Thankyou. [applause] faq very much. It is so great to be important to have been here for all nine of my books i have come here even when though whole city two years ago i wrote a book about cholera and airport apologize for that. I feel that is a very special place. I just got word this book will be number four on the New York Times bestseller list. [applause] which just came out. I have never been in the top10 before so i am excited. What is different from all the books i have done before is i had a Television Series that accompanies the book that was developed together in parallel it will be on pbs for six episodes with the same title and i think it would be fine to show you a little clip. Hopefully this will work. Imagine observing earth from a distance of the last 100,000 years. How do we get to todays world . Who are the people that took us out of the dark . People whod made the modern world . People you probably never heard of. A hobbyist or the tinkers or ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Five rightabout ideas and innovations. This is the untold story of how we got to now. The people were spontaneous could this be the innovation were waiting for . You can see how it was dangerous work. Previously invisible group of people to make them visible on a mass scale triggering the Great Movement of social reform in history. It is appalling mix of human and animal excrement they have to wade through there is the incredible idea if not dig down then with the city up it is a beautiful idea. Outside the movie is stranger than fiction a brilliant idea those to the things coming together beyond understanding. To have the beginning of an idea for the most transformative of the 20th century it will take three days. Well take decades to finally pay off. It is the idea behind this this is inside the whales head. Get me out of here. We make our idea is to. [applause] host there is. Can you tell how fun that was to make . We shot it all over the world and were the telescopes and then to the indoor ski slope in dubai in the middle of the every review desert. Also the episode on queens i went through the sewers in said francisco which is literally the worst thing i have ever done in my entire life. Has had these experiences that it was tough but im glad it is over not this a with chicken erase it from my memory. [laughter] in to see the clips over and over so now i have like ptsd from editing that clips but what we tried to do with the series and in the book is to take these facets of modern life and in many cases we no longer think of as Technology Without wonder and amazement that these things work cattle so in the clean chapter is the basic idea with the clean glass of Drinking Water that we live in a world for the most part in the developed world where to go to the faucet to get a glass of water in dont think about dying of cholera 48 hours later. Said is an incredible achievement to live in the city of 10 Million People and it took whole history of invention and ingenuity and Engineering Projects to make that possible. And while we celebrate innovation here and that is great and worth celebrating but we dont think about who made these part of our lives but also to talk about the unexpected places this is the idea of the hummingbird defect we have these hummingbirds in our garden that enables them to cover and eurocom said in parallel with each other and it has nothing to do with birds. o and that wing structure to hover but it turns out to transform that it had every the scientific history has a pattern to have a problem in one field with the series of changes with new platforms that transforms in all the unpredictable ways and in the history of clean Drinking Water we end that episode and the chapter with Texas Instruments and austin, texas 09 briefly dressed up in a spacesuit. And when you get suited up they were being protected from something. You are the dirt in protecting the chips from you. S and it is called ultra clean water that is just your h20 this so clean that they cannot drink it because normal water has minerals if you drink this it is bad for you. But it is required to do the rinsing of the microchips so this technology to make our water clean of the Drinking Water and to take a shower or bath in we have five phones and computersuy what you would not necessarily think. But to take you on these different journeys with a different way to tell history that is centered around president ial figures military conflicts and this is the history of the world through the lens of these ideas and technologies and the raiders. Actually whole opening chapter is on glass the importance of the material. If you could wave a3i want to remove class from the last 1,000 years it would radically change almost everything in society would eliminate not just obvious like windows and glasses for our water but that with that scientific revolution and the fiberoptic cables that connect the internet for it becomes such a part of the world we dont think of the technology thinking of the most a pianist technology in the world were glassmakers. One of my favorite is one that involves gutenberg we feel like we have of pretty good read on gutenberg. With the biggest communication but we know the story of love revolutions and science the cousin of the litter in population but there is the unsung stories the hummingbird defect that once the book got r circulation and had the interesting secondary effect all the people reading for the first time said they said i cannot read this i need glasses for i am farsighted and as we see there was a problem of that did not exist until the was the book to make it a problem so people were farsighted all along. But they never had to read books the original spectacles were invented by monks because theyre the only ones reading in the first place, now there is a demand with its need for spectacles to send out of market signal throughout europe there is a sudden demand for lens makers. And because of that with the pools of expertise because people like to tinker with theirzh inventions if i put them together . If i put them in this way . Then almost