Book of the Week: The Most Powerful Idea in the World

06 Jan 2014

This week I read a book from the list of the best books that Bill Gates read in 2013. The Most Powerful Idea in the World is about all the pieces that had to go right in order to bring the steam engine to life. The beginning of the book was slow going, but it picked up steam midway before I gave up. Many things had to be in place for the steam engine to exist. Not just technology, put the economics, politics, laws and people. You need people who put in 10,000 hours to become experts, so they can build the invention with ever increasing improvements. The legal protection needs to be there for actors with the financial motivation, but weak enough that other people can enter the playing field. The steam engine contest at the end of the book reminded me of the DARPA challenges. Government has a strong role in advancing technology. I take a lot of things for granted. If I want to make something, I can order parts from a catalog and get custom parts fabricated through CNC milling, laser cutting or 3D printing. What is keeping us from advancing technology? The answer is that there needs to be a market for your advances. Before the steam engine was used for locomotion, it was used to mine and make textiles. Everything has to go right for a game changing technology to flourish. Just because you can build something, doesn’t mean it makes sense to build it. Also what is the cost of our technological advancement. We as inventors are separated from the ecological impact of our inventions. In the Lord of the Rings, you could see the trees being cut down to fuel the fires of Mordor to make metal weapons. The early metal workers had to deal with a lot of deforestation and started importing wood from neighboring countries.