyperLoop. However, the inherent difficulties are many including the cost of tunnels that can withstand earthquakes and expansion, right-of-way issues and passenger comfort.

Cereal crops require large amounts of nitrogen fertilizer which is only partially used, resulting in run-off problems. Much research has been done to induce cereals to behave as leguminous plants and fix all or most of the needed nitrogen through symbiosis with nitrogen-­fixing bacteria. While progress has been made, a barrier has been the lack of acceptance of genetically modified (GMO) foods.

Despite the fanfare, progress on controlled nuclear fusion has been slow.

Chapter 5 - TECHNO-­OPTIMISM, EXAGGERATIONS, AND REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS

BREAKTHROUGHS THAT ARE NOT

The author reviews the many examples of excessive expectations and exaggerated claims for future advancement.

Michael Jordan stresses, “People are getting confused about the meaning of AI in discussions of technology trends—­that there is some kind of intelligent thought in computers that is responsible for the progress and which is competing with humans. We don’t have that, but people are talking as if we do.”

Smil seems to have a few math difficulties in this section:
- "in fifty years of improvements that has resulted in a gain of seven orders of magnitude (that is, more than 10,000,000,000 times greater).
- "Most of the world’s electricity is generated by large steam turbines whose efficiency got better by about 1.5 percent per year during the past hundred years."

THE MYTH OF EVER-­FASTER INNOVATIONS

The exponential innovation in electronics and computing has prompted many writers to posit that invention will continue at an ever increasing pace. However, a detailed study of innovation across American industries spanning nearly two centuries, lead by Bryan Kelly found that in many areas innvation peaked before the year 1900. Smil observes that a single decade, the 1880s, saw the invention and in many cases also the successful commercial introduction, of so many processes, converters, and materials indispensable for modern civilization that their aggregate makes the decade’s record unprecedented, and most likely unrepeatable.

WHAT WE NEED MOST

Without inventions and the ensuing innovation, modern societies could not have achieved their high quality of life, including unprecedented longevity, affluence, education, and high mobility.

In looking at global warming, Smil points out the impossibility of CO2 reductions by looking at the big picture: "having 40 percent of it decarbonized by 2030 would require about 570 million new electric (or hydrogen-­or ammonia-­fueled) vehicles made in nine years; that is about 63 million a year, or more than the total global production of all cars in 2019."

"We know perfectly well how to remedy all of these undesirable or outright demeaning realities without any brilliant inventions but with the determined extension of known and reliable methods, skills, and procedures. In the grand scheme of things, improving what we know and making it universally available might bring more benefits to more people in a shorter period of time than focusing overly on invention and hoping that it will bring miraculous breakthroughs. To forestall the obvious critique, this is not an argument against the determined pursuit of new inventions, merely a plea for a better balance between the quest for (perhaps, but not assuredly) stunning future gains and the deployment of the well-­mastered but still far from universally applied understanding and achievements."

[Jamie Crutchley · Rating 1 out of 5]

Smil over-inflating the media’s over-inflating of technological progress. Ever the soft target, he blames the media for grabbing attention by playing up the pace of innovation because once there was lead in petrol and supersonic jets didn’t work out. If anyone is not familiar with the chronic mischaracterisation of technical works by said media, they most likely won’t be someone who reads books. Let along someone who reads this pedantic technical manual about how we shouldn’t have Facebook because there are starving children in Africa. Yes, 1880 was a massive decade for technological progress, but to downplay the gains and innovations since then is farcical at best. I’ve put up with Smil cause his tedium is often accompanied by rare insight. In this book, there was no insight.

[Shubham Kumar · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Invention and Innovation" is yet another good book from Vaclav Smil in which he has provided lots of relevant data and information to educate us on the relevance, hype, success and failures of various inventions and innovations done by humans.
Dr. Smil rightly notes that Invention is the process of introducing new stuffs. It may or may not be innovative.

Inventions that were once welcomed and then eventually became undesirable -
1. Leaded gasoline or Tetraethyllead(TEL) was once widely used as a fuel additive but were eventually stopped owing to the lead poisoning caused by TEL and the toxic harm caused to the human brain. Lead causes neuro behavioural deficits even in extremely low doses.
2. Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane(DDT) was once used as insecticide and was used to cure malaria. But it was eventually found out that exposure to DDT caused neuro-psychological and psychiatric symptom.
3. Usage of Chlorofluorocarbons as a refrigerant has also been stopped due to the ozone layer depletion caused by it. Hydrofluorocarbons(HFCs) are being used as substitute for CFCs.

