How We Got to Now

Six Innovations That Made the Modern World

By: Steven Johnson

Narrated by: George Newbern

Look out for Johnson’s new book, Wonderland, on sale November 15, 2016.

From the New York Times–bestselling author of Where Good Ideas Come From and Everything Bad Is Good for You, a new look at the power and legacy of great ideas.

In this illustrated history, Steven Johnson explores the history of innovation over centuries, tracing facets of modern life (refrigeration, clocks, and eyeglass lenses, to name a few) from their creation by hobbyists, amateurs, and entrepreneurs to their unintended historical consequences. Filled with surprising stories of accidental genius and brilliant mistakes—from the French publisher who invented the phonograph before Edison but forgot to include playback, to the Hollywood movie star who helped invent the technology behind Wi-Fi and Bluetooth—How We Got to Now investigates the secret history behind the everyday objects of contemporary life.

In his trademark style, Johnson examines unexpected connections between seemingly unrelated fields: how the invention of air-conditioning enabled the largest migration of human beings in the history of the species—to cities such as Dubai or Phoenix, which would otherwise be virtually uninhabitable; how pendulum clocks helped trigger the industrial revolution; and how clean water made it possible to manufacture computer chips. Accompanied by a major six-part television series on PBS, How We Got to Now is the story of collaborative networks building the modern world, written in the provocative, informative, and engaging style that has earned Johnson fans around the globe.

New insight into famous innovations

Great stories of innovation, while drawing a few general principles from the commonalities of the anecdotes.

CIVILIZATION'S ADVANCE

Steven Johnson suggests innovations in glass, ice, light, print, sound, and time are seminal markers for civilization’s advance. Through human innovation, Johnson argues these seminal markers create the modern world.

Johnson’s first example is a translucent substance in the Egyptian desert. Its discovery takes the form of art-buried in ancient tombs. Tiny scarab models lead to questions of how a translucent glass beetle is formed. His second example is the brittle transparent natural production of ice that leads to cooled drinks, to refrigeration, air conditioning, and frozen dinners. In the early days of civilization, sunlight determined the length of the work day. Eventually ways of extending the work day are created with artificial light. With Guttenberg, innovations in print spread education around the world at an affordable cost. Personal human knowledge expands geometrically. Innovations in sound have expanded from echoes in caves to wired communication to cell phone conversations to sea floor mapping to the discovery of remnants of the sound of earth’s Big Bang. As the world matures, time is measured; i.e. first by the position of the sun; later by the segmentation of a created twenty-four hour day and finally with accuracy determined by the molecular action of atoms. Accurate and synchronized measurement of time becomes critical to many aspects of life.

Johnson argues that these six areas of innovation coalesce to explain humanity’s past, present, and future. Johnson’s glass, ice, light, print, sound, and time reminds one of Aristotle’s forms; i.e. the idea that forms are what human’ senses determine objects to be. Johnson adds the principle of innovation to Aristotelian forms to make the world modern.

I come back to this over and over!

This is a fascinating book and the approach the author takes in explaining the interrelated nature of technology and social change is at once insightful and easy to comprehend. Great narration by George Newbern. I like this audiobook immensely.

Amazing, but 25% shorter than I'd like

Outstanding overview of common materials and measures that we take for granted, how they came into importance, and the unintended consequences of each. I thoroughly enjoyed every bit of this book. I highly recommend it, even though it's perhaps a bit short. I feel like the author should have taken the time to write on two more topics to make this a full length, more complete book.

interesting

Solid history of some important but basic technologies. Good but not great, a brief and enjoyable read that is worth the time.