Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “Інноватори. Як група хакерів, геніїв та ґіків здійснила цифрову революцію” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

Інноватори. Як група хакерів, геніїв та ґіків здійснила цифрову революцію

Walter Isaacson (Goodreads Author),

Дмитро Гломозда (Translator)

4.07 · Rating details · 31,591 ratings · 2,229 reviews

Мало хто знає, що теорію сучасного цифрового світу сформулювала жінка ще в середині ХІХ століття; і не будь-хто, а донька самого Байрона — леді Лавлейс. За півтора століття цифрову еру наближали багато людей, проте більшість так і залишилася в тіні. Це книжка про різні етапи цифрової революції, про ґіків, хакерів і мрійників, які кардинально змінили світ і підхід до бізнес ...more

Get A Copy

Hardcover, 488 pages

Published April 2017 by Наш Формат (first published October 7th 2014)

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about Інноватори. Як група хакерів, геніїв та ґіків здійснила цифрову революцію, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Add this book to your favorite list »

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

Average rating 4.07 ·

Rating details

· 31,591 ratings · 2,229 reviews

More filters

Sort order

Start your review of Інноватори. Як група хакерів, геніїв та ґіків здійснила цифрову революцію

Oct 18, 2019 Emily May rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019, nonfiction

I feel bad that I joked about this book in my review of Ninth House and made it seem like a boring read all about how transistors are made. It seemed funny at the time, but it was entirely misleading. This book was not boring at all. In fact, I would say some chapters were difficult to put down!

The Innovators is NOT a comprehensive history of all computer and Internet-related technology; I feel the need to stress that now. It takes a very specific route - from Charles Babbage to Google, by way o ...more

flag 252 likes · Like · see review

Nov 17, 2014 John rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: recommended-for-nerds, reviewed-by-me

[Note added 23-Feb-2017: This seems to have a lot of likes, but I want to make sure that people understand that my perspective is a bit specialized. The book is lively and very interesting. If you want to read a provocative and detailed story of innovation, this is a great choice. I think the full story requires some extra reading, which I note in the review. The book has its limitations, but it's still a "good read."]

Regrettably, I can't give this a great review.

In part, it depends on what you [Note added 23-Feb-2017: This seems to have a lot of likes, but I want to make sure that people understand that my perspective is a bit specialized. The book is lively and very interesting. If you want to read a provocative and detailed story of innovation, this is a great choice. I think the full story requires some extra reading, which I note in the review. The book has its limitations, but it's still a "good read."]

Regrettably, I can't give this a great review.

In part, it depends on what you want. If you want a history of innovation from the point of view of the winners -- the people who created the technology we use today -- then this book might be for you.

But I would strongly recommend that you read some other books: Katie Hafner's Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet; John Markoff's What the Dormouse Said; Steven Levy's Hackers.

Isaacson hits all of the main highlights of the development of digital technology from Ada Lovelace to Google. In terms of new contributions, his treatment of Lovelace is much broader than what one normally gets, and he's very good on the women who worked as programmers for Eniac and the like. That's good. Additionally, there is new interview material that provides details that I haven't seen elsewhere: For instance, the book notes that both parents of Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the web) were computer programmers, and that TBL was an electronics nerd as a kid. The quotes from people like the founders of Google are a bit looser than usual. I like that.

Yet there are three big problems here:

(1) First off, this is a history of the victors, and its extremely "presentist" in that it privileges things that are our technology today. Thus people like Jef Raskin and Ted Nelson are essentially buried. Yes, there are a few words on Nelson, but he deserves more like 10 pages, and Raskin gets one mention. Raskin was the true originator of the Mac; he deserves way more credit. Another example: Gopher. The Gopher protocol, which predates the web, was extremely important, and, arguably, would have been more useful for certain kinds of information browsing. Yet another thing that is scanted (as in so many histories that involve computer-mediated communication) is the depth of social sharing on time-sharing systems; it was a big deal and seems to be just outside the view of most historians. I think Isaacson's canvas is large and this would have complicated his story.

(2) The discussion of bidirectional information transfer is very weak. It comes up on p. 300 with regard to Lee Felsenstein and the free speech movement. People like Felsenstein thought computer networks would change society because they might provide for "broadcast" from the citizen. Despite the advent of blogs, twitter, etc., the dominant model has been "publication" (as Isaacson rightly points out from his personal experience editing Time online - 420-422). But I think Isaacson makes a big mistake to not talk at significantly greater length about how bidirectionality was lost in the early history of the network. To be sure, he does get into the blogging phenomenon, but it is weak because so focused on a single individual (Justin Hall). Anyway, the concern isn't even so much about individuals contributing content, but the very structure of the Internet and the policing of "uploads" (for example, your broadband provider gives you a lot less data quota for upload than download). Obviously the missing figure here is Nicholas Negroponte, who long advocated for true bidirectionally for communication - his key case was always video out of the home, so grandparents could easily send movies to their kids. A similar gap to the lack of spadework to uncover the deeper interest in bidirectionally is the discussion of how Mosaic/Netscape never had a decent editor that might provide for easily composing web pages from the browser (see p. 418). This wasn't just an issue for the Berners-Lee: It was a howl coming from the early adopters of browsers. (The lack of such editors also points out limitations in the standards track and how RFCs cannot really turn the industry.)

