How We Got to Now by Steven Johnson

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

I have greatly enjoyed Steven Johnson’s books. He has a way of thinking through connections between related but seemingly unrelated areas of knowledge, and finding the connections between science and human experience. Previous books of his have have read are:

The Ghost Map

Where Good Ideas Come From

The Ghost Map is about the discovery of the connection between Cholera and contaminated water. Where Good Ideas Come From is a fantastic look at innovation which debunks the American myth of the sole genius motivated by the lure of fantastic profits. Both books are worth a read. 

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How We Got to Now is about six key technologies and their history. But don’t think these are modern, monolithic ideas. Rather these are technologies that started out as simple, but exploded over the centuries into completely unforeseen areas. Thus, ancient discoveries can be traced to our modern world - they made us modern.

Key to understanding this is Johnson’s idea of the “Hummingbird Effect.” Most of us are familiar (at least in passing) with the “Butterfly Effect.” In essence, a small cause can have great - and unexpected - effects down the line. In the case of the Butterfly Effect, the causal links in the chain are not generally traceable or predictable. (Fun fact: while the term was coined by Edward Lorenz, it comes from Ray Bradbury’s short story, “A Sound of Thunder.”)

In the case of the Hummingbird Effect, however, the causal links are - while unexpected perhaps - quite visible. Think of it this way: as plants evolved, and pollination became a survival need, various animals co-evolved to fill this role - and get their food in exchange. For the most part, these are insects. But, in what is rather a surprise, a vertebrate - a bird - also managed to co-evolve with a different solution to the same problem of hovering. So, while one may not have been able to predict that a hummingbird would be the result of co-evolution, it is quite easy to see in retrospect how it happened.

Johnson introduces this concept in his excellent introduction, and it sets the tone for the whole book.

The six chapters are entitled “Glass,” “Cold,” “Sound,” “Clean,” “Time,” and “Light,” and are fairly self-explanatory. But from the first human-created glass (to use one example) we get a tour that includes literacy, books, microbiology, astrophysics, and electronics. Johnson even argues that the development of glass mirrors was a contributing factor to the rise of an individualistic view of self. To tie it together in a way is this tour-de-force in a paragraph:

Think of that iconic, early-twenty-first-century act: snapping a selfie on your phone as you stand in some exotic spot on vacation, and then uploading the image to Instagram or Twitter, where it circulates to other people’s phones and computers all around the world. We’re accustomed to celebrating the innovations that have made this act almost second nature to us now: the miniaturization of digital computers into handheld devices, the creation of the Internet and the Web, the interfaces of social-networking software. What we rarely do is recognize the way glass supports this entire network: we take pictures through glass lenses, store and manipulate them on circuit boards made of fiberglass, transmit them around the world via glass cables, and enjoy them on screens made of glass. It’s silicon dioxide all the way down the chain.

Every chapter is like this, although the details and time frames obviously vary. Johnson also ties this book to his other writing. Discussing these developments, it is impossible to avoid talking of the “adjacent possible,” from Where Good Ideas Come From; and the chapter on sanitation and germ theory certainly needs a mention of Cholera and The Ghost Map. This is the kind of connectedness that characterizes Johnson’s writing - and his wide knowledge of specific scientific, sociological, and historical disciplines serves him well. I always walk away from one of his books fascinated by a connection I hadn’t noticed, but now seems obvious.

There are a few things I decided to mention specifically in this post. One is the beginning of the chapter on “Cold.” This is about the history of artificial cold. While fire was first controlled by humans a hundred thousand years ago, artificial cold turned out to be far more difficult to manage. Sure, if you lived where there were cold winters and hot summers, you could preserve ice in an icehouse. But this was impossible in more tropical climes.

Until the someone monomaniacal Frederic Tudor decided to ship ice from New England to the Caribbean. This rather crazy story opens the chapter, and it gets more and more implausible as it goes on. I won’t spoil it by telling it badly, but I was reminded of a mediocre Harrison Ford movie I saw as a kid: Mosquito Coast. I suspect the book was better - but even the movie stuck with me. The idea of delivering ice to remote South American tribes was an obvious metaphor for colonialist missionary work - and it is a powerful picture. Looking back, it rather expresses why I have a lot of discomfort for a lot of what American (and Western) missionaries have done and continue to do. More often than not, it seems to be all about exporting the most toxic parts of our culture, making monolingual whites feel righteous for learning a second language, and mostly wasting time with little to no results. I’m sure some of this comes from being the grandchild of missionaries, and hearing from my parents how things really looked on the ground. (For a really fantastic discussion of this, check out Jamie Wright’s podcast with Peter Enns and Jared Byas. She really clarified what I was feeling.)

