# Walter Isaacson - The Innovators (Highlights)  ## Metadata **Cover**:: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51W4yxYn-JL._SL200_.jpg **Source**:: #from/readwise **Zettel**:: #zettel/fleeting **Status**:: #x **Authors**:: [[Walter Isaacson]] **Full Title**:: The Innovators **Category**:: #books #readwise/books **Category Icon**:: 📚 **Highlighted**:: [[2022-03-18]] **Created**:: [[2022-09-26]] ## Highlights - connect the arts and sciences. ([Location 267](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JGAS65Q&location=267)) - Even complex mathematical tasks, Babbage realized, could be broken into steps that came down to calculating “finite differences” through simple adding and subtracting. ([Location 516](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JGAS65Q&location=516)) - Ada Lovelace, “the world’s first computer programmer.” ([Location 648](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JGAS65Q&location=648)) - He believed (at least while he was young) that this uncertainty and indeterminacy at the subatomic level permitted humans to exercise free will—a trait that, if true, would seem to distinguish them from machines. ([Location 853](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JGAS65Q&location=853)) - Turing’s paper was published in 1937 with the not so snappy title “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem.” ([Location 911](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JGAS65Q&location=911)) - In 1939 Zuse began work on a third model, the Z3, that used electromechanical relays both for the arithmetic unit and for the memory and control units. When it was completed in 1941, it became the first fully working all-purpose, programmable digital computer. ([Location 1049](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JGAS65Q&location=1049)) <!-- New highlights added May 7, 2023 at 12:31 PM --> - Douglas Hofstadter, a professor at Indiana University, combined the arts and sciences in his unexpected 1979 best seller, Gödel, Escher, Bach. He believed that the only way to achieve meaningful artificial intelligence was to understand how human imagination worked. His approach was pretty much abandoned in the 1990s, when researchers found it more cost-effective to tackle complex tasks by throwing massive processing power at huge amounts of data, the way Deep Blue played chess. ([Location 7973](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JGAS65Q&location=7973)) ^523959094 - “The main lesson of thirty-five years of AI research is that the hard problems are easy and the easy problems are hard,” according to Steven Pinker, the Harvard cognitive scientist. ([Location 7990](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JGAS65Q&location=7990)) ^523959095 <!-- New highlights added May 13, 2023 at 1:33 PM --> - First and foremost is that creativity is a collaborative process. Innovation comes from teams more often than from the lightbulb moments of lone geniuses. ([Location 8110](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JGAS65Q&location=8110)) ^524796549 - People don’t invent things on the Internet. They simply expand on an idea that already exists.” ([Location 8119](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JGAS65Q&location=8119)) ^524796550 - Even though the Internet provided a tool for virtual and distant collaborations, another lesson of digital-age innovation is that, now as in the past, physical proximity is beneficial. ([Location 8129](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JGAS65Q&location=8129)) ^524796551 - Another key to fielding a great team is pairing visionaries, who can generate ideas, with operating managers, who can execute them. Visions without execution are hallucinations. ([Location 8141](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JGAS65Q&location=8141)) ^524796552 - 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. ([Location 8203](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JGAS65Q&location=8203)) ^526389619 <!-- New highlights added May 28, 2023 at 10:24 AM --> - They knew that creativity came through chance encounters. ([Location 2429](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JGAS65Q&location=2429)) ^536806342 <!-- New highlights added June 3, 2023 at 10:54 PM --> - The Regency radio, the size of a pack of index cards, used four transistors and sold for $49.95. ... Within a year, 100,000 had been sold, making it one of the most popular new products in history. ([Location 2643](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JGAS65Q&location=2643)) ^539155729 - Despite the fact that he would never turn out to be successful in business, Shockley would accomplish that. The company that he was about to found would transform a valley known for its apricot orchards into one famed for turning silicon into gold. ([Location 2696](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00JGAS65Q&location=2696)) ^539155728