REVIEW OF A REVIEW (NY Times OCT. 2009)The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves, by W. Brian Arthur. Rethinking What Leads the Way: Science, or New Technology?(Quotes are in According to the NY Times, Comment from a reader (signed Walter): But also comment from another reader (signed CJ): The best example where pure science has led is radio communications. You cannot detect radio waves unless you have a receiver. But why build a receiver? Because pure science predicted their existence (James Clerk Maxwell circa 1864). The mathematician Alan Turing laid the theoretical foundations of computing in the 1930’s and then put those ideas in practice by building the code breaker during WW-II. Occasionally technology does motivate science but that technology had its roots in earlier science. Notable examples are the steam engine and thermodynamics, airplanes and aerodynamics, electronic signal processing and the mathematical theory of distributions. And yes, the “lone inventor” is real. I am personally familiar with the history of some advances in computing that I witnessed when I was at Bell Labs. One advance was the development of the Unix operating system by Ken Thompson and the other the development of the C++ programming language by Bjarne Stroustrup. In both cases the individuals not only acted alone but they did so in the face of skepticism from their colleagues. Theo Pavlidis |