(3) Finally, the biggest argument in the book: That innovation comes from teams and groups, not from individuals (479-488 and elsewhere). The qualifiers for this claim are huge. The biggie is that he means: "successful" innovation, i.e., innovation that has gone mainstream. Clearly there were plenty of team innovations that weren't absorbed by the marketplace. Shouldn't we then acknowledge how teams can fail? Additionally, what is meant by "teams" and "groups" isn't solid. Isaacson admits as much when disrupting his own claim by outlining "three ways that teams were put together in the digital age" (482). Sorry, you can't have your lumping claim, and then at the end of the book break it down. You can make the claim about three modalities of team innovation at the beginning of the book and then show it: But pulling this canard out at the end of the book is just not fair.

In sum, if this is the only book you're going to read, it's OK. But the real story is bigger and Isaacson's take on all this is slanted and focused way too much on the technology we have, rather than the technologies we might have. I don't think asking for that is asking for a different book, either, because Isaacson is interested enough in the losers to mention them. His book would have been immensely richer by giving them their due to the tune of perhaps 50 additional pages over the whole book. ...more

flag 108 likes · Like · see review

May 16, 2020 J.L. Sutton rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Jobs' author Isaacson tackles tech history

>

“But the main lesson to draw from the birth of computers is that innovation is usually a group effort, involving collaboration between visionaries and engineers, and that creativity comes from drawing on many sources. Only in storybooks do inventions come like a thunderbolt, or a lightbulb popping out of the head of a lone individual in a basement or garret or garage.”

Walter Isaacson's The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution is an enjoyable an ...more

flag 59 likes · Like · see review

Oct 22, 2014 LillyBooks rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I loved Isaacson's Benjamin Franklin and Steve Jobs biographies. I really, really wanted to love this one. In a sense, this book is at least a four star book because Isaacson wants to prove a point and he succeeds: no one person invented the computer or the Internet, that the digital revolution is one person building on and with the backs of others. However, it is that success that made this book not as enjoyable for me because Isaacson is profiling so many people, several each chapter, that the ...more

flag 44 likes · Like · see review

Sep 04, 2014 Jacob rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: biznass-and-whatever, history

2nd read 10.8.2016-10.13.2016
Rereading this book was just slightly less entertaining than the first time through. I loved hearing the stories of collaboration, outright copying, business machinations and cool combinations of art and technology. I really like the whole Shockley, Noyce, transistor, microchip era. And then the section on the early homebrew groups contending ideologically with Gates and Jobs is good too.

Isaacson's overt theses are that collaboration, not isolated geniuses account f ...more

flag 31 likes · Like · see review

Jun 15, 2015 Michael rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: business, journalism, non-fiction, history, science, physics, technology

A masterful tour of the creative people behind the development of computers and the digital revolution using a frame that probes the relative contributions of teamwork vs. individual genius. As I continually benefitted the ever increasing capabilities of computers from the 70s onward for my former science career and I enjoyed Isaacson’s biography of Ben Franklin, I figured I couldn’t lose. Plus friends praise his skills in the history of science as revealed in his books on Einstein and Steve Job A masterful tour of the creative people behind the development of computers and the digital revolution using a frame that probes the relative contributions of teamwork vs. individual genius. As I continually benefitted the ever increasing capabilities of computers from the 70s onward for my former science career and I enjoyed Isaacson’s biography of Ben Franklin, I figured I couldn’t lose. Plus friends praise his skills in the history of science as revealed in his books on Einstein and Steve Jobs. I wasn’t disappointed, given that he inevitably had to focus on highlights and distillations to cover his intended scope. His story of the “pioneers, hackers. Inventors, and entrepreneurs” who made the evolution possible makes for exciting reading even if you are not technically oriented. That’s because it’s a human story, mixing the personal history behind the ambition and dreams and the energy of both competitive and collaborative forces.

The story begins with Ada Lovelace, who teamed up with Babbage in Victorian England to conceive of generalized programming routines that could control a calculating machine. They never built a working machine, but their theoretical concepts were seminal by the time the build-up toward World War 2 was driving scientists ever closer to a working computer to make calculations important for waging war. Turing’s innovations on code-breaking machines, mathematical advances by John von Neumann, and adaptation of punch card programming from the textile industry for calculation routines of room-sized electromechanical computers represented big breakthroughs. From there it was short jump to an all-electronic system based on vacuum tubes and then a big leap to faster and denser logic circuits made possible by the invention of transistors.

Major milestones in the form of the first multipurpose memory units, the first central processing component, and first program stored in memory were paralleled by advances in software languages and operating systems to translate logical operations into machine code. The invention of integrated circuits made possible an exponential leap in computing power and opened the door to smaller, personal computers which in turn fed into the development of spreadsheets and graphical design programs for business and games for fun and soon thereafter networking and the Internet.

It’s all quite a dizzying progression, one that changed the world. And Isaacson brings to life, albeit in a compressed presentation, the many individuals and teams who made it happen. There is no great insight in his use of a lens of collaborative vs. individual contributions, but it was surprising the way the combinations of skillsets played out in various accomplishments. Sometime it’s a mathematician and an engineer that make a successful team, other times it’s the addition of a people manager or business promoter that makes the difference. The synergy between Gordon Moore and Andy Groves at Intel, Bill Gates and Paul Allen at Microscoft, and Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak at Apple are just some of the obvious examples.

