Topic
history
- Innovation and Human Nature
In this piece from a few years ago, historian Anton Howes wrote about about what drives innovation. Is it part of human nature to pursue innovation? Or is it not a naturally occurring phenomenon? He makes the case thaā¦
- History of Hip Hop, 1982
I delved back into the archives of these mixtapes from The Rub put together, originally back in 2007. When these came out I downloaded the mp3s and for a bunch of them I actually edited them into individual tracks soā¦
- David Deutsch on Brexit and Error Correction
I ran across this interview with physicist David Deutsch, with his thoughts on Brexit. A lot of great stuff here on resilience, error correction, individualism vs. collectivism, Karl Popper, and Britain's first-past-tā¦
- Roots of Progress on Agriculture
On Roots of Progress, Jason Crawford is now diving into the history of agriculture, with an interesting change to his process about writing on the history of technological discovery. In this series, he's approaching iā¦
- Common Enemies
Morgan Housel draws similarities between the current crisis and global response to World War II: Pandemics kill people and recessions ruin people. Saying they have silver linings is a step too far. But I wonder if theā¦
- Hardy Boys and Microkids
Physicians hang diplomas in their waiting rooms. Some fishermen mount their biggest catch. Downstairs in Westborough, it was pictures of computers. Over the course of a few decades dating beginning in the mid-40s, comā¦
- On Building Systems That Will Fail
This is a presentation from Fernando CorbatĆ³ from the 1990 ACM Turing Award lectures. CorbatĆ³ was one of the creators of both the Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) at MIT and Multics, the operating system that infā¦
- Why Alto?
In 1972 at Xerox PARC "Xerox PARC"), Butler Lampson wrote this memo to the Xerox leadership making the case to produce the Alto computer from Chuck Thacker's original design. Amazing to think how significant this piecā¦
- The UNIX System
Today on the nerdy computer history feed, we've got a 1982 video from Bell Labs: The UNIX System: Making Computers More Productive. Most of the video has Brian Kernighan explaining the structure of UNIX and why it's dā¦
- The Rise and Fall of Minicomputers
Continuing my dive into the history of computers, I ran across this extended, detailed article covering the development and boom of the minicomputer industry.
- Weekend Reading: Figma's Typography, Xerox Alto, and a Timeline of CoVID
āØļø I Pressed āB, You Wouldn't Believe What Happened Next An entertaining talk about the complexity of typography, from Marcin Wichary at Figma's recent Config conference. š„ Restoring Y Combinator's Xerox Alto An techā¦
- Enter Ethernet
The specification for Ethernet was proposed in 1973 by Bob Metcalfe as a medium to connect the expanding network of computers at Xerox PARC. This was a schematic he drew as part of the memo proposing the technology toā¦
- RFC Reader
This tool lets you plunge back into computing history and read the RFCs published over the years since the early days of the ARPANET. I've been reading Where Wizards Stay Up Late, which tells the interesting story behā¦
- 10th Anniversary of the iPad: Perspective from the Windows Team
A great annotated Twitter thread from Steven Sinofsky, who was leading the launch of Windows 7 coincident with when the iPad was announced. 19/ The iPad and iPhone were soundly existential threats to Microsoftās coreā¦
- The Deal of the Century
A fun story from Jimmy Maher about the 1991 partnership with IBM that moved Apple from the Motorola 88000 chips to PowerPC. It was a savvy deal that kept the Macintosh (and Apple) alive and kicking long enough to bridā¦
- A Retrospective on the History of Work
Great site from Atlassian that steps through the decades to show you what work life looked like from the 1950s and on.
- Google Maps at 15
Google Maps just had its 15th birthday. This post from one of the original team on Maps back in 2005, Elizabeth Reid, reflects on a history of the product from its first iteration. On Feb 8, 2005, Google Maps was firsā¦
- The Tech History Playlist
As I've been reading more into the history of technology, specifically computers and the Internet, I'll go on side trails through Wikipedia or the wider 'net back to many of the source papers that were the seeds of ceā¦
- Adam Smith, Loneliness, and the Limits of Mainstream Economics
This is an essay from EconTalk's Russ Roberts with some takeaways from Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments. It's a book on topics like altruism and what drives human morality, and it's clear that much of whatā¦
- Man-Computer Symbiosis
J.C.R. Licklider's seminal 1960 paper on what would eventually become the personal computer. Man-computer symbiosis is a subclass of man-machine systems. There are many man-machine systems. At present, however, thereā¦
- Weekend Reading: Internet of Beefs, Company Culture, and Secular Cycles
š„© The Internet of Beefs Venkatesh Rao has assembled a most compelling explanation for how the internet polarization machine works: The semantic structure of the Internet of Beefs is shaped by high-profile beefs betweā¦
- Some Reflections on Early History by J.C.R. Licklider
I'm currently reading the fantastic book The Dream Machine, a history of the creation of personal computers, and a biography of this man, JCR Licklider. This is a talk from an ACM conference in 1986 where he discussesā¦
- Wernher von Braun and the Moon Landing
This is a neat clip from Walt Disney's Disneyland "Disneyland") TV series. Wernher von Braun explains the future technology that'll take us to the Moon, in 1955, several years before the Mercury program even began.
