Technology diffusion
Books about the ways different technologies have been created, introduced, and spread over time. One of my absolute favorite topics.
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The Rise of Universities A series of lectures about the origins of the “modern” (post-Dark Ages) university system, given by a medieval history expert in the early 1920s. Still seems (depressingly?) relevant.
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Splendid Exchange Overview of the characters behind and impact of world trade from Mesopotamia circa 100 BC to Italy circa 1500. The book’s organized thematically, which makes it less overwhelming than it sounds it might be. (There’s a lot covered, but it all holds together well.)
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A History of Future Cities The ideas that started and shaped four cities: Mumbai, St. Petersburg, Shanghai, and Dubai. The book holds together better than I thought it would and mostly convinced me that eighteenth century St. Petersburg, in its time, served a similar role to today’s Dubai.
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The Age of Edison A really great history of electrification in the United States. Touches on reasons electrification proceeded faster in the US than Europe (more state sponsorship and more tolerance for accidents) and electricity as a social phenomenon (electric companies petitioning for electronics education in primary schools — not because everyone will be an electrician but because everyone will need to understand electricity in the modern world. (Sound familiar?))
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Men, Machines, and Modern Times Stories of technological diffusion within large organizations — the navy, steel factories, and dairy processors. Felt more recorded lectures than proper book but still recommended.
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Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital Dense and academic. Argues that technology revolutions have two phases: installation, when the infrastructure required by new technologies is built, and deployment, when new technologies comes into their own. Each phase asks for different things from financial markets, too.
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The Box A history of the shipping container, which is both more interesting and had more impact than it might sound. Super skimmable and full of fun facts.
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The Great A&P The story of “Walmart before Walmart,” with all its innovation — the first grocery store and supermarket in the US, the first national radio program, the first women’s magazine with recipes, the introduction of private-label items — and the regulation and mismanagement that crippled it.
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Business Adventures A collection of New Yorker-ish essays about the innovative titans of mid-twentieth century America. My favorites were the Edsel and Xerox stories, though I’d recommend them all.
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Computers and Society Published in 1972, Hamming talks through the impact he thinks computers will have on society. In retrospect, he was both directionally correct and too soon; most of his predictions still sound (painfully) good today.
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Hard Drive A history of the first ~two decades of Microsoft, and how the company was sufficiently driven and ruthless to imagine a computer in every home. The most striking part, to me, was how it seemed things were going well, but not nearly-biggest-technology-company-in-the-world well, to the Microsofts at the time.
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China Airborne Ostensibly about China’s burgeoning aviation industry but actually much more about Chinese modernization in general. The leaps between airplanes and national ambition feel only a bit forced, and it’s probably worth reading for the fun plane facts alone.