The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer

Source of book: Borrowed from my son (who is a serious tinkerer too).

This was this month’s selection for our “Literary Lush” book club. One of the things I enjoy about this club is that I end up reading interesting books that I never would have discovered on my own. The club has usually read along with the “One Book, One Bakersfield” project sponsored by our local library. Some years, this has been a bit boring - one theory is that books have been selected partly on the basis of which authors were willing to come out and speak at an event. This one, however, was not. I was unable to attend the event, but did read the book and discuss it at our club meeting. 

I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from this book. I was familiar with the rough outline of the story, but was worried it might fall into either the “isn’t Africa backward” genre or the “see, everyone can succeed if they just try” category. But this book didn’t go either of those directions. Rather, despite the use of a ghost writer (more or less), it really did tell a fascinating story - William Kamkwamba’s story. 

Kamkwamba came to fame after he built his own windmill generator – at age 14 - to bring electricity to his home. But that isn’t all that there is to the story. In fact, in some ways, it is just an incident in the broader arc. 

William starts the story with his earliest memories. He grew up in Malawi, the son of subsistence farmers. His parents had an interesting courtship story, which he tells in the first chapter. From there, they worked hard to survive and build a decent life. 

Disaster struck, however, in the form of a terrible drought and famine. This section of the book was horrifying and difficult to read. The descriptions of hunger and hopelessness, of people dying in the road, of children who starved to death and never returned to school, are the things of nightmares. It is almost surprising that William even survived it. 

There are certainly some things to understand about how the drought played out. First, it is a reminder of how fragile human existence can be. We forget that in modern first-world nations. We have the infrastructure to transport food, and the wealth to purchase it. For those who have neither, starvation is a real risk. Second, there is a contrast between the first drought (the bad one) and the second - and the difference was in the response of the government. In the first, a corrupt system denied the famine existed, sold food to other countries so the leaders could pocket the proceeds, and brutally punished those who complained. A change in leadership made a difference for the second drought. By proactively directing resources to the most vulnerable areas, a famine was avoided. It seems weird to have to say this, but humans are at their strongest when they look out for the weakest. A society or nation is only as strong as its most vulnerable point. Malawi lost tremendous ground during the first drought because of its failure to ensure that the victims of the famine survived. It literally took years - a decade even - for the communities affected to bounce back. And the promising lives lost were gone forever. 

The toll wasn’t just from deaths. The financial cost was enormous, as families sold everything they had, including seed corn, to avoid starvation. The resources of the whole community were devastated and took years to rebuild. 

Likewise, the cost to the children was incalculable. In the case of William, his chance at an education was lost for years. Honestly, had he not been “discovered” by someone with a global platform, he likely would never have finished his education. This was true for thousands of others who were not fortunate enough to get publicity. They just quietly were relegated to subsistence farming, with no chance at social mobility. 

This was another distressing reality brought to light in the book. Without the public infrastructure to provide a free public education, most children do not finish school. The entire country then suffers from a lack of educated leaders and innovators, and cannot advance. The cycle then feeds on itself. 

I was struck by some similarities to the effects of educational segregation here in the United States, as described in White Rage by Carol Anderson. (I read that concurrently with this book.) The United States lags other first world countries in education, in significant part because of its obsession with maintaining racial hierarchies and refusal to fund and support minority students. (Take a look at, say, Alabama, if you want to see true third-world education and poverty.) The US continues to shoot itself in the foot, too. As higher education costs have soared, many (most?) of my parents’ generation - who got free or very affordable college themselves - keep blaming my kids’ generation for student debt. The refusal to actually invest in education (and cull the exploding numbers of administrators) will increasingly lead to an under-educated population. And the US will fall further and further behind. (Also, keeping educated immigrants out - as in Stephen Miller’s push to severely cut back H-2B visas - will further cause educated and innovative immigrants to look elsewhere.) Hatred and xenophobia and racism hurt everyone. 

If I were to give my immediate impressions of the book, I would start with the compelling story of William’s life. Even if he had never come to unexpected fame, his story would be a good one. He is clearly an intelligent young man, with an ability to find solutions on a shoestring. How many more Williams are there in Malawi? In Africa? In America? How many of them will never have the chance to get an education, to survive childhood, or have access to the resources to make a better world? It is something worth considering. William Kawkwamba is above average, but not a once-in-a-lifetime genius. He’s someone who should, in all justice, have the chance to use his talents. And there are millions like him. We as a society and as a human race should be focused on ensuring that all of us have that chance. 

I rather enjoyed reading this one, and also the discussion we had regarding it. It is my understanding that there is a kids version too, which leaves out some of the more disturbing stuff, like William’s mom nearly dying of malaria and the dead bodies in the road. We have the full version, and I think it is fine for most kids, honestly. Kids don’t need to be protected from death and illness - they sure wouldn’t have been able to avoid it in an earlier era. I could see it making a good starting point for discussing a bunch of issues - from the importance of investment in the public sector, to the mechanics of making a generator. 

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.