Name: How we got here
ISBN: 9780060840976

How we got here

author Andy Kessler ties up the loose ends from his provocative book, Running Money, with this history of breakthrough technology and the markets that funded them. Expanding on themes first raised in his tour de force, Running Money, Andy Kessler unpacks the entire history of Silicon Valley and Wall Street, from the Industrial Revolution to computers, communications, money, gold and stock markets. These stories cut (by an unscrupulous editor) from the original manuscript were intended as a primer on the ways in which new technologies develop from unprofitable curiosities to essential investments. Indeed, How We Got Here is the book Kessler wishes someone had handed him on his first day as a freshman engineering student at Cornell or on the day he started on Wall Street. This book connects the dots through history to how we got to where we are today.

What Hacker News says

brownbatJan 2020

Andy Kessler's How We Got Here.

Only a few hundred people have rated it on GoodReads, but if you wanted to trace a march of technological progress from swords to the Internet, it does a good job. There are definitely other stories you could tell about this accelerating sweep of technological change, but this one was a solid rapid overview and really stuck some ideas with me about how changes compound (or completely swerve to a new goal) over time.

The original tweet is more about how domain experts would rely on books nobody outside that domain has heard of, so maybe I should be thinking more about textbooks that stuck with me. Sources of Chinese Tradition, the Tractatus, and A Mathematical Theory of Computation all left pretty lasting influences in one way or another.

Sources of Japanese Tradition discusses the origins of Tendai Zen Buddhism, with some bits on Dogen, who once wrote something like, "If you want to achieve a certain thing, you must first become a certain person. After becoming a certain person, you no longer want that certain thing."

That's a pretty good tie in to Kessler's view of the last several hundred years of human progress. We were repeatedly solving some other problem, which once we had the tools to solve that, it became nearly irrelevant compared to what else we could do now.

thread

brownbatApr 2018

The best fast and fun one is "How We Got Here" by Kessler, I think it's free if you send an email. Draws a really clever line of related inventions from swords to microchips.

Specific areas after that...

"Brilliant" by Brox on the history of lighting.

"Salt" by Kurlansky.

"The Master Switch" by Wu on telecoms and broadcasting.

"Ascent of Money" by Ferguson has some critics, but it's got some great historical anecdotes on the history of financial tools, like fractional reserves and insurance, weirdly captivating.

Those are all economic history... If you really want a pop intro to econ principles, maybe Planet Money? Pretty much everyone should listen to Planet Money anyway, it's just great radio.

thread

anademApr 2018

Here's Kessler's excellent How We Got Here (pdf): http://www.andykessler.com/andy_kessler/excerpts/How_We_Got_...

thread

AlfaWolphJul 2015

This might be a bit broader but I enjoyed "How We Got Here" by Andy Kessler, which is available for free (emailed link[1] or direct[2] if you prefer. It's more about how the systems and engineering that predated computing influenced its development to where it is now. Actually it's argument is it's been computing all along since before we had vacuum tubes. Worth a read.

[1] http://akessler.blogs.com/andy_kessler/2005/04/hwgh.html

[2] http://www.andykessler.com/andy_kessler/excerpts/How_We_Got_...

thread

acqqDec 2013

I've really enjoyed reading

http://www.amazon.com/How-Got-Here-Irreverent-Technology/dp/...

"How We Got Here: A Slightly Irreverent History of Technology and Markets" by Andy Kessler

"Expanding on themes first raised in his tour de force, Running Money, Andy Kessler unpacks the entire history of Silicon Valley and Wall Street, from the Industrial Revolution to computers, communications, money, gold and stock markets. These stories cut (by an unscrupulous editor) from the original manuscript were intended as a primer on the ways in which new technologies develop from unprofitable curiosities to essential investments. Indeed, How We Got Here is the book Kessler wishes someone had handed him on his first day as a freshman engineering student at Cornell or on the day he started on Wall Street. This book connects the dots through history to how we got to where we are today."

thread

armandososaMar 2012

I think this is a good thread to recommend Andy Kessler's book "How We Got Here" which can be downloaded from here (http://akessler.blogs.com/andy_kessler/2005/04/hwgh.html). It's a parallel history between economy and technology evolution up from the steam engine genesis.

thread