Another really interesting story comes in the chapter on Sound - which is about how we developed sound recording and transmission. A key player in this saga was the Bell Corporation. As Johnson notes, the Bell Labs subsidiary of Ma Bell had a hand in the development of pretty much every major technology of the 20th Century. This was no surprise. What WAS a surprise was that much of its ability to innovate came from the peculiarities of antitrust law as applied to Bell. My lawyer ears perked up at this, to be sure.

What happened was that Bell had a monopoly over phone service in the US. Until 1984, it was impossible to make a call - any call - without using Bell’s network. Starting in 1913, Federal antitrust regulators battled with Bell, which responded with claims that it was a “natural monopoly,” because its systems were too complex to be run by a bunch of companies. This argument had some merit, but the drawbacks to the monopoly were every bit as real. After decades of wrangling back and forth, a compromise was reached: Bell would retain its monopoly...BUT...any inventions coming out of Bell Labs would have to be freely licensed to anyone who could use it. In essence, Bell’s monopoly gave it lots of research and development funding - but the results belonged to everyone. That’s why, by the way, you can use the internet without having to use a Bell computer, a Bell cell phone, all using Bell microchips, Bell fiber optic lines, and so on.

Also fascinating in this chapter is the connection between sound recording, jazz, and the Civil Rights movement. I think Johnson is right that radio and recorded music gave African American artists access to a global medium, vastly amplifying their influence and visibility. On a related note, white supremacists HATE that African American athletes protest police brutality in a visible way. Protest is all very fine until it actually becomes visible and makes [white] people uncomfortable. The book has a great quote by Martin Luther King Jr.

It is no wonder that so much of the search for identity among American Negroes was championed by Jazz musicians. Long before the modern essayists and scholars wrote of “racial identity” as a problem for a multi-racial world, musicians were returning to their roots to affirm that which was stirring within their souls. Much of the power of our Freedom Movement in the United States has come from this music. It has strengthened us with its sweet rhythms when courage began to fail. It has calmed us with its rich harmonies when spirits were down. And now, Jazz is exported to the world.

I already mentioned it in a post long ago, but the cultic tradition I spent time in (Bill Gothard’s cult - but this teaching was everywhere) HATED all forms of music that were considered “Black.” From Jazz to Rock to anything with a drum set in it, these were considered evil and demonic - coming from Pagan Africa, of course. I think the racist patriarchists were on to something. Music is inherently political. And the rise of African American forms of music (which Czech composer Dvorak correctly identified as the truly American voice in music...back in the 1800s) was the beginning of the end of Jim Crow. Long live Jazz and Rock and Roll.

One final thing to mention. The book has an interesting epilogue, which I thought didn’t really fit the rest of the book. It actually would have fit well at the end of How Good Ideas Happen, and I wonder if he thought of it after the book went to press. It focuses on Ada Lovelace - the first computer programer. The daughter of Lord Byron, she had a truly original mind. A true genius at math, but with a broad range of knowledge, she was recruited by Charles Babbage for his computing machine project. While the steam powered gadget never really worked in practice, Lovelace’s programs for it turned out to be predictive of the future of computing. She saw that they would be more than just calculators - they would go far beyond that into a change in our conception of, well, everything.

Johnson cites her as an example of the rare exception to the rule. The person who was truly ahead of her time - and its technology. As I said, this would fit perfectly in his earlier book, but it seems to be just a bit out of place here. That said, as a stand-alone essay, it is great. So enjoy.

I really enjoyed this book, as I have all of Johnson’s writing. The experience in this case was enhanced by the fact that it was published in a high quality hardback. It just feels so delightful in the hands, I am tempted to buy one just for that reason.

Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

Yet another book I picked up on a whim from a library display. Some people play the lottery, I grab books…

Actually, I read another Steven Johnson book not too long ago, The Ghost Map, about the cholera outbreak in London that led to the definitive connection between the disease and water contaminated by feces. 

