Summary

Steven Johnson walks through six key innovations that shaped the modern world to show how our conceptions of innovation are often misguided. The hummingbird effect demonstrates how chains of innovation and co-evolution are common. Innovation is often iterative which is why multiple invention is so common. Take advantage of information spillover by being in the thick of a likeminded yet diverse crowd.

Key Takeaways

• Hummingbird effect: (vs butterfly) chains of innovation, co-evolution
  • One doesn’t imply the other, but harder to imagine otherwise
• 6 key innovations: glass, cooling, sound waves, sanitation, timekeeping, artificial light
• Multiple invention: multiple independent discoveries once prerequisite pieces known
• Incremental improvement > “lightbulb moment”
• Information spillover: proximity to others leads to quick proliferation of information
  • Eg. Silicon Valley
• Innovation are often unexpected, connections from disparate fields (breadth > depth)

Notes

Introduction

• Hummingbird effect: chains of influence of innovation across domains, co-evolution
• ↑ one doesn’t necessarily imply the other, but harder to imagine the situation otherwise
• ↑ vs butterfly effect where chain of causality is untraceable
• Agrees with breadth > depth
• “The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner” - Steve Jobs

1: Glass

• Unlike most materials, electrons travel through glass
• Information spillover: proximity to others leads to quick proliferation of information
  • Eg. Silicon Valley, NYC
• Lenses / glasses ↔︎ printing press / books
• Microscopes → telescopes → camera
• Fiberglass → communication technology
• Mirror → introspection → renaissance
• Building blocks: silicon vs carbon, hydrogen
• Heat → glass pebble → comet → space

2: Cold

• Ice → beef shipping
• Unique properties of H2O
• Artificial cold after artificial heat (fire)
• Vacuum → low pressure generates cold → artificial cooling
• Multiple invention: multiple independent discoveries once prerequisite pieces known
• Flash freezing: product of a network of uncommon insights, not one breakthrough
• AC → migration → democratic reform

3: Sound

• Sound recording far before playback
• 1956: 24 calls across US and Europe
• Phones → skyscrapers
• Bell Labs: monopoly from 1930-1984
• 1956 antitrust agreement: all innovations have to be relinquished to public
• Phones → encryption / no decay → binary
• Wireless → audion → vacuum tubes
• Radio → amplification → social movements
• Sound travels 4x faster in water
• Sonar → ultrasound → sex ratios
• No technology is purely positive in its effects, unforeseeable consequences

4: Clean

• Chicago lifted for sewer system
• Germ theory
• Chlorine water: 43% reduction in mortality
• Chlorine → pools → women’s fashion
• Chlorine → personal hygiene → story-driven advertising
• Cleanliness→ asthma
• Precision fabrication clean rooms

5: Time

• Pendulums’ rhythmic precision
• Clocks → longitude → shipping
• Work day, scheduling, time is money
• Watches → Sears → catalogs
• Trains → GMT → time zones
• Quartz time → microchips
• Atomic clocks, radioactive decay
• Both ever shorter and ever longer vision

6: Light

• Two naps → candle → one overnight
• Whaling and candles
• Light as true purchasing power (1000L hrs):
  • 1800 tallow candle: $0.40
  • ↑ 1h work = 10 mins light
  • 1880 kerosene:
  • ↑ 1h work = 3 hrs light
  • 1992 fluorescent bulb: $0.001
  • 2004 electric bulb
  • ↑ 1h work = 300 days
• Network systems model of innovation vs lone genius innovation
• 40+ years of circling innovation before “lightbulb moment”
• Flash → slums / poverty reduction
• Neon → postmodernism
• Lasers → barcodes
• Fusion energy