Table of Contents
How we got to now: 6 innovations that are reshaping the world (How we got to now).
How we got to now, a book about the history of invention, is divided into six chapters, starting from six common things in the daily life of modern people (glass, refrigeration, sound, cleaning, time, light), to explore how a thing was invented or discovered because of a simple need, and then "evolved" into a subsequent innovation. Some of these seemingly unrelated developments have changed the way people have lived for thousands of years. The author says he tries to look at the history of innovation from the perspective of the self-centeredness of mankind, and from the perspective of things themselves. That's why this book is not too busy singing the praises of the inventor or the research organization that invented something. Most of the time, we just follow the narrative to understand how a thing evolves with the situation at that time, and how it occasionally stimulates new creativity and different fields. This may be a bit abstract, but perhaps it would be more concrete to say that this book will tell us why the invention of printing led to the invention of the microscope.
The author of this book is Steven Johnson, a famous American science writer. I started reading this book because I saw the documentary version of the same name on the internet, and since I couldn't find the documentary in my location, I read the original book. I read the English version of the book, which is also available in simplified Chinese, called "How We Got Here: 6 Innovations That Are Reshaping the World".
It is inevitable that people outside the realm of technology and innovation will be confused by new technological terms. However, many knowledge workers who are responsible for innovation may not be able to see the future of innovative technology. While reading this book, I tried to rethink the possibility of the direction of innovation in the process of reviewing the history. Perhaps the conclusion of the book can be summarized in a nutshell:
“Better to make new connections than remain comfortably situation in the same routine. If you want to improve the world slightly, you need focus and determination; you need to stay within the confines of a field and open the new doors in the adjacent possible one at a time.”
Here are the reading notes.
From Glass and Lenses to the Scientific Revolution and the 3Cs
The earliest knowledge of glass came from the natural formation of glass, formed by thermalization in the Libyan Desert. People stumbled upon this natural glass, and presumably found it so beautiful that these solids began to circulate, and early man made decorative brooches like the one found in Tutankhamen's tomb. Naturally, local people began to investigate techniques to make the glass look clearer and more beautiful, and gradually these early glasses were used in crafts such as windows and cups.
Originally, the production of artificial glass was confined to the neighborhood. With the fall of Constantine, a group of glassblowers from modern-day Turkey migrated to the flourishing seaport of Venice during the war, and glass became one of the thriving industries of international trade.
The Great Leap Forward in glass technology was actually a fluke. Because glassmaking requires the use of high temperatures, a side effect of which was a number of large-scale fires in Venice's wooden communities, the local government eventually decided to require glassmakers to relocate centrally to another nearby island, Murano, inadvertently creating a concept similar to today's industrial parks. The concentration of talent allowed new techniques and ideas to percolate, and eventually clear, modern glass was developed on this small island.
With the advent of transparent modern glass, it was discovered that glass could cause visual changes by refracting light. In Northern Italy, some people made lenses, which were first used only by monks, as only monks read books. These lenses were first used only by monks, who were the only ones who read, and it was only with the invention of Gutenberg's printing press in the 1440's, when people had prints to look at, that many people realized they had farsightedness, and there was a strong demand for lenses. The strong commercial demand attracted more people into making and developing lenses, which led to the creation of their successors, the telescope and the microscope.
By this time, glass lenses demonstrated a strong influence on modern civilization and culture: First, after the invention of the telescope, Galileo used it to observe the celestial bodies, which led to the heliocentric theory that the earth revolves around the sun, as the heliocentric theory challenged the European Church and influenced the subsequent scientific revolution. Secondly, the invention of the microscope led to the study of bacteria and virology three generations later, which led to the invention of various modern medical treatments such as antibiotics. Needless to say, in the 19th and 20th centuries, the technology of the lens continued with the invention of the camera and television.
玻璃的另一成就，來自於它的延展性。1887年，物理學家Charles Vernon Boys試圖使用玻璃的延展性做為測量力學的工具，為了製作出他理想中的工具，無意間創造出了玻璃纖維，是一種耐用性很高的材料。這種材料現在被應用在製作各種東西上 – 衣服、船、電路板、晶片…後來也造出了光纖，由於有了光纖，才有今日的寬頻網路和Internet。
From shipping ice, refrigerators, frozen long-distance transportation, and air conditioning to national political changes
Ice is a natural thing. Ice as a business is relatively recent. Boston businessman Frederic Tudor, suffering from the heat of a disastrous trip to the Caribbean, had the idea of shipping his native Boston's natural ice to the tropics for sale. To start his ice business, he developed several techniques. First, he figured out a way to ship ice using wood chips to keep it cold. With virtually free ice, wood chips, and empty ships returning south after delivering goods north, the ice business operated at low cost. Later, he experimented with the invention of the primitive icehouse to store the ice in the heat of the South. The ice business became popular and ice became a luxury item in the middle of summer. Later businessmen were able to transport meat and other foodstuffs in addition to ice because of refrigeration, and these techniques led to the emergence of long-distance refrigerated cargo transportation, which allowed people in different parts of the world to start enjoying foodstuffs shipped from far away, and had a significant impact on the civil society.