Isaacson also explores the differences and similarities of the environment of various settings of great advances, including: Bell Labs, where the transistor was invented; IBM, where mainframes and business programming were developed (which denied sufficient glory to women programmers like Grace Hopper); Penn State, where the first general purpose electromechanical computer was creates; Xerox PARC, where the first graphical user interface was designed; and Apple Computer, which married hippie chic and Silicon Valley cultures. Another theme Isaacson pursues is the whole concept of artificial intelligence and “thinking machines” vs. Lovelace’s prediction that computers will forever serve to amplify human creative capabilities. The potential for computers to empower the individual drove many to pursue software development without the profit motive. The story of Steward Brand harnessing the Whole Earth Catalog and hippie culture to advance this cause was fascinating. The birth of shareware through the work of Stallman and Linux and the free contribution of the first web browser by Andreessen are great hallmarks of that tradition worth my learning more about. The story of the birth and success of Wikipedia was something I knew nothing about and fun to learn about.

All in all, I found this a solid achievement in laying out such a vast river of innovation in a coherent and stimulating progression. It’s so easy to forget where all these wonders came from that it’s worth putting some names and personal stories to the history.
...more

flag 29 likes · Like · see review

Oct 08, 2017 David rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: biography, audiobook, history

The basic premise of this book, is that innovators and inventors do not create new concepts solo. They are almost always collaborators. But, there is not a surplus of collaboration described in this book. This was a fun, entertaining book to read. In the beginning of the book, the innovators were described in detail, in historical order. But, as the chronology approached the present day, less and less space was devoted to individual innovators, and more to the innovations.

I really enjoyed an ea ...more

flag 29 likes · Like · see review

Oct 07, 2015 Matt rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook

In his latest book, Isaacson offers the reader an insightful look into the world of technology and the numerous people whose insights and innovative ideas have changed the world in which we live. While not the biography of any one person, Isaacson personifies technology and offers stories related to its branches, from the early speculative ideas of Ada Loveless around a mechanical calculating device through to the dawn of Wikipedia and mass-user self-editing. Isaacson travels through time, speci In his latest book, Isaacson offers the reader an insightful look into the world of technology and the numerous people whose insights and innovative ideas have changed the world in which we live. While not the biography of any one person, Isaacson personifies technology and offers stories related to its branches, from the early speculative ideas of Ada Loveless around a mechanical calculating device through to the dawn of Wikipedia and mass-user self-editing. Isaacson travels through time, specifically since the pre-WWII era to the present, to offer tales of innovative ideas that built on one another. Things the reader would take for granted become major events and received excellent backstories. One thing Isaacson does throughout his tome is to dispel the myths that urban legends have spun into faux-realities, including Al Gore inventing the internet. He further lays the premise that the entire book should be taken as a set of technological building blocks, one device or idea connecting to the next, such that there are not true 'inventors' but strict innovators who seek to add a niche to a larger conversation that takes place in an evolutionary reality. Those who seek to claim inventor status are quashed in Isaacson's narrative and by the scores of men and women who have added to the technological quilt. Any reader with a curiosity surrounding technology should invest time in this book, though be somewhat leery of some technical jargon that can weigh down the narrative for the layperson.

As Isaacson presents in his introduction, some of these ideas came during his research on the Steve Jobs biography, the first of his that I devoured. Isaacson's desire to downplay any one person wearing the crown of inventor, he passes out the praise to all those who played a role in their own way, and does so in an effective manner. The narrative flows nicely, even if it is weighed down with jargon in spots. This jargon is highly useful, however, as it depicts the degree to which many of the actors were ensconced in their fields. The reader can read (or listen) in awe to all that Isaacson has unearthed, proving how interconnected something as routine as internet access and application usage. Perhaps one of the best, and most varied of the biographical pieces I've read of his, Isaacson does a stellar job in presentation, content, and detail.

Kudos Mr. Isaacson for this great piece. I cannot wait what, or who, you tackle next for the reader to absorb.

Like/hate the review? An ever-growing collection of others appears at:
http://pecheyponderings.wordpress.com/ ...more

flag 27 likes · Like · see review

Aug 10, 2014 Kevin Parsons rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This book is going to be huge since it functions not only as a history of the computer and the internet but as a treatise on innovation and collaboration. I can imagine that it will be required reading for all kinds of people working in all varieties of business.

Unlike his bio of Steve Jobs, which was important as immediate history but was also understandably rushed, Isaacson's new book reads like a labor of love and is much better written, more focused than "Jobs" and is thought provoking on a ...more

flag 23 likes · Like · see review

Jan 31, 2015 Sean Gibson rated it really liked it · review of another edition

4.2 Stars

Readers can infer a number of salient points from this excellent history of digital innovation, but the main takeaway for me was this: innovative ideas are like digestive systems—nothing comes from them unless they get a big push from an asshole.

Okay, so, the author would probably suggest that his REAL overarching theme is that innovation is driven not by lone geniuses, but by collaborative teams that provide an ideal mix of vision, engineering, and execution, but hey—that doesn’t mean 4.2 Stars

Readers can infer a number of salient points from this excellent history of digital innovation, but the main takeaway for me was this: innovative ideas are like digestive systems—nothing comes from them unless they get a big push from an asshole.

Okay, so, the author would probably suggest that his REAL overarching theme is that innovation is driven not by lone geniuses, but by collaborative teams that provide an ideal mix of vision, engineering, and execution, but hey—that doesn’t mean that the aforementioned point is NOT true (see, for example, Jobs, Steve). In tracing the path of key digital innovations—from bulky, room-size computers that could crunch differential equations at astonishing speeds to sleek personal computers, and from proprietary, government-funded interconnected academic networks to the all-you-can-eat porn buffet of today’s Internet—Isaacson persuasively hammers home that theme.