- Weekend Reading: Bullets in Games, Lessons of History, and BrickLink
š® How Do Bullets Work in Video Games? A cool analysis of methods for rendering bullet physics in games. š Notes on "The Lessons of History" Maksim Stepanenko's notes on Will and Ariel Durant's The Lessons of Historyā¦
- Weekend Reading: The Worst Year to Be Alive, Chinese Sci-Fi, and Slack Networks
š Why 536 Was the Worst Year To Be Alive You may have thought the entire 14th century was pretty bad, or maybe 1918 with its flu pandemic and millions of war casualties, but how about the 6th: A mysterious fog plungeā¦
- The Mother of All Demos
One of the great things about YouTube is being able to find gems of history like Doug Engelbartās āMother of All Demosā presentation from 1968. How amazing it mustāve been to see something like this live, 50 years agoā¦
- Microsoft Access: The Database Software That Won't Die
I love this story about Access and how it's still hanging on with a sizable user base after almost a decade of neglect by its parent. It goes to show you that there are still gaps in the market for software being fillā¦
- Memos
A neat collection of corporate memos from momentous points in their history. Bill Gates, Howard Schultz, Mark Zuckerberg, Nathan Mhyrvold, and more.
- Weekend Reading: Baseball Graphics, the Mind Illuminated, and the Crucial Century
ā¾ļø How Many Outs? Baseball Graphics Compared Some top-notch baseball geekery, with Jason Snell comparing the graphics overlays from Fox, MLB Network, and ESPNās telecasts. Iāve thought about this, too, but have to givā¦
- Why New Technology is Such a Hard Sell
Why does it take so long for new technologies with seemingly-obvious positive benefits to get adopted? This example on the speed with which the polio vaccine was adopted and administered are incredible, but an outlierā¦
- The History of Steel
Since Iāve been following the progress studies movement and Jason Crawfordās Roots of Progress blog, it was cool to see video of his talk on the history of steel from a San Francisco meetup a few weeks ago.
- The All Things Tech History List
Through a Twitter thread I ran across this running catalog of resources on the history of the tech industry ā books, articles, movies, and more. A definitive list of content. There are some great recommendations hereā¦
- Age of Invention
A newsletter from Dr. Anton Howes, a historian studying innovation and the Industrial Revolution. Iām a historian of innovation. I write mostly about the causes of Britainās Industrial Revolution, focusing on the liveā¦
- Instant Stone
This is another great one from last year on Jason Crawford's Roots of Progress project, in which he dives into advancements in human progress. In this post he covers a brief background on cement, one of the oldest ofā¦
- The Full Reset
On the power of starting with no baggage, sunk costs, or past poor decisions: Part of the reason the economy recovered slowly after the financial crisis was that businesses, spooked by the recession, relentlessly reviā¦
- Steve Jobs in 1981
I saw this Nightline interview clip with Steve Jobs from a recent Steven Sinofsky post. In this clip is his famous "bicycle for the mind" quote about the personal computer. This is a 21st century bicycle that amplifieā¦
- The Tunnel of Samos
This is a fascinating article from a 2004 issue of Engineering & Science that investigates the "Tunnel of Samos", constructed on the eponymous Greek island 2500+ years ago. One of the greatest engineering achievementsā¦
- Why Did We Wait So Long for the Bicycle?
Roots of Progress has an interesting deep dive on why it took so long for a (relatively) simple invention of the bicycle, even in a time when the principles of a bicycle's components were well understood for a long tiā¦
- Weekend Reading: Rhythmic Breathing, Drowned Lands, and Fulcrum SSO
šš»āāļø Everything You Need to Know About Rhythmic Breathing I tried this out the other night on a run. The technique makes some intiutive sense that it'd reduce impact (or level it out side to side anyway). Surely toā¦
- Cape Canaveral
We took the kids over to Kennedy Space Center on Saturday on the way up to Jacksonville. A quick stopover in Titusville Friday night then morning over at the Cape. I always loved visiting KSC when I was younger. We haā¦
- Five Lessons from History
Another great piece from Morgan Housel, this one on what we can learn from history. My personal favorite from the list: Progress happens too slowly for people to notice; setbacks happen too fast for people to ignore.ā¦
- The Second Phase: allinspections
This post is part 3 in a series about my history in product development. Check out the intro in part 1 and all about our first product, Geodexy, in part 2. Back in 2010 we decide to halt our development of Geodexy andā¦
- A Spreadsheet Way of Knowledge
I loved this piece, a history of the spreadsheet from Steven Levy originally written in 1984. It's a great retrospective that demonstrates how much impact spreadsheets had on business, even though we now consider themā¦
- Clippy: The Unauthorized Biography
One of my favorite tech figures, a16z's Steven Sinofsky, gives a history of "Clippy", the helpful anthropomorphic office supply from Microsoft Office. As the product leader of the Office group in the 90s, he gives somā¦
- Entering Product Development: Geodexy
I started with the first post in this series back in January, describing my own entrance into product development and management. When I joined the company we were in the very early stages of building a data collectioā¦
- Weekend Reading: LiDAR, Auto Generated Textbooks, and Paleo Plate Tectonics
š£ Creating Low-Cost LiDAR This is a great breakdown of the different elements of LiDAR technology, looking at three broad areas: beam direction, distance measurement, and frequencies. They compare the tech of 10 diffā¦
- What Did the Earth Look Like?
In the spirit of yesterday's post on the Earth of the past, this interactive map lets you browse back in time to see what oceans and landmasses looked like all the way back to 750 million years ago. Try typing in yourā¦
- The History of the World on One Map
Every year since the pre-Stone Age area, visualized as a time lapse on a map. This is amazing and puts into context what was developing where over time. I know when I read the history of one culture, like Ancient Greeā¦
- Progress Report: The Federalist Papers
Iām making my way through The Federalist, which has been on my reading list forever, and for which I had my interest rekindled last year reading Alexander Hamilton. For those that donāt know, itās a collection of essaā¦
- Spycraft
I recently finished reading Spycraft, Robert Wallace and Keith Melton's chronicle of the CIA's spy tech divisions, specifically OTS (Office of Technical Services), the division responsible for creating technical espioā¦