With the advent of ice in the South, a Florida doctor discovered that ice could be used to help cool down feverish patients, and it became an unexpected medical tool. To ensure that ice was always available in his clinic, he began researching and eventually invented the ice machine. This invention was not popular at first because it was cheaper to ship ice than to make it, but later, during the Civil War, ice shipping was blocked, and refrigerators and ice machines made by Carrier, an American businessman, became popular in the United States. As families began to purchase refrigerators, frozen foods that could be stored for long periods of time became popular, greatly improving the nutritional intake of civilians during lean seasons.
Carrier's business grew and he invented the air conditioner. At first, air conditioners took a long time to cool down and were expensive, so they were only used in large spaces such as shopping malls and movie theaters. Later on, with the advancement of technology, window type air-conditioners were invented, and the price was gradually lowered, eventually popularized to the general households. The popularization of air-conditioning had an unintended consequence, that is, it led to population migration, many people from the cool climate of the North moved to the cheap but hot South to retire, in the United States of America, Florida, Southern California, Texas and other southern regions of the population doubled, dramatically changing the political map of the United States at that time.
From Sound Recordings and Telephones to Wireless Broadcasting and the Civil Rights Movement
Since the beginning of time, man has had the desire to record sound, just as he has had the desire to paint. The earliest approximation to the invention of the phonograph came from a stenographer named Scott. At a time when scientists already had a basic understanding of sound waves and the structure of the human ear, Scott invented a machine that attempted to replace shorthand by recording the waveforms of sound vibrations. However, at the time, it only recorded, but did not play back. This was because his original idea was to replace shorthand, which is accomplished by a series of shorthand symbols, so his idea of having a human read the recordings and translate them into text did not materialize.
Although Scott's idea was not substantial, Bell later improved on his idea by inventing a telephone that could capture and transmit sound, creating what would become America's first telephone company, AT&T.
Because of the complexity of building a telephone network, AT&T convinced the U.S. government to build the network on an exclusive basis. In exchange for exclusivity, the U.S. government required that any innovations developed at Bell labs, AT&T's research organization, be open for commercial use by all future companies. This accidentally turned Bell labs into an unprecedented research environment, creating one innovative concept after another for the next half-century. The research coming out of Bell labs included new technologies such as noise-reducing digital signals, radio, vacuum tubes, and more.
Thanks to wireless broadcasting technology and the invention of vacuum tubes and stereos, America began to have more and more radio stations. This new form of media broke down the boundaries and brought the jazz music of New Orleans in the South to the big cities of New York and Chicago. Black singers became celebrities, black culture became part of popular culture, and the black civil rights movement gained wider and wider support.
On the other hand, radio waves have also developed the technology of ultrasonic sonar, which was originally developed to protect the safety of vessels, but has later been applied to medical treatment. The advancement of technology is not without its disadvantages. The use of ultrasound to see the sex of the fetus in the mother's womb has created a serious gender imbalance in countries like China, where men are favored over women, for example.
From sewage sewers and bactericidal bleaching to the rise of modern fashion and advertising
Can you imagine? In the mid-19th century, Chicago was a city without sewers. What was that? Streets full of human, horse, and animal feces. In a city like Chicago, built on the plains, the rain wouldn't wash away the mess, and after it rained, people had to soak in knee-deep, muddy rainwater. As the city's population grew, so did the problem. To solve the problem, Chicago brought in engineers to design the first sewage sewer system in the United States.
As a result of the construction of sewers, people naturally installed water pipes in their homes and began to develop personal hygiene habits such as bathing. Before that, when there was no running water, people didn't even have personal hygiene habits such as bathing, let alone turning on the tap to get water.
Drinking water was once a life-threatening concept because discharging dirt into neighboring lakes and rivers also contaminated the water supply. Before the invention of the microscope, the only way to know how clean the water was was to see if a lot of people would get sick from drinking it. It was only after the invention of the microscope that a way to measure the concentration of bacteria in water was developed, and a standard for clean water (i.e., not getting sick) was established.