More intriguingly, however, he suggests that these innovations were driven not by pure technologists, but by people who understood the need to balance technical proficiency with an appreciation—and application—of the arts. From Ada Lovelace (First Lady of Computing, offspring of that rapscallion Lord Byron, all-around saucy minx) to the aforementioned Steve Jobs (intuitive design genius, turtleneck aficionado, colossal a-hole), the people who have led us into the digital age have understood that both poetry and mathematical equations are equally, if differently, beautiful.

Given that I’m the type of person Isaacson gently scolds in his conclusion (that is, a humanities person who takes pride in his lack of math aptitude), this idea is what resonated with me the most. Reading this book made me yearn to pick up a physics textbook and try to crack the code of the universe, to understand the beauty of algebraic expression, to see the art that goes into a perfect line of code.

Isaacson is a tremendous chronicler of history (I strongly recommend his eloquent and insightful Benjamin Franklin: An American Life as well as his engaging Einstein: His Life and Universe), and while this hopscotch sort of narrative doesn’t afford him the same opportunity to dive deeply into his subjects as he does in his magnificent biographies, he does his themes justice even if he leaves you wanting a little bit more about certain individuals. It also makes you want Mountain Dew, candy bars, and pizza—you know, the staples of the coder diet. ...more

flag 20 likes · Like · see review

Sep 28, 2015 Perry rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction

"Atlantean Shoulders, Fit to Bear," John Milton

This is a grand and gratifying overview of the innovators who have played a major role in forging today's dynamic technology and our high-tech society, with its main focus on the last 80 or so years.

Walter Isaacson, who has written bios of Jobs and Einstein, has the brilliant ability to research, comprehend and assimilate all this intriguing and highly complex information and transform it into an inquisitive and fascinating look at our technological "Atlantean Shoulders, Fit to Bear," John Milton

This is a grand and gratifying overview of the innovators who have played a major role in forging today's dynamic technology and our high-tech society, with its main focus on the last 80 or so years.

Walter Isaacson, who has written bios of Jobs and Einstein, has the brilliant ability to research, comprehend and assimilate all this intriguing and highly complex information and transform it into an inquisitive and fascinating look at our technological Innovators, coherent and clear enough for the average reader to understand AND enjoy.

I took away a much more informed perspective of how we got here and a distinct reverence for the innovators in the text and generally for the human capacity for incredible intellect and curiosity as well as our enduring and limitless creativity.

The following quote gives the best overview, in my opinion, of the book to an average reader (such as I):

"Most of the successful innovators and entrepreneurs in this book had one thing in common: they were product people. They cared about, and deeply understood, the engineering and design. They were not primarily marketers or salesmen or financial types; when such folks took over companies, it was often to the detriment of sustained innovation. When the sales guys run the company, the product guys don’t matter so much, and a lot of them just turn off, Jobs said. Larry Page felt the same: The best leaders are those with the deepest understanding of the engineering and product design.

Another lesson of the digital age is as old as Aristotle: Man is a social animal. What else could explain CB and ham radios or their successors, such as WhatsApp and Twitter? Almost every digital tool, whether designed for it or not, was commandeered by humans for a social purpose: to create communities, facilitate communication, collaborate on projects, and enable social networking. Even the personal computer, which was originally embraced as a tool for individual creativity, inevitably led to the rise of modems, online services, and eventually Facebook, Flickr, and Foursquare. Machines, by contrast, are not social animals. They don’t join Facebook of their own volition nor seek companionship for its own sake.... Despite all of the proclamations of artificial intelligence engineers and Internet sociologists, digital tools have no personalities, intentions, or desires. They are what we make of them.”

This book is due all exceptional acclaim. ...more

flag 20 likes · Like · see review

Sep 25, 2017 Asif rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, biographies

Walter Isaacson is a brilliant writer, he after writing books on Einstein and Steve Jobs was attracted to science and tech world this time he came up with the book on the whole process of innovation. This is very interesting book and it serves two purposes simultaneously;
One is it teaches us the history of innovation i.e chronological history of development of the computers from the embryonic concept of computing machine of Charles Babbage and Lady Ada to the sophisticated personal computers and ...more

flag 14 likes · Like · see review

Apr 06, 2019 Lorna rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson was a well-researched and delightfully told beautifully as only Mr. Isaacson can do. I am not a scientist, nor do I even pretend to understand the complex technological science that is encompassed in this meticulously researched book, but I get the thrust of the history of the digital age and all of the people that made most important contributions. I would be remiss if we didn't start w The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson was a well-researched and delightfully told beautifully as only Mr. Isaacson can do. I am not a scientist, nor do I even pretend to understand the complex technological science that is encompassed in this meticulously researched book, but I get the thrust of the history of the digital age and all of the people that made most important contributions. I would be remiss if we didn't start with how Isaacson became interested in this book. Having been a fan of Walter Isaacson for some time, I was drawn to his fascination to those individuals that excel in creativity and innovation in many different disciplines. Isaacson has written marvelous biographies of Benjamin Franklin, Leonardo Da Vinci and Steve Jobs. It was in working on those books that he began to recognize that there was a commonality in how they approached their craft. Isaacson dramatically shows us how each person's innovations formed a basis for the next scientist to build upon. As Isaacson states, "The collaboration that created the digital age was just not among peers but also between generations. Ideas were handed off from one cohort of innovators to the next." What I found most interesting was the interface between science and the arts. As Walter Isaacson said in the Introduction, "Finally, I was struck by how the truest creativity of the digital age came from those who were able to connect the arts and sciences. They believed that beauty mattered."

