Fantastic condensed and quite full story of the digital age!!

The Innovators

Industrial Age
to Ground concepts, super simple1!!
Simplify endeavours: -this has been the goal of new Ages!!!
1. breaking into easy small tasks that can be accomplished on an assembly
Textile industry:
2. mechanise steps so that they can be performed by machines!!

Charles Babage build on these:
- machines could be programmed and reprogrammed
Aida:
- process anything that can be noted be symbols!

Aida: new subject first overrated to be already iterating and remarkable, and to undervalue the true state of the case

Can we do the same with reasoning!!!
Can we split reasoning into chunks to be executed by a machine on an assembly line?

Free will and Quantum computing!!
Because events at subatomic level are not predetermined!
If we can build. A computer to act on quantum states-it might also have free will!!!!!

Claude Shanon turned in the most influential Master Thesis of all times

Bell Labs!!
Theorist, hands on engineers, business like problem solvers!!!

The power of an invention is estimated by its historical impact!!!

Von Baumann
Get to the essence
The ability to pick out in a particular problem the one crucial thing that is important

Kelby

Read every single patten issued

It is not like one day the light bulb would go on and you have the whole idea
If could do that, they maybe I could do that, which would let me do this

Two Gambits working for TI
Inventing new devices, another popular way to use those

Hand held, same take
Efficient for battery
Small enough to put in pocket
Cheap to buy on impulse

Understand which industries are symbiotic to capitalise on who they will spur each other

AI gpu, cloud, VR
Oil auto

Artur Rock!!
Good feel for personalities!!
Bet primarily on the people rather than the idea
Talking to the individual is more important then finding out what they want to do

When the company is successful it is a privilege to invest in it!!!

Intel
Intel was the anthesis of corporate culture

- rejection of hierarchy
- Freedoms to achieve task

Unwillingness to be bossy, neither was a decisive manager!!!! Careful with that!
Guided, but didn’t drive

Andy Grove


Effective management

Peter Druckers the practise of management
Outside, inside, person of action

CEO in turn each other
The alteration of the executive team
Colorado the

Visionary who knows how to inspire people and sell it when it is getting of the ground!!!

Pioneer each new wave of technology- brilliant scientist

Competitors - hard charging, non nonsense manager, drive as a business

Meritocracy culture!!
The more open,

Avoiding chain of command

Responsibilities are let to young engineers

Here are your guidelines:
A),b)c)

Units as separate agile teams

Noise - pasture

If you suggest to people what they will be, they will figure it out

Grove
Failures and sloppiness should be accountable

Driven, focus,
Grove irrepressible
Blunt, no bull-shit style

Steve Jobs - brutal honesty, clear focus,
Drive for excellences
Goal - innovation, experimentation, and entrepreneurship

Success- >complacency -> fail our

Only the paranoid survive

Retain the rights to the chip

Ripe for digital distribution

The video game

Interactive in real time
Intuitive interfaces
Delightful graffiti displays

Atari
Entrepreneurial trait!!!

Distort reality!!!! To motivate people


An important trait: decisive
Clear crisp,fair

Promoting collobaorarice creativity

Rational, and precise analysis

The most important thing in building a network: getting everyone to buy into the idea!!

Each researcher give presentations

AT&T explained to the inventor of the internet how the telephone worked!!
They didn’t question their own believes

Create a grid of all possibilities to define the characteristics of a devices that doesn’t yet exist!!

Cf materials and material sciences!!!

Questions: what would be your great achievement!

Leadership traits

Radar for talent ability to get together
Highest quality team

Provoke creative abrasion and then articulate the points of the idea

Taylor was Better at dealing with people under him, not above.. hmm, should you do both, should you capitalise on your strengths Pesho up you be the ultimate communicator


The innovators dilemma!!

The best way to predict the future is to invent it!!!!

Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible a

Hired only people who had stars in their eyes wrt the PC

Potential to amplify human reach and new way of thinking!!!

If you encourage the person the play with the computer (the new product) you will grow it and the community


Microsoft don’t think of original ideas and don’t bring culture into their product!!!!!!!

Emotional incentive beyond financial reward can motivate!!!!!!!

The secret is to combine

Best work when some is driven by passion when they are having fun!!!

Self-interest esteemed Gaines
everybody wants to feel important!!!! Hence, elevate status!!!!


Emotional incentive beyond financial reward can motivate!!!!!!!

