Opinionated, often counterintuitive, full of delicious stories, always provocative.
An enthusiastic history of human technical innovation.
Innovation is not the same as invention, writes bestselling science writer Ridley. Innovation rarely proceeds from a single genius and takes much longer. It resembles Darwinian evolution, a process of “rearranging the world into forms that are unlikely to arise by chance—and that happen to be useful….And innovation is potentially infinite because even if it runs out of new things to do, it can always find ways to do the same things more quickly or for less energy.” Throughout the book, the author delivers fascinating histories of technology that we take for granted. Many hands contributed to the developments of the steam engine, automobile, and computer. Ridley makes a convincing case that obsessive trial and error works better than inspiration and illustrates with insightful accounts of Edison, the Wright brothers, and Marconi. Some breakthroughs are inexplicable. People hauled luggage for a century, but the wheeled suitcase only appeared in the 1970s. Perhaps one of the greatest underrated innovations is corrugated sheet metal, a mainstay of slum housing around the world. Indoor flush toilets existed throughout history, but they smelled. Carrying a chamber pot outside worked better. The U-trap, a bend to prevent gases from backing up, started a revolution. Ridley’s readership will not be surprised to learn that innovation flourishes where individuals are free to experiment with minimal interference from two large, unimaginative institutions: big business and government. He maintains that they worked together for a generation to suppress cellphones, which were feasible after World War II. In his opinion, the 20th century’s sole innovative source of large-scale energy, nuclear power, is in decline, mostly due to government regulation. He contends that patent laws do more harm than good and has little respect for activist zealots, especially when they ignore scientific evidence, a category in which he includes both opponents of genetically modified food and vaccination.
Opinionated, often counterintuitive, full of delicious stories, always provocative.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-291659-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.
A well-constructed critique of an economic system that, by the author’s account, is a driver of the world’s destruction.
Harvard Business School professor Henderson vigorously questions the bromide that “management’s only duty is to maximize shareholder value,” a notion advanced by Milton Friedman and accepted uncritically in business schools ever since. By that logic, writes the author, there is no reason why corporations should not fish out the oceans, raise drug prices, militate against public education (since it costs tax money), and otherwise behave ruinously and anti-socially. Many do, even though an alternative theory of business organization argues that corporations and society should enjoy a symbiotic relationship of mutual benefit, which includes corporate investment in what economists call public goods. Given that the history of humankind is “the story of our increasing ability to cooperate at larger and larger scales,” one would hope that in the face of environmental degradation and other threats, we might adopt the symbiotic model rather than the winner-take-all one. Problems abound, of course, including that of the “free rider,” the corporation that takes the benefits from collaborative agreements but does none of the work. Henderson examines case studies such as a large food company that emphasized environmentally responsible production and in turn built “purpose-led, sustainable living brands” and otherwise led the way in increasing shareholder value by reducing risk while building demand. The author argues that the “short-termism” that dominates corporate thinking needs to be adjusted to a longer view even though the larger problem might be better characterized as “failure of information.” Henderson closes with a set of prescriptions for bringing a more equitable economics to the personal level, one that, among other things, asks us to step outside routine—eat less meat, drive less—and become active in forcing corporations (and politicians) to be better citizens.
A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.Pub Date: May 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5417-3015-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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