The Foreign Policy Research Institute (you can get on their EMail list) recently published an item titled "From Stone to Silicon: A Brief Survey of Innovation."
There are also a set of slides to go with the paper.
This paper, by Lawrence A Husick, who is a Senior Fellow at FPRI, is pretty interesting to me because it shows how new solutions build upon older ones, like the late 1970s TV show Connections, with its frenetic developer/presenter, James Burke. The problem is, the list is from bottom to top and so we don't see the "build up" of ideas, but rather the track back to the beginning.
This effort was sponsored by FPRI's History Institute for Teachers, which is led by David Eisenhower and Walter A McDougall. The first name rings a bell--he was President Eisenhower's grandson and married President Nixon's daughter. Mr McDougall is a Pulitzer Prize winning historian.
In my mind, the thing missing, is, of course, Wilbur and Orville Wright and the airplane, but that is just my bias.
Regards -- Cliff
1 comment:
I remember the Connections series from the 70s - love those slices across the accumulated experience of humanity that offer fresh perspectives, new insights. Those insights, inevitably reflect a western, first-world viewpoint.
Could be a good lunchtime conversation.
Cheers,
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