In this book, Johnson tackles the widely held belief that innovation is primarily the result of solitary geniuses thinking up stuff. His contention is that, rather, innovation mostly takes place in environments that are more collaborative than competitive, and require specific conditions to happen. In order to come to this conclusion, Johnson uses what he calls the “long zoom.” In other words, you can’t look closely at a particular idea to understand innovation any more than you can look at the DNA of an organism to determine how it adapted. You have to look at a long time period - the scope of human history - and a broad section of human invention in order to understand how it came to be.

Specifically, with the longer view, Johnson concludes that competition is overrated as the inciting force for invention. Rather, it is the free flow of ideas, not the profit motive, which fuels invention. (As he later points out, overly protective patent law tends to lead, not to innovation, but to rent-seeking and patent trolls. Hmm, I think he may be onto something there…)

Johnson devotes a chapter to each of seven factors that he believes contribute to the flourishing of ideas - but it is perhaps the framing chapters which tie it all together. The first begins with Charles Darwin and his observations of the coral reef. Why was it, after all, that a relatively nutrient poor environment could give rise to such amazing diversity of life? (About one fifth of all marine life species live in and around coral reefs!) What was it about the reef itself that gave rise to such biological innovation? Johnson takes Darwin’s query and expands it to human environments: what “ecosystems” tend to give rise to innovative ideas? How is knowledge expanded? With this start, Johnson continues his evolutionary metaphor throughout the book.

In what seems in retrospect to be an obvious observation, Johnson notes that human innovation exploded soon after the first cities came into being. Previously, small bands of humans would only rarely come into contact, and often with violent, rather than collaborative results. With cities, more and more connections could be made, and ideas spread. The wheel didn’t have to be reinvented each time.

The first of his factors is what he calls the “adjacent possible.” The idea is that you cannot simply invent stuff out of nowhere. Da Vinci, as brilliant as he was, could not build a functional airplane because the technology did not exist. (Metallurgy, combustion engines, and many more.) Progress can only happen on the foundation of what has come before. This is why I cannot simply build a pencil, even though I am pretty familiar with how they are made. I know some of  what needs to be known, but by no means all. I must rely on the knowledge and discoveries of others.

I may now date myself on this a bit. My introduction to this idea came through a video game from my youth. I am pretty sure I played Civilization, not the more mainstream Age of Empires. Regardless of which one it was, I remember most the “technology tree.”  You couldn’t just research, say, ocean navigation. You had to first research the elementary technologies which made it possible. You could only build your empire through the adjacent possible - going one step at a time into new areas of knowledge.

On a related note to this is the idea of “multiple inventions.” One of the things which really stands out when reading the history of scientific ideas is how often two or more people “discovered” the same idea, at the same time, independently of each other. (An easy example is Leibniz and Newton developing Calculus at the same time, independently.) This happens, because the foundational knowledge is in place - and ideas are widely disseminated. At any point in history, only some doors are available to be opened - and they then lead to other doors. The course of progress isn’t just about geniuses, but about the foundations. This takes nothing away from geniuses. They remain important parts of the story. But we too often think in terms of “finding the next genius who will [cure cancer][discover cold fusion][fill in the blank]” when what we really need is the hard work of expanding the adjacent possible.

The next prerequisite is the “liquid network,” where ideas flow freely. Whether the cafe culture of the fin de cecile or the corporate environments of Google and other tech powerhouses, it is important that ideas meet. And not just ideas related to the obvious, but ones that cross boundaries of disciplines.

Third is the “slow hunch,” the idea that takes years - or decades - to form. Darwin is a key example here, where he slowly comes to his conclusions after (seemingly) being so very close for years. Particularly interesting in this case is the discussion of the way the intelligence agencies failed to connect slow hunches to prevent the 9/11 attacks. One of the conclusions of the report, as most of us recall, is that the culture of the CIA and FBI was such to prevent, rather than encourage sharing of hunches.

“Serendipity” is the fourth factor, and it is hard to exactly define what Johnson means. In essence, it is the idea of how dreams work (reprocessing ideas from the day) and the idea that it is the seemingly random way our brains draw together seemingly unrelated ideas into a new idea. I am doing a terrible idea of describing it. Johnson does it much better.