This book is a history of the digital age from its very beginnings beginning with Ada Byron, the daughter of Lord Byron. Her mother was determined that she study mathematics as it was an antidote to "poetic tendencies" and her "Byronic tendencies." However, Ada with Charles Babbage in the early 1800's were able to set forth many of the basics that were built upon over the subsequent digital age. The science that develops over the subsequent years culminating in the Silicone Valley is well done, right down to the issues of patents and lawsuits. It is a wonderful book that will make us all stop to look back in awe at where we have come in such a short period of time and ponder our future.

"The tale of their teamwork is important because we don't often focus on how central that skill is to innovation."

"The collaboration that created the digital age was not just among peers but also between generations. Ideas were handed off from one cohort of innovators to the next.

"The people who were comfortable at this humanities-technology intersection helped to create the human-machine symbiosis that is the core of this story."

"Leonardo da Vinci was the exemplar of the creativity that flourishes when the humanities and sciences interact. When Einstein was stymied while working out General Relativity, he would pull out his violin and play Mozart until he could reconnect to what he called the harmony of the spheres."

"The reality is that Ada's contribution was both profound and inspirational. More than Babbage or any other person of her era, she was able to glimpse a future in which machines would become partners of the human imagination, together weaving tapestries as beautiful as those from Jacquard's loom."

...more

flag 13 likes · Like · see review

Sep 30, 2019 Frank Naitan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This book is the only way to go! Any other book just tells you what to do, this book teaches it to you in an entertaining way.

flag 9 likes · Like · see review

Oct 07, 2016 Jim rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, books-read-2016, computers-technology

2.5 Starts

This book was okay. It covers a lot of history and people and therefore makes it somewhat difficult to rate. It begins with Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron’s daughter, who helped pioneer computer programming in the 1840s. It ends in 2014. That is a lot of history. At times it becomes confusing. There are times when there were developments taking place in multiple locations and usually each involved a team of people. Some of the names were familiar such as Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Bill Ga 2.5 Starts

This book was okay. It covers a lot of history and people and therefore makes it somewhat difficult to rate. It begins with Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron’s daughter, who helped pioneer computer programming in the 1840s. It ends in 2014. That is a lot of history. At times it becomes confusing. There are times when there were developments taking place in multiple locations and usually each involved a team of people. Some of the names were familiar such as Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Others were unfamiliar to me such as John Atanasoff.

One of the key points (IMHO) is collaboration. Innovation, development, success came about when people collaborated. Often times one person had the initial idea and someone else picked up on it and ran with it. Xerox PARC had some great innovations but they pretty much stayed in a lab until Steve Jobs saw what they had. John Atanasoff was building a computer in Iowa when World War II started. He was working pretty much alone with the exception of maybe a grad student. He enlisted and the computer wound up in a basement and then years later was salvaged for scrap and parts because nobody knew what it was. In the meantime at the University of Pennsylvania there was a dedicated team working on ENIAC. At the same time in Bletchley Park a team of code breakers were hard at work trying to break the German Enigma code. The point is that innovations and development happened when people collaborated and worked together. It was not the result of a lone person.

Another often forgotten fact is the role of women in the history of computers. There is Grace Hopper who was a programmer and invented the first compiler. There was Kay McNulty, Betty Jennings, and Betty Snyder among others who were known as "the ENIAC girls". These were some of the first programmers and they were known as "computers".

The book even discusses Ken Kesey, The Grateful Dead, and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. You will need to read the book to learn how this factors into the innovators. There are other interesting tidbits in this book about the early history of computers (e.g. The Homebrew Computer Club, The Tech Model Railroad Club, etc.). It was a bit nostalgic and brought back memories of Heathkits, chemistry sets, and model rockets. There was actually a time when hackers were just kids who were simply trying to learn how things worked. To get inside and under the hood.

Overall this was an interesting history of the people who helped bring about computers, the internet, and the web. Tools just about everyone depends on today. ...more

flag 8 likes · Like · see review

Jul 06, 2015 Jim rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2non-fiction, 1audio, 1ebook, historical

Who invented the 'computer'? Many of the early calculating machines were quite specific in the type of calculations they could perform. It was a term once applied to a bunch of (mostly) women math majors using mechanical adding machines to figure out parts of equations during WWII. Mechanical 'computers' (The name wasn't applied to the devices until either late in or after WWII.) were a number of independent mechanical devices including the abacus & Babbage's device in the early 1800s. Babbage's ...more

flag 8 likes · Like · see review

Oct 01, 2014 Paul rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: books-read-2015

Almost everything we do these days has some link to the world wide web, or involves interacting with some sort of computer, but how did these things become so pervasive and essential? In this book Isaacson writes about the people that made the companies, that made the products that we all now use.

Starting on the earliest computer, the Analytical Engine conceived by Charles Babbage, which he made with Byron’s daughter Ada Lovelace. It was a purely mechanical device, made at the very limits of eng Almost everything we do these days has some link to the world wide web, or involves interacting with some sort of computer, but how did these things become so pervasive and essential? In this book Isaacson writes about the people that made the companies, that made the products that we all now use.

Starting on the earliest computer, the Analytical Engine conceived by Charles Babbage, which he made with Byron’s daughter Ada Lovelace. It was a purely mechanical device, made at the very limits of engineering capability at the time. It took another century until the next computers surfaced. A man called Vannevar Bush was instrumental in developing a differential analyser for generating firing tables, followed in World War 2 by the Colossus at Bletchley used for attacking the Nazi Enigma codes. These new room sized contraptions used the old vacuum tube valves, and consumed vast amounts of energy and took large numbers of people to maintain and use the machines.

