Review: The Innovators by Walter Isaacson

A nice history of some of the key players in the history of modern computing. On the plus side, the book correctly credits most major technological progress not to the action of a small number of heroes working alone, but to teams of people building off each others’ ideas. It also does a good job of showing the role of women, government funding, theoretical research, open source development, and many other aspects of technological development, whereas other narratives usually omit one or more of these. On the negative side, to get through so much history, the book only gives you a neat, clean, saran-wrapped glimpse at most of the stories, and overlooks some important stories entirely. I prefer Isaacson’s books that focus on a single person (e.g. Steve Jobs), as that lets you see just how messy, chaotic, and sometimes downright accidental innovation really is. In short, this book is a nice TLDR of computing history, but if you find a story that intrigues you, you’ll have to dig deeper to really appreciate it.

Rating: 3 stars