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The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

by Walter Isaacson (Goodreads Author)

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Jake said: " Instead of choosing a text that focuses on a specific item of emerging technology, I decided to choose a text that chronicled some of the world’s most influential creators of innovative technology. In Walter Isaacson’s The Innovators, he presents th Instead of choosing a text that focuses on a specific item of emerging technology, I decided to choose a text that chronicled some of the world’s most influential creators of innovative technology. In Walter Isaacson’s The Innovators, he presents the lives and achievements of some of the most important figures in computing technology. Most importantly, however, I wanted to discover how each of the innovators thought and lived because whatever they did in their lives directly led to the development of their respective innovation. A goal of mine, as a reader, centered around understanding how great creators of emerging technology lived and thought in order to hopefully one day create or help develop the next great technological innovation.
Similar to Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, this text is skillfully crafted and weaves biographical detail into a rich, consumable narrative. Each of the chapters focuses on a specific innovative figure, and the chapters progress in an ascending chronological order. Each chapter is structured roughly the same: beginnings, struggles, successes. Each figure is examined within this basic pattern, and Isaacson does a great job of taking the reader through the figure’s life without getting lost in the weeds. For example, while chronicling the life of Ada Lovelace, the author focused his evidence on the aspects of her life that were relevant to how she came to develop the first programming language. Similar to Mary Shelley’s entrance into a traditionally male-dominated sphere, Lovelace burst onto the scene initially under a pseudonym, but later revealed her true identity and began participating in the mathematics field related to her fascination with “thinking machines.”
Beyond his consistency and strength in delivering only the most relevant and interesting content in his biographical descriptions, Isaacson includes incredibly profound nuggets of wisdom that he gleaned through the research process. One of these nuggets centers around a somewhat paradoxical characteristic of many technological innovators. The authors explains that, “computer innovators, like other pioneers, can find themselves left behind if they get stuck in their ways. The same traits that make them inventive, such as stubbornness and focus, can make them resistant to change when new ideas come along” (Isaacson, 2014, p. 94). Later on, he explains that Steve Jobs is particularly successful because he is able to combine open-mindedness with his other inventive characteristics (stubbornness and focus). In other words, Steve Jobs is able to have the best of both worlds. He has taken the flaws of traditional innovators and combined those with the strengths of someone who is receptive to new ideas. As intuitive or automatic as this may seem, being an innovator paradoxically implies that the individual is resistant to change.
A pseudo-shortcoming of the book is that it almost immediately dates itself. Instead of being called The Innovators, a more accurate title might have been, The Innovators (so far). The very nature of the final technology that the book covers (The Web) reveals that these initial innovations have laid the foundations for even greater innovations. The innovators of the past will be replaced with the innovators of the future. In my mind, I wonder if the emerging technology of the future will be so strong that it overshadows the prior technology in a similar manner to the way that Newtonian and Einsteinian physics replaced Aristotelian science. In science classes today, Aristotelian science is not even mentioned, and this is because the current scientific paradigm is many paradigm shifts beyond what once was. Just like Aristotelian science was important and relevant for a time, Isaacson’s chronicling of some of our time’s leading innovators will likely become obsolete and referenced only in passing as a nostalgic memory of when computers were new.
Following the completion of this text, I would argue that my goal for this text was definitely met and exceeded. One of the most important ideas that I gathered from each of the innovators in Isaacson’s text is that in order to create something new, individuals are often forced to be patient. Some new ideas need to sit in a basement and wait until other factors are established that usher in the full realization of a vision. Also, some of the most innovative ideas are merely old ideas that are repurposed or “made strange”. Looking into the future, I will try to emulate these perspectives and make them a part of my identity. ...more "

Mar 03, 2017 06:30PM · see review