For computers to reach the point where you could get more than one in a room, the technology would need to be miniaturised. The team in America that achieved this using the semi conducting properties of silicon would earn themselves a Nobel Prize. This moment was the point where the modern computer age started, especially when it was realised that there could have a variety of components, and therefore circuits on a single piece of silicon. These new microchips were initially all taken by the US military for weapons, but as the price of manufacture fall, numerous commercial applications could be realised.

Some of the first products that used microchips that the general public saw were calculators, but as engineers started to use their imaginations almost anything was possible. The coming years saw the development of the first video games, personal computers that you could fit on a desk and the birth of the internet. Most of these innovations came out of one place in California that we now know as Silicon Valley. It formed a new way of working too, with unlikely collaborations, spin offs and the beginning of software and hardware companies that have now become household names.

It didn’t take too long for people to start wanting to hook computers together. The original ARPNET was a military network, but it soon had links to academia and not long after that the geeks found it. It was still a niche way of communicating, until Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web with hypertext linking, and the world was never the same again.

Isaacson has written a reasonable book on the history of computing and the internet, and the significant characters and people who discovered or made things, or who just happened to be in the right place at the right time. He covers all manner of noteworthy events right up to the present day. Mostly written from an American centric point of view, it feels like a book celebrating America’s major achievements in computing. Whilst they have had a major part to play, they have not had the stage entirely to themselves; there is a brief sojourn to Finland about Linux and CERN with Berners-Lee there is very little mention of other European.

There are some flaws though. He doesn’t mention the dark net or any of the other less salubrious activities that happen online either; ignoring them doesn’t make them go away. There is very little mention of mobile technology either. It was a book worth reading though, as he shows that some of the best innovations have come from unlikely collaborations, those that don’t follow the herd and those whose quirky personalities and way of seeing the world bring forth products that we never knew we needed. ...more

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

Jan 22, 2019 John Blumenthal rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I must confess that I did not finish this book—the technical stuff did me in. This has happened several times before. (Note to self: do not try to read books involving motors, cathode tubes, quantum mechanics or how to screw in a lightbulb.) Science has never been my forte, although I am fascinated by it so I buy these books (Innovators, Tesla, Einstein) and always regret it.

I did learn a thing or two though. For example, I discovered that a woman named Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, an Englis ...more

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

Sep 16, 2019 Joseph Sciuto rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Walter Isaacson's "The Innovators: How a group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution," is the most IMPORTANT book I have read since I read "Emperor of all Maladies: A biography of Cancer," by Siddhartha Mukherjee. What is unusual about that statement, is that I have been very critical of internet during different stages of my life, but Walter Isaacson is one of my favorite historians and so I decided to read the book

Mr Isaacson's biography on "Einstein" allowed me, after Walter Isaacson's "The Innovators: How a group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution," is the most IMPORTANT book I have read since I read "Emperor of all Maladies: A biography of Cancer," by Siddhartha Mukherjee. What is unusual about that statement, is that I have been very critical of internet during different stages of my life, but Walter Isaacson is one of my favorite historians and so I decided to read the book

Mr Isaacson's biography on "Einstein" allowed me, after nearly six decades on this planet, to understand Einstein's amazing theories with very little effort. His Biography on "DA Vinci" is one of the greatest biographies I have ever read about another human being. In fact, his revelations about DA Vinci go hand and hand with "The Innovators" and his name is brought up repeatedly and the final picture in this amazing book is a DA Vinci drawing of the Vitruvian Man.

DA Vinci, unlike Michaelangelo, loved to collaborate with other artists, musicians, actors, and scientists and that is one of the reasons he is considered one of the greatest, complete, geniuses who has ever lived and Michaelangelo, a loner, is a mere shadow in the presence of DA Vinci.

"The Innovators" is a story that began over 150 years ago with Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron, whose interest in both science and the humanities, foresaw what would eventually lead to the digital age (computers, the internet, the web). Her interest in calculating machines, algorithms, poetry, and music and her collaboration with Charles Babbage, a mathematician and inventor would be the genesis of the digital age and the vision and foundation that would eventually morph into the world wide web.

Over the next 150 years there would be notable names as the military (government) Academica (MIT, Yale, Stanford, Harvard) and entrepreneurs (Gates, Allen, Jobs, etc.) contributed to this amazing revolution in science but it was never one individual but a collaboration of thousands of gifted men and women. There was never a great leap, but a steady, at times painstaking, process from rudimentary computers to high speed computers to personal computers, and then to the software and operating systems, and finally to the world wide web and companies like Google.

Computers were originally seen as machines that would create communities of people in which they would make it easy to exchange ideas. It was to be free, and in fact the creator of the world wide web never patented his creation. Of course, over time the free exchange of ideas and inventions were patented and individuals like Jobs and Gates became billionaires, creating empires.