The secret is to combine
Best work when some is driven by passion when they are having fun!!!

The digital art skill

Massive decentralised non-hierarchical collaboration!!!!!!
The first rule is to make decisions like an engineer based on technical merit than personal consideration-> trust -

Leaders in volunteers environment have to encourage others to follow not boss them around

Self-interest esteemed Gaines
everybody wants to feel important!!!! Hence, elevate status!!!!

People see who’s active and who they can trust!!

Idealism vs Prgamatism
Black and white vs gray
Binary vs quantum
Two sides va range of responses

It depends should be the most important answer to any big questions

Every advancement is because of specific new social-cultural development:
Version
Apple- seem less experience
Microsoft - more user choices
Linux - completely unfathered and open to change

All combinations

Each model put the other into check to prevent the other from becoming ever so dominant

The internet
Developed at the same time, discarded from each other!! Do I have to go over the same mindset shift to bind two technologies

The street finds its own ways of using things!!
Appropriation!!

Von myster cvc
Consumers don’t want information just piped to them, but also a chance to connect with friends and create their own content

We are going to turn the video game junky into an information junky!!!!!!!
How did he figure this out?


Punch card era -> computers have to be more intuitive and accessible

Two lessons:

People with shines, but desire for connection!

Network
1. Tech has to be Simple to appeal to the masses
2. People like to be part of communities!!

Tim Burners Lee
Computers:
1. Good at step by step problems
2. No good at random associations and creative connections

Computers can become more powerful if they are able to link otherwise unconnected information

Limitations what you can do with computer are limitations of imagination

Unlike the Steve’s Bernes Lee didn’t have the same community!!!!!

Community is critical! Could it be solved now through the internet?

Treat computer as a refrigerator!!!
You can do so much more with it?!? What?!?!
The whole earth catalog of the -19 century!!!!

Google is that for us now!!! What would it be in the future?

The surest way to predict the future is to invent it!!
Ask the right questions: what could the future be?
How does the brain conjure up connections?!?


How people work together - brainstorm fill halves, but how could we do that if we are separated

Inquire within, brains ability to make random associations, and collaborate
Inquire

Stores info without using data structures like matrices or trees?!

Or did it just use graphs?!?
Web of info!

CERN connected diversity!!!
Microcosm of the rest of the world
He wanted to enable people interaction and collaboration system to store

Brainstorm and keep track of the memory of the project
Allows us to work and design together!! Parts of it in their heads

Innovation was created by weaving together two previous inovatjons!

Hypertext and the internet
Brilliant collaborator found himself in need of partner to turn a concept into a reality

The visionary product designer with the diligent project manager
Tim’s Interest can from a moral deeper place of sharing and collaboration

The first browser
Programming bing!

2months
2-3 days code around the clock!
Digital Age secret
Fanatically headed use feedback and soaked suggestions and complaints
Continual improvement - bug report within 2 hours

VC:
Startups which focus on running code and customer service than charts and presentation

Tim Berbers Lee was annoyed because he saw the potential! That people should be able to edit,

Edit vs display enabled sever places to be publishing houses!

Zanedu feature laced two-way links!!
That requires central system!!! It can now be solved with Blackchain!!!
Could have prevented growth, which is why TBL rejected it
Add buyers were enthralled by the amount of eyeballs they could command

That is not sustainable
Sites go up, every month, advertisers remains constant.

Until then and now again!! Consumer are conditioned that content should be free

TBL envisions blockchaon in 1999!! With micro-wallets
TBL would have created crypto currency in 1993!!!! To pay for people who created content!!!

Imagine if the internet really was pay per view!!!
That would stimulate everyone to be a producer in one way or another to allow for views of other things

Basic lesson for innovation
Don’t stay too focused!

Wikipedia

Think about the value of user generating content

Idea: audible Bg allows anyone to upload their voice recordings


Why do people contribute?

Commons based peer production
Diverse cluster of motivational drives and social signals rather than market prices or managerial commands
Psychological reward of interacting with others
Personal gratification of doing a useful task!