The next chapter contains the details about the inventions that were supposed to dominate, but do not. These are - Airships, nuclear fission and supersonic flights.
Hindenburg airship crash, small emission of greenhouse gases by airship as compared to airplanes, etc. have been well articulated in the book. Dr. Smil also talks about the revival efforts of airships by few companies by highlighting that - The lure of LTA(lighter than air) airships will never disappear. In all heavier than air machines, lift comes only externally, while LTA airships combine internal lift from the natural buoyancy of light gases with the external lift provided by their engines. This makes it more difficult to control and design.
In reference to nuclear fission, we learn that large scale nuclear electricity generation using fission could help in accelerating de-carbonization. But U-235 was so scarce that its resources could not support large scale nuclear generation. Dr. Smil also highlights about the hope of nuclear electricity generation in future given that Europe's need to reduce reliance on Russian energy can fuel adoption of nuclear electricity.
We get to learn about supersonic flights as well which were once supposed to dominate given the US's efforts to retain supremacy, but eventually could not. There's reference to the mishaps happened to Concorde supersonic flight, public concerns over sonic boom of supersonic flights and American startups in the present trying to resurrect supersonic flights.

Inventions that we keep waiting for-
1. Travel in a (near) vacuum(Hyperloop) - We learn that the concept and the idea is not new, and there have been efforts in the earlier centuries to achieve travel in tubes at rapid speed. But there are complexities and challenges like high costs, operational challenges, security issues indicated by surveys done by transportation experts in the present era. We learn about the efforts made by Virgin's Hyperloop and the Boring company, but also get to understand that it is likely to remain a distant dream even after 200 years of talks and efforts.
2. Nitrogen-fixing cereals - Nitrogenous fertilizers used in crops release mostly nitrates and ammonia resulting into environmental problems causing dead zones spreading in ponds and lakes supporting the growth of algae. When these algae die and sink to the bottom, their decomposition consumes dissolved oxygen suffocating fish and other marine creatures. These dead zones are now found in the Gulf of Mexico. Nitrogen oxide and Nitrogen dioxide released from fertilization and converted to nitrates in atmospheric reactions contribute to acid rain. Hence, it is important for the crops to fix their own nitrogen. There are references to research related to Nif Genes which are the genes encoding enzymes involved in the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen into a form of nitrogen available to living organisms. The reluctance of accepting transgenic (genetically modified) crops, especially staple food and animal feed crops by few countries leads to slow adoption of the technique. There's also opposition by the groups lobbying for organic crops. Hence, there is no line of sight towards the adoption of this innovation.
3. Controlled nuclear fusion - The conversion of heat to electricity from nuclear fusion reactions can lead to application in electricity supply. But challenges such as production of large quantities of radioactive waste, rarity of naturally occurring tritium and the challenges that lie with operation of reactors only using deuterium fuel lead to the complexities with controlled nuclear fusion.

Towards the end of the book, we learn about the so-called breakthroughs which are not and overhyped innovations which are not currently being accepted widely such as Metaverse. The myths of faster innovations have been busted with the exception of Moore's law in the beginning of the microprocessor innovation days and the eventual S-curve in chip size reduction, the reality of slow growth of innovation such as photovoltaic cells due to cost have been discussed. Also, Dr. Smil calls out those who set unreasonable carbon emission goals and how it is difficult to achieve them. He reasons the same with lots of mathematics and data. He also lays the emphasis of prioritizing innovation in certain sectors such as health and education over making efforts to deploy supersonic transportation highlighting the need to do so citing data.

Overall, it's an informative and data-driven book which helps us to dive deeper into the facts and myths of inventions and innovations.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciated this book based on the information it provided and its thoughtful and pragmatic approach. I also liked the discussions of how the media distorts information related to science and technology. There was also some sarcasm which helped lighten the mood. But I found the writing style abrupt, with what appeared to be the author’s well-placed anger showing through. Some of the discussions were complex, with not enough background given. Thank you to Netgalley and MIT Press for the advance reader copy.