With standards of cleanliness in place, people began to think of ways to purify the water. The first person to conduct a large-scale water disinfection experiment was a New Jersey doctor named John Leal, who found out that chlorine could be used to disinfect water, and boldly took a job with the Jersey City Water Company and put chlorine directly into the public's drinking water without the public's knowledge. This was of course a very risky maneuver and caused a huge uproar when it was discovered, but it was a real success. The death rate in the city was reduced by more than 70%. After that, sanitizable public swimming pools became popular, which led to a series of clothing fashions (especially bathing suits) that influenced people's fashion sense.
The usefulness of chlorine also caught the attention of businessmen and a group of people started selling bleach. Initially, bleach was targeted at large corporations, but business was not good. One investor's wife decided to dilute the bleach with concentrated bleach for home use, which was welcomed by housewives and led to the founding of Clorox, a cleaning product company that became famous later. Because of the fierce competition, the companies began to advertise in newspapers and magazines, which in turn revitalized the emerging advertising and marketing industry. When television became popular, these advertisements also entered the field of television, which led to the development of new media. The fact that we still call serial dramas soap operas is a trace of the history of that time.
Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the development of cleanliness is also related to what we now know as wafer production. Wafer manufacturing requires a very clean, dust-free environment, and if it weren't for a century of advances in cleaning technology, there wouldn't be any clean rooms today, and there wouldn't be any chip or technology manufacturing.
From timepieces and clocks to GPS and archaeology
Before the sixteenth century, people did not have a precise concept of time. People did not have the means to measure time, and could only give rough descriptions of time, such as how long it took to eat a meal, or how long it took to walk from here to somewhere. Although the sun could be used to synchronize time, it was relatively difficult to calculate the time required for an event. It was not until Galileo noticed the regularity of the movement of an oil lamp, and developed the concept into a pendulum, that a more precise way of telling time became available.
As timekeeping technology became more widely used, it became clear that accuracy needed to be improved again and again. Initially, the biggest problem came from the demands of navigation. Mariners traveled by ship and used the time difference between two clocks at the origin and destination to determine their position. The time at the destination could be calibrated using the position of the sun, but the time at the departure point was only as good as the accuracy of the clock. An inaccurate clock will cause inaccurate distance measurement and errors in route interpretation. This was a serious problem in the age of navigation. To solve this problem, Galileo developed a quartz clock to increase the accuracy to the second level.
The concept of precise time went hand in hand with industrialization, and with watches, people began to use time to determine everything in their lives. Factories could set commuting times, trains could have timetables. However, at first, people in each place used the sun to set the time, so neighboring towns could have a time difference of a few minutes, making travel very troublesome. After the popularization of the train, it became a problem to adjust the time every time you took a train stop. Starting from Europe and the United States, people began to standardize time zones, which later expanded to the global level, and today's international markets and air travel are based on the concept of time zones.
The increased accuracy of time measurement has subsequently led to many more sophisticated scientific developments. For example, we now have the GPS system, which uses the time difference of satellite signals to determine location. In addition, Mrs. Curie's work on molecular clocks and half-life has further enabled the use of carbon dating as a basis for archaeology.
Oil lamps and candles to large shopping malls
In ancient times, there was darkness after sunset. Man-made light sources were of poor quality in the early days, and although oil lamps and candles were available in the Middle Ages, they were of poor quality and tended to produce smoke that choked the nose. It wasn't until the 18th century that the sperm whale was discovered as a material for higher quality, less smoky candles. The candle business was so popular that Washington, D.C., was said to spend the equivalent of $15,000 a year on candles for lighting. The sperm whale is still extinct, thanks to the discovery of fossil fuels, which made diesel lamps much brighter than candles.
The quest for light led to the invention of the electric light. Thomas Edison's company, GE, was a huge commercial success due to the invention of the electric light. Since the invention of the electric lamp, power systems to support lighting have been established in various cities. The invention of the strobe light made it possible to photograph dimly lit spaces, which led to the development of new art; neon lights and flashing signs enabled the development of cities that never sleep, such as Las Vegas, and a range of commercial activities related to the city of the night, and the nightlife of the people gradually flourished.
有些研究人員開始著手定向雷射光的研究。雷射光研究最先並沒有什麼商業價值，不過後來終於發展出真正有意義的商業應用 — 條碼掃瞄。這項發明在現代發明意義上進展算是緩慢，花了二十年， 條碼才被印在了第一項商品上。不過隨著商店、超市逐漸開始使用，終究促使了大型商場的興起。商品庫存的管理是商場擴大最主要的痛點之一，而使用條碼讓庫存管理變得簡單的多，成本容易控制，因此，成功的大型商場逐漸取代了街頭商店，成為二十世紀末的主要消費場域。
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