All have small joys
Dopamine crack when you make a smart edit and it appears instantly in an edit

Being published was pride allowed only to select few
No need to be credentialed or anointed

Even more satisfactory is the creation of information rather than just passively receiving it

Peer-production allows people to be engaged

Free access to the sum of all knowledge

Empowering people to be part of the process of creating and distributing knowledge

When you help build something you own it, you are vested in it!
Far more rewarding than having it handed down to you

Larry Page Sergei Brin and Search
Lary Pages hero was Nicola Tesla, who was outmanoeuvred by Thomas Edison
You have to be more like Edison!
If you invent something, you have to produce

Lary Page +Steve Jobs + Alan Kay likes music
Larry page Computer Science + Business !!!
Carl older brother of Page sold to yahoo for 413M

Course on designer how to design things to be easy and intuitive!

Command keys slow people than a mouse click?!?
Went to summer school to learn about a healthy disregard to the impossible!
Motivated him to launch product which were on the border line between audacious and insane!
Push futuristic ideas

Stanford is the intersection between business and innovation

Professor whose focus is equally on scholarly papers as well as start-up business plans!!!

I have made a mistake here!!
This is what I should have looked for!
Stanford is both an academy and an incubator!
You want what you are working on to apply to a real problem!!!!!!! I totally agree about that!!
1995 enrol to grad school

Sergei Brin gregarious
Sergei Brin when to Montessori school focusing on invidious last thinking! You have to plot your own path
Credit to success

Montessori school
Not following rules or orders and being self motivated
Questioning what is going on in the world and doing things a little differently
Had computers from very young!

Inspired by Memoirs of the physicist Richard Feynman! Talked about joining the powers of art and science the same way Leonardo da Vinci did!

Sergei Brin has quirky acrobatic desires
Complementary skills

Larry is not sociable
Listen with focus! Steer shallow conversations in philosophical discussions
Brin - charming brahs blurt out ideas and requests

Brin OK with something worked, Page would ask why

Intense talkative natures filled the room
Page insightful comments made everyone lean in

Computer engineer and the hardware
The other has mathematical!

Impressed by how smart one of them was
And outgoing personality bring people together

Sergei would walk into Professor offices and talk to them which was unusual
Tolerated it because he was smart and knowledgeable

Page HCi
Make something intuitive and the user is always right

Not how computer will automate, but how do you want to interact with a computer

HCI + Data mining
Two papers on Market Basket analysis together with first hire at Google!

H-index
Page would wander
Page’s idea came after a lucid DREAM!!!!!!
You have to be a little silly for the goal you are going to set
Healthy disregard of impossible
You should try to do things other people would not

The optimism of youth if often highly underrated
Wise enough to not tell him!

He had all of the resources of Stanford to launch a prototype!
Search engine wasn’t even on the radar!

Number and quality of pages

High quality search engine downed on them later!
When a really great dream shows up - grab it!!

It is all recursive, it is all a circle, but you can solve it!!

Blaming the user is wrong!!!

Improvements on Google

1. Processing power and storage capacity
100pages/second
2.fanatic in studying userbehaviour so they could constantly tweet algorithms! If clicked on top result and didn’t return it is exactly what they wanted!! Id they searched and revised the query right away, means they are dissatisfied
Scroll -> unhappy with order

Cold email -> instant reply and meeting on the Palo Alto Porch

The pitch was not some vapour, but a working demo better than existing product a with woo smart founders

Interesting:
They knew it was good enough, it would spread by word of mouth so every penny was spent to build computers

Deliver something of value
Compelling enough that people would just us it!

Jeff Bezos invested in Google
A higher form of human computer symbiosis

The number of document a has been increasing in many magnitudes, but the users ability to search through them has not!

Create a world in which humans, machines and networks were intimately linked

Inquire within about everything

Computers are great at storing and processing vast amount of information!!!

What remains is inference!!!

Hard problem are easy, and easy problems are hard!

Bill Gates -> eventually we will reverse engineer the brain!

Reverse engineering someone else’s product

40years to map brain!!!
Ha Hahahah! Now we have AI!!

It will be much faster!
1millimitwr Round worm
302 neurona 8k synapses
8.6x10^10-11
1.5x10^14

Singularity - Von Neughman
Computers are smarter than humans but can also design themselves to be even smarter!!
Leonardo da Vinci!! The human mind will never design anything more perfect than nature!!!!

Human Computer Symbiosis
Machines partner a to human
Human bring creativity and originality
augmented intelligence

Kasparov!!!
Spend time thinking out strategy instead of calculating moves!!

Idea!!! Strategy thinker for SMEs to computer potential impact of decisions!!!
Make the computer more humble so that it is like a conversation with a knowledgable colleague!!