One of the best passages in this chapter is the discussion of the effect of the internet. I love that Johnson doesn’t fall into the common habit of assuming the old is better than the new, but actually examines how the internet has in fact increased connections - and increased knowledge. Sure, there are those who live in their bubbles, but they probably would have anyway. And they would have been much less likely to stumble upon competing ideas. In my own personal experience (and as someone who read the encyclopedia for fun), I have found that following “rabbit trails” has led me to so much more useful information than simply doing a paper research at the library. But then, I am the sort that has always done that sort of thing - the internet has just made it easier.

“Error” is the fifth factor. Namely, the understanding that errors are absolutely necessary to progress. Nobody guesses correctly all the time, and a tolerance of incorrect solutions leads to the freedom to try stuff, to think outside of the current paradigm.

The sixth factor is something that Johnson calls “Exaptation,” which is a word he borrows from Stephen Jay Gould and Elisabeth Vrba. It means borrowing something and adapting it into a totally new use. Johnson uses both evolutionary examples and Gutenberg’s appropriation of the winepress to use with moveable type. The technology already existed - he just found a brilliant new use for it. This circles back to the idea of liquid networks as well. Had Gutenberg not known of winepresses from his own history, he may not have been able to find the elegant solution.

The final factor is “platforms,” systems which enable all of the above. Here, the coral reef comes back as the central metaphor, which is then expanded the specific kind of networks and systems which promote all of the above. It is here where it really comes together. Johnson is able to show just how many of the major developments - particularly in the last 150 years - have arisen in these specific environments. Not the solitary genius, but teams working under favorable conditions, solving problems, building on each other’s work.

This leads into the final chapter, which is about what Johnson calls the “Fourth Quadrant.” This is a four-box grid, divided into market (profit) or non-market, and into individual and network. He then sorts major inventions, discoveries, and ideas into these boxes, and shows just how many come from the fourth quadrant: non-market, networked developments. Again, this becomes more apparent when looking at the recent past. This quadrant has been an immensely fertile ground for discovery. (On a related note, during past ages of discovery, it has been startling how many major developments fell into the third quadrant: non-market individuals. And how few truly came from the market individual first quadrant.)

Johnson is no enemy to the free market, by the way. Rather, he is a proponent of recognizing that the profit motive and individual competition are not the sole - nor the historically predominant - source of innovation. Collaboration turns out to be more important that competition - and the two can and should work together. Likewise, humans have always built on the foundation of the knowledge of the past. We do not create in a vacuum, but rather in the environments we are in. It is thus vital to cultivate the environments that lead to innovation and discovery - and these require infrastructure: education, availability of knowledge, freedom from the need to immediately profit, and the recognition that making money is not the same as the ultimate good.

One final thing: there is an extended appendix at the end, tracing major developments in science and technology from the late 1400s on. This is fascinating in and of itself, but I specifically noted the discovery of pulsars. These were first observed and discovered by Jocelyn Bell Burnell.

She did not win the Nobel Prize for her discovery.

Rather, it was the man who was her supervisor, Antony Hewish, who got credit for her work.

Fortunately, history has been kinder to her. The reason I bring this up is that the preferred narrative of the lonely genius, rising above the common man, feeds into this problem. We idolize the (usually white and male) person who we give credit for the discovery, overlooking those who did the hard labor - and often the brilliant thought as well. Burnell, thankfully, received credit in retrospect - but others languish in obscurity. Probably, we have no idea how many unsung heroes will never be known, because they didn’t fit the narrative. Johnson’s book is in part an attempt to rectify that, to acknowledge that success is never a simple story of a great man. We all stand on the shoulders of giants, as Newton put it. Progress depends not on better identifying and rewarding the “geniuses,” but in creating and sustaining the infrastructure where progress and innovation can thrive. 

 If anyone knows where to find a better resolution version of this graphic, e-mail or comment. I love this!

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I will refrain from an extended riff on current politics in this regard. Suffice it to say that there is new proof that identifying the next narcissist does not appear to be an effective way of solving problems. I suspect that hostility toward science and scientists and support of research is likely to end well either. 

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Johnson has some interesting TED talks on his books, if you are interested in a quick introduction.