Mr. Isaacson's book is like an encyclopedia, mixed with the poetry and music, that Mrs Lovelace first envisioned. It is about the creative process, teamwork, and contributions and insights from many different fields of science and the humanities. It is like a giant collage that looks like Mr. DA Vinci's "The Vitruvian Man." It is an extraordinary book and a very important book. ...more

flag 6 likes · Like · see review

Dec 02, 2017 A Man Called Ove rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-sci-fi

2.5/5 First things first - This is the book to recommend to your CA friends if they have recommended you a book filled with economics/accounting jargon that made it frustrating for u.
This is a history of the computer industry - both hardware and software. Picked it up a year or so earlier, found it too dry and gave it up. This was my second attempt at reading the book. Loved Steve Jobs' biography by the author recently and so decided to read the book in reverse order, with the latest technologic ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Nov 04, 2014 Aman Mittal rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction

There is no doubt that the computer and the internet are one of the most important innovations of our era. Without them, I would not have written this, and you won't be reading this either. In spite of that, computers should be considered only the second most important innovation, as important as Gutenberg's wooden printing press. Accessible to most, easy to learn, part and parcel of everyone's life nowadays.

Walter Isaacson's recently published THE INNOVATORS takes a reader back in the times of There is no doubt that the computer and the internet are one of the most important innovations of our era. Without them, I would not have written this, and you won't be reading this either. In spite of that, computers should be considered only the second most important innovation, as important as Gutenberg's wooden printing press. Accessible to most, easy to learn, part and parcel of everyone's life nowadays.

Walter Isaacson's recently published THE INNOVATORS takes a reader back in the times of Romantic Era or Romanticism, during which much emphasis was given to the artistic and literary originators. One of the key figures of that era was Lord Gordon Byron whose daughter turned out to be one of the first to acknowledge of what we today call 'Technology'. Ada Lovelace, is chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. Her notes on the engine include what is recognised as the first algorithm intended to be carried out by a machine. Because of this she is often called the world's first computer programmer.
The book tracks the stories in a linear perspective, from the 19th century-- Lovelace and Babbage to Alan Turing, ENIAC, John Von Neumann, to Ethernet and Xerox, to Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Linus Trovalds, Tim Berners- Lee, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. He covers almost all of these people and how their creativity helped them harness not only their goals, but also the clear and visible difference brought in an entire culture of people as well as formulating the digital era. Many of their innovations are now important aspect of an individual's thinking, his actions and his overall growth. Imagine, the usual life without internet. This is a story of individuals with brilliant ideas. There is sometimes collaboration of people, sometimes when people work on their own and yet at the end of it all, the reader is left with more clarity on them and the various eras in which different ideas were shaped and formed.

There have been countless books written on the digital era, the one that constitute us as segments but Walter Isaacson’s book is different in the sense that he takes a complete look at the innovators, the geniuses, the hackers, and the geeks and what they did and did not do to make their contributions in the digital era. The Innovators is a book which looks at everything, right from the start, to the middle and the future of entrepreneurs and creative geniuses.

Along with her love for machines, Ada Lovelace is the first known specimen of "Poetical Science", a term used by Isaacson in the concluding pages of his book quite relevantly.

"We humans can remain relevant in an era of cognitive computing because we are able to think different, something that an algorithm, almost by definition cannot master [...]" -Walter Isaacson

This is well said, and there is no point of argument that instead of considering artificial intelligence the "holy grail" and concentrating all our efforts to make a machine better than us which is not a feasible aspect because of a reason that a machine and a human can never think on the same grounds. No matter how much more efficient a computer can become in storing numerous amount of data and calculating numbers that a human mind in normal terms cannot proceed, a computer will never be able to think creatively and sense enormous feelings using an imagination a human has. Computers are just "brilliant idiots" as they will do what you tell him to do. Even as a human, we need art as much as we need science. The art provides us the conscience that lead up to the creativity and science provides the intelligence that can add up to that creativity. These two different looking cultures do intersect and it is our job in this era to understand how they intersect since only then the next phase of Digital Revolution will bring more and new methods of merging technology and creativeness. Using machines intelligence supported by human's creativity is the only way to materialise our future.

"This innovation will come from people who are able to link beauty and engineering, humanity to technology, and poetry to processors. [...] it will come from people who can flourish where the arts intersect with the sciences and who have a rebellious sense of wonder that opens to the beauty of both." -Walter Isaacson on the intersection of art and technology. ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Sep 10, 2015 Abhishek Dafria rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The 'Digital Revolution' has been a long journey which continues moving forward even today, which has had innumerable number of heroes, some of them crossing paths and some of them working alone. There is an underlying interconnection amongst each of the great achievements in the digital age, which can only be seen when someone takes a step back and looks at the whole big picture. That is what Walter Isaacson has bravely attempted to do in his book The Innovators. To try to capture this complex The 'Digital Revolution' has been a long journey which continues moving forward even today, which has had innumerable number of heroes, some of them crossing paths and some of them working alone. There is an underlying interconnection amongst each of the great achievements in the digital age, which can only be seen when someone takes a step back and looks at the whole big picture. That is what Walter Isaacson has bravely attempted to do in his book The Innovators. To try to capture this complex and huge story in itself is a mammoth task, but to finally manage to put quite a lot of it in a book and make sense of it all is praise-worthy. The Innovators shines on account of Isaacson's hardwork in his research and his ability to make the story simplistic but interesting.