Humble ! Per stage likelihood this could be useful
Intuition plus strength of a machine

Lessons
1. Creativity is a collaborative process
1. Teams
2. People don’t invent things on the internet, they expand on already existing ideas
3. Digital age is expand ideas of products innovators
4. Best innovatorsExpanding on generation ideaBest innovators understood the trajectory of technological change and took the buton from innovators who preceded them
5. It is rediscovering and augmenting old ideas
2. Most productive teams were those that brought people with wide array of specialties
3. Physical proximity is beneficial?
1. People are more collaborative and innovative when they are together
2. Pixar and Apple offices to create serendipitous encounters
4. Best leadership combine people with complementary styles
Complementary styles

US
Rectitude
Thinker
Vision and passion
Sage consolidators

ARPaNet
Visionary
Crisp decision making Engineers
Politically adroit people handlers
Collaborative ointments

5. Pair visionary with Operations
1. Visionaries without execution is hallucinating
6. Internet collaboration with thousands of collaborators
1. Collective wisdom of the crowd
7. 3 ways teams are assembled
1. Government funding and organisation
2. Private enterprise research Centers
1. Key driver is profit
3. Peers freely sharing and collaboration
1. Other forms of rewards
8. Foster collaboration and establish a vision
1. Bring strong teams around them and inspire loyalty!
9. Product people!
1. Cared about design and tech
2. Engineering and design

Product people are the leaders

Cared about and deeply understood the engineering

When sales take over it is to the detriment of innovation

When sales guys run the company, product guys don’t matter so much and turn of

Lary Page: the best leaders are those with the deepest understanding of engineering and product design
10. Man is a social animal
1. Create community
2. Enhance communication
3. Foster collaboration on projects
4. Machine are not social; hence they are a beast or a God 😂
11. Final Lesson
Rational and analytics

Judgment
Intuition
Creativity
Empathy
Moral compass

Storytelling
Nurture humanity
Technology on its own is not enough!!
The innovation happens at the intersection
Science and the humanities understand how they intersect!
Poetical science

The next stage will bring new ways of marrying technology and humanities
Media
Fashion
Music
Entertaining
Literature
Arts

First Round of innovation was pouring old wine into new digital bottles!!
Now it is time enabling fres opportunities for creativity

Interplay
Link Beaty and engineering
Humanity to technology
Poetry to processing
Rebellious sense of wonder which opens them to the beauty of both

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2 people found this helpful

Better than expected

I really enjoyed this book despite having low expectations.
I expected a breathless homage to genius but instead got a thoughtful reflection on collaboration and human computer interaction and an appeal to the merging of computing and arts.
Well worth a read.

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Much more than a history of technology

WI really knows what he is doing! This is a really good book. The account builds steadily in interest and insight. He adds just the right amount of personality and opinion.
The performance is first class.

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5 people found this helpful

A brilliant story in every way

Where does The Innovators rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

The best.

Walter Isaacson's incredible story telling was brought to life through the best narrated audio book I've listened to.

This will be a book I listen to several times.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Absolutely! Such an engaging story!

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2 people found this helpful

love it, learned a lot

This book was very informative well read and full of information and facts about this modern world, it was very interesting to find that women were the first computer in software programmers. I highly recommend this book if you have any type of interest in technology.

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Good book and great value

Full of great stories, although quite hard going at times with lots of tech detail for any neutral. Lots of repetition but well worth a read for anyone interested in business, technology or human psychology

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One of my favourite books ever

Just loved it. But I love science and art and the Internet and mathematics and the culmination of all these, and humans and their effect on all of the above. So it was the perfect book for me. Very well researched, very we read, very well written and nice smart conclusions.

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Wonderful if u are a science geek

This book covers the innovation of computers starting from analog relays to the latest microchips...
Covers the story around the shift from hardware primary to software primary and few on the people who bring the software to life.
Even though I'm a computer student it's great to go through the history and see how the chips grown and computer comes to the world.
I like it very much.

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Interesting and engaging story

As a former IT geek who was always more interested in the history and development of computing that the current scene this book was right up my street. Covering from Ada Lovelace onwards this was a fascinating look at the development of computing.

whilst the technical information was there it was not too heavy so as to be impenetrable. That said I think some knowledge of the language of computers is going to make this far more enjoyable.

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Really interesting

As a software professional this book gives interesting insights into the history of r industry.

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