The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
William Kamkwamba was born in Malawi, a country where magic ruled and modern science was mystery. It was also a land withered by drought and hunger, and a place where hope and opportunity were hard to find. But William had read about windmills in a book called Using Energy, and he dreamed of building one that would bring electricity and water to his village and change his life and the lives of those around him. His neighbors may have mocked him and called him misala-crazy-but William was determined to show them what a little grit and ingenuity could do.Enchanted by the workings of electricity as a boy, William had a goal to study science in Malawi's top boarding schools. But in 2002, his country was stricken with a famine that left his family's farm devastated and his parents destitute. Unable to pay the eighty-dollar-a-year tuition for his education, William was forced to drop out and help his family forage for food as thousands across the country starved and died.Yet William refused to let go of his dreams. With nothing more than a fistful of cornmeal in his stomach, a small pile of once-forgotten science textbooks, and an armory of curiosity and determination, he embarked on a daring plan to bring his family a set of luxuries that only two percent of Malawians could afford and what the West considers a necessity-electricity and running water.
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What Hacker News says
- Reminds me of the book "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope" by William Kamkwamba. Good read.
- Thank you!
Me, I'm more interested in building alternate futures than writing stories about alternate histories. It's just more difficult!
If you want to understand what cultural or political factors have prevented innovation, maybe a good place to start is the cultures that are currently failing at innovation. I mean, on an absolute scale, that's all of them, but some are failing harder than others: the PRC is failing harder than Taiwan, the US is failing harder than the PRC, Brazil is failing harder than the US, Nigeria is failing harder than Brazil, and Malawi is failing harder than Nigeria. Maybe an especially good place to start would be the stories of people who have succeeded at innovation despite finding themselves in the most unfavorable conditions, like William Kamkwamba's application of windmills in Malawi. He wrote a book about it: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.
Any STEM graduate school research program in the US or Europe is full of people who are advancing foundational knowledge, but moved there from cultures that are doing very poorly at advancing foundational knowledge. It might be worthwhile to talk to them.
Of course, the situation 100, 1000, or 10'000 years ago was not the same as the situation in Malawi today. On one hand, the people who invented fossil-fueled mass production, movable type, and gunpowder 1000 years ago in China didn't have to compete economically against cheaper and technically superior imports from the modern US, the way Malawians do today; on the other, they couldn't import knowledge and tools from the US, and they didn't know that the things they were attempting were even possible.
- The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
- Reminds me of "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind". Amazing true story. Book is recommended.
- Interesting post, reminds me of a book that I read recently on similar topic - "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope" (http://amzn.com/0061730335)
- Makes me think of "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind." A very cool book, I would highly recommend it.
