Invention and Innovation: A Brief History of Hype and Failure
Written by Vaclav Smil
Narrated by Tim Fannon
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
Impatient with the hype that so often accompanies innovation, Smil offers in this book a clear-eyed corrective to the overpromises of new inventions—from cures for diseases to AI. He reminds us that even after we go quite far along the invention-development-application trajectory, we
may never get anything real to deploy. Or worse, even after we have succeeded by introducing an invention, its future may be marked by underperformance, disappointment, demise, or outright harm.
Drawing on his vast breadth of scientific and historical knowledge, Smil explains the difference between invention and innovation, and looks not only at inventions that failed to dominate as promised (such as the airship, nuclear fission, and supersonic flight) but also at those that turned
disastrous (leaded gasoline, DDT, and chlorofluorocarbons). And finally, he offers a “wish list” of inventions that we most urgently need to confront the staggering challenges of the twenty-first century.
Filled with engaging examples and pragmatic approaches, this book is a sobering account of the folly that so often attends human ingenuity—and how we can, and must, better align our expectations with reality.
Vaclav Smil
Vaclav Smil is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba. He is the New York Times bestselling author of How the World Really Works, as well as more than forty other books on topics including energy, environmental and population change, food production and nutrition, technical innovation, risk assessment, and public policy. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, he has been named by Foreign Policy as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers.
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