The Innovators charts the journey of the Digital Revolution from the 19th century when Charles Babbage and Lady Lovelace attempted to write a program for a machine to perform a task upto the present day where millions are connected through personal computers and the power of the Web which is only growing bigger and faster. This journey has had many splendid moments, be it the creation of the transistor, the evolution of the microprocessor, the advent of personal computer, the ability to connect computers through packet-sharing networks, the rise of software when Microsoft came into dominance, the brilliance of Apple products, the growth of collaboration through Wikipedia and many more. Walter Isaacson takes us through the entire evolution of the Digital Age from infancy into becoming an essential part of our lives. In many places, he talks about the importance of collaboration, and how the Revolution has been brought about not by one man or a few, but by many teams who worked tirelessly to attain their visions. There are quite a few places though, where I felt Isaacson ended up repeating his points a bit too often, which makes the book a good 50-pages longer than was required. Nonetheless, if you have an interest in this topic, if you would love to know how that laptop on which you are googling things came to be, then there can be nothing better recommended than The Innovators. The whole story is way too big for one book to capture but The Innovators should do more than enough to get you interested and make you seek out more! ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Oct 23, 2014 Rob rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audio-book, read-2018, own-backlog, author-male, own, computers, nonfiction

Executive Summary: A very well written and fascinating look at the rise history of computers and the internet and those who helped to shape it.

Audiobook: For any nonfiction book I simply want a narrator who reads at a good pace and tone and is mostly unremarkable. Dennis Boutsikaris was that for me. He did a good job at keeping me focused on the history and not his narration.

Full Review
I added this book to my list after listening to Mr. Isaacson better know work: Steve Jobs. Jobs was fascina ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Nov 06, 2014 Boudewijn rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: english, science, downloaded, non-fiction, audio, on-ipod

In this book, Walter Isaacsson explores the lives and works of famous and less famous hackers and pioneers, that are responsible for our digital revolution. Starting by Ada Lovelace and ending with Larry Page and Sergej Brin, in a clear and easy to understand writing style, he takes us on a comprehensive tour through the giants of the digital age.

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Mar 09, 2020 Mark Jr. rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: library-book, audio, 2020

Somehow some writers of biography end up sounding trite, both in their relating of their subjects' stories and in the lessons they draw from them.

Isaacson is not one of these writers. The word that comes to my mind to describe him is "complementarity." His powers of anecdote selection complement his keen ability to distill insight from them. I thoroughly enjoyed his Steve Jobs biography and felt that this set of biographies—of people and of the technologies they created—complements the Jobs bio ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Jan 12, 2015 Sarju Shrestha Mehri rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2015-books-to-read

Walter Isaacson is such a great writer and a researcher. Coming from none technical background, this book really gave me the bigger picture of technology world; its beginning and its future. How devices we use in our daily lives are the products of many creative genius, visionaries and restless ambitious minds. Also, many of these work are the contribution of collaboration, respect and stealing the best ideas from each other.

I am very impressed how Isaacson credits and acknowledged the first wom ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Apr 06, 2016 Lori rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: history, biography

Fantastic read. Although at times I think Isaacson is simplifying a bit too much for the sake of brevity, he provides a wonderful service here in handing us the sweeping narrative of the Digital Age. The story itself is riveting, and Isaacson basically just gets out of the way of it.

Throughout he takes time to suggest lessons about innovation. To some, perhaps, that will seem annoying and intrusive. To me, it was the best part of the book. Innovation happens when collectives of humans with comp ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Aug 26, 2015 Lei rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Another wonderful work from Walter Isaacson, a legendary of digital revolutions, full of amazing stories of innovators who made a dent in the computer history. A must read , I'll buy one to keep it at home for sure. ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Dec 21, 2015 Hussein Nasser rated it really liked it · review of another edition

An excellent book reach on history of the great innovators

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Apr 29, 2018 ScienceOfSuccess rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: waiting

From Ada Lovelace to Wikipedia. Interesting "biography of the computer" as known in 2010. ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
Brain Hacker Mind	1	3	Oct 02, 2020 11:18PM
2015 Reading Chal...: The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson	1	25	Jan 30, 2015 09:22AM
The Rise of the Sharing Economy in Publishing	1	20	Oct 09, 2014 10:13AM
Goodreads Librari...: Pre-release vs. Released covers	7	61	Aug 25, 2014 04:04PM

Readers also enjoyed

See similar books…

Goodreads is hiring!

If you like books and love to build cool products, we may be looking for you.
Learn more »

Videos About This Book

Add a comment

2 comments

Genres

Nonfiction

903 users

History

747 users

Business

543 users

Biography

505 users

Science > Technology

367 users

Science

289 users

Audiobook

99 users

Science > Computer Science

61 users

Business > Entrepreneurship

61 users

Computer Science > Computers

51 users

See top shelves…

About Walter Isaacson

Walter Isaacson

12,155 followers

Walter Isaacson, a professor of history at Tulane, has been CEO of the Aspen Institute, chair of CNN, and editor of Time. He is the author of 'Leonardo da Vinci; The Innovators; Steve Jobs; Einstein: His Life and Universe; Benjamin Franklin: An American Life; and Kissinger: A Biography, and the coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. Visit him at Isaacson.Tulane.edu and on T ...more

Books by Walter Isaacson

The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made

More…

Articles featuring this book

Famed Biographer Walter Isaacson on Gene Editing, Science, and Good Books

Walter Isaacson, it’s safe to say, is not afraid of tackling the really big topics. In 2011, he wrote about our ubiquitous computer culture...

Trivia About The Innovators: H...

No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »

Quotes from Інноватори. Як гр...

“progress comes not only in great leaps but also from hundreds of small steps.” — 15 likes

“But the main lesson to draw from the birth of computers is that innovation is usually a group effort, involving collaboration between visionaries and engineers, and that creativity comes from drawing on many sources. Only in storybooks do inventions come like a thunderbolt, or a lightbulb popping out of the head of a lone individual in a basement or garret or garage.” — 13 likes

More quotes…