Technology

Technology

Inventing technologies is what makes us different from all other living things on earth.

Technologies lead to many outcomes, good and bad, intentional and non.

Technology innovation creates all future wealth. It is the only way we grow and progress. Progress in any discipline of human survival is enabled by technology.

Here is an assortment of materials on technology, the history, the impacts, purpose, and future potential.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic - Arthur C Clarke.
  • Techno Optimist Manifesto - Marc Andreessen’s bat signal to those people who are optimistic about a future with technology.
  • The Purpose of Technology - “ If the proximate purpose of technology is to reduce scarcity, the ultimate purpose of technology is to eliminate mortality “ - Balaji Srinivasan
  • Scientific Freedom: The Elixir of Civilization - “Donald W. Braben presents a framework to find and support transformative scientific innovation. Even in the earliest stages, groundbreaking research can look unrecognizable to those who are accustomed to the patterns established by the past.”
  • Men, Machines, and Modern Times - The nature of technological change, the fission brought about in society by such change, and society's reaction to that change
  • The 50 Greatest Breakthroughs since the Wheel - “Why did it take so long to invent the wheelbarrow? Have we hit peak innovation? What our list reveals about imagination, optimism, and the nature of progress “
  • The Big Score - “Michael S Malone was one of the first technology reporters. Malone recounts the feverish efforts of young technologists and entrepreneurs to build something that would change the world―and score them a big payday. Starting with the birth of Hewlett-Packard in the 1930s…”
  • General Purpose Technolgy Theory - “Identifying GPTs requires recognition that they evolve continually and that there are always boundary uncertainties concerning particular items. We consider existing ‘tests’ of whether particular technologies are GPTs, arguing that many of these are based on misunderstandings, either of what GPT theory predicts or of what such tests can establish.”
  • General Purpose Technology and Economic Growth - “Traditionally, economists have considered the accumulation of conventional inputs such as labor and capital to be the primary force behind economic growth. Now, however, many macroeconomists place technological progress at the center of the growth process. This shift is due to new theoretical developments that allow researchers to link microeconomic aspects of the innovation process with macroeconomic outcomes.Most economists have viewed technological progress as an incremental process. A few have focused on the role of drastic innovations—those that introduce a discontinuity. The contributors to this volume are concerned with the type of drastic innovation called general purpose technologies (GPTs). A GPT has the potential to affect the entire economic system and can lead to far-reaching changes in such social factors as working hours and constraints on family life”
  • The Imagineers of War: The Untold histor of DARPA - “The definitive history of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon agency that has quietly shaped war and technology for nearly sixty years.”
  • The Idea Factory - Bell Labs defined American Innovation. It was the birth place of great inventions that defined the 20th century.
  • NucleoSynthesis - Potentially the greatest wealth and value driver of the 22nd century.
  • Software is Eating the World - Marc Andreessens generation defining blog post. Perfectly summarizes the transformation of so many parts of life from atoms to bits.
  • MIT Building 20 - Powerhouse of innovation. A facinating account of the Magical Incubator.
  • Doing the Impossible - “Apollo was known for its engineering triumphs, but its success also came from a disciplined management style. This excellent account of one of the most important personalities in early American human spaceflight history describes for the first time how George E. Mueller, the system manager of the human spaceflight program of the 1960s, applied the SPO methodology and other special considerations such as “all-up”testing, resulting in the success of the Apollo Program.”
  • Organizing Genius - Examination of commonalities in across 6 legenday projects & technological innovations. Manhattan Project, Black Mountain College, Skunk Works.
  • How Innovation works - Matt Ridley does a great job putting together a chronical of the history of innovation, the defining event of the modern age. Matt makes the case for why innovation is the reason we see improvements in our living standards all over the world.
  • Do we loose skills because of technology? - We once knew how to do imporact things…until new technology made us weaker, lazier, and dumer. That’s a story we’ve told ourselves for centuries.
  • Making the Modern World - “Over the course of time, the modern world has become dependent on unprecedented flows of materials. Now even the most efficient production processes and the highest practical rates of recycling may not be enough to result in dematerialization rates that would be high enough to negate the rising demand for materials generated by continuing population growth and rising standards of living. This book explores the costs of this dependence and the potential for substantial dematerialization of modern economies.”
  • Technology that people once feared - It’s amazing to look back at history and wonder why we ever feared any of this stuff.
  • Technology Adoption Curve it helps explain how technology progresses.
  • Skunk Works - From the U-2, Stealth Fighter, to the SR-71 Blackbird, Skunk Works is the true story of America’s most secret and successful aerospace program. They we’re a small but mighty team, that accomplished the unthinkable at speeds never seen again.
  • Paradigm Shifts due to Technology
    • 000’ - Agriculture
    • 0000’s - Accounting & Companies
    • 0000’s - Ships & Ocean Travel
    • 1400s - The Printing PRess
    • 1500s - Gun Powder
    • 1800s - The Steam Engine
    • 1800’s - Theoretical Physics
    • 1900’s - Electrification
    • 1910’s - Flight
    • 1930’s - Antibiotics
    • 1940’s - Urbanization
    • 1950’s - Rockets + Space Flight
    • 1970’s - Transitors & Home Electroncis
    • 1980’s - Personal Computers
    • 1990’s - The Internet
    • 2000’s - Software
    • 2010’s - Mobile Devices & Cloud Computing
    • 2020’s - Networks or AI ?