immediately galileo takes the telescope to revolutionize astronomy. It takes about 70 years for the telescope to change the world and for the first time he sees these little boxes with the sole structure of life as we know it to think of society became that of the ability to see the small and the distant. Partial abetting people publish scientific papers but in this lateral move the people make glasses and telescopes but it is that kind of movement through history that runs throughout the entire book their playful storiessr but it shows a profound truth how societies change but on some level you can point to the individual and a genius for innovation and that set out to solve a problem but also to say their ideas have a that lead to things that the creators can never dream of if you dont tell that part of the story youre not true to what happened with the basic question of how we got to know the other thing i find interesting looking at the history of ideas with the march of progress we tend to celebrate the victors this technology and it is fantastic but on the one hand we have multiple inventors out Thomas Edison did not invent the label but 20 people were in parallel. So it is always more complex but the history of innovation is filled with these beautiful mistakes that people were so innovative so far ahead of their peers that they fail to see things better obvious in hindsight. It is important because it happened in number to it happens to all of us right now as then cultural blindke spot maybe be even more vulnerable living with this new possibilities state. There is said chapter on sound out it came out of the pursuit amplify the sound of the human voice. But what comes out of that pursuit french inventor he invented a device of the recorded audio of the sound waves that he patented this device youre probably thinking he invented the photograph the he was a full 20 years ahead of edison and recording and audio it is amazing when you hear almost one generation ahead. But he treated this ingenious contraptions and then it converted2k and it is the the sound waves written on the piece of paper. I forgot to include one key feature. There is no way to listen to the idea that you recorded that turned out to be a feature that people like. [laughter] the reason with the i pawed they put in the headphone jack would be lame with 10,000 jobs just in your pocket. So we could not see that component. But it never occurred to him. What the hell was he thinking . But he was assessed g with stenography and dictation and shorthand. So human beings could write this scribbled and decipher it back. And then to do this much faster then people could just dictate into the machine directly. And then to turn into words and images with admiral tool kit that nobody to this day but going back looking at the history that people got lost a little bit is sometimes a strange deters that is an ultimate gain for society. So the story is tragic he dies panelist nobody hears about him that intel became along and then other researchers come along to uncover his stuff but it turns out technology was 10 years later used in another way with another inventor who figured out sound to come out of it that was Alexander Graham bell who] invented the telephone. Into data groundwork it was the seed. But what is important about the book is what you see with all these people, some of them are borderline insane and many get arrested [laughter] after raise money than they are thrown in jail and almost all of them are blocked but what theysy have that is so extraordinary that is part of the spirit of the project is they have this amazing curiosity about the world to not be clear where it will take them. And in my book is a slow hunch that it doesnt just come from libel moments without a clear idea of what you are interested and to follow that sometimes for decades that it will turn into something transformative and with the episode on coal and with the mastery of coal with artificial refrigeration one of the weird heroes of that chapterc] from birds eye frozen foods and invented the technology of flash freezing almost 100 years ago that path was a process of day park ranger and he moves to labrador with the oneyearold child had and is up there in the winter and he has a really hard time just finding nourishment for his family so one day he goes ice fishing i went that was incredibly bad and they catch this fish because it was 30 below and instantly freezes so he takes it back and then pause about this is really good it is tasty and taste almost fresh but most of us would say great. The fish was tasty now lego read my book. But why . What was different . Saudi begin the bizarre set ofgz experiments that freezes at different temperatures test for nosteount apparent reason. And it turns out over time those that are frozen at a low temperature quickly does not damage the cellular structure of the food and preserves it better so another eight years passed in putting together the industrial process and also sells this to general foods and becomes very wealthy that of a suddenmour kitchens are filled with refrigerators with birds eye frozen food. And many think i have frozen tv dinners but freezing is technology for also freezing human embryos so there is a central part of possibility over conceiving children that is dependent on our ability to master cold but there are millions the people today that would not be alive if we did not master cold in that way. And i hope i lifted as a parent has an 11 yearold that the one thing and wanted was to be obsessive they just want to know everything as long as they learn that feeling i have to Read Everything because that is incredibly useful to have as a grownup if either that learn the pleasure to dive into anything that is the kind of kid8n that was in no careful what you wish for category is a total waste of time. [laughter] why dont we have fiat like that . [laughter],n it is funny because they really could not care less and i am a liability in the show. [laughter] but you can see that pulled into the narrative. Rabil try a to think of that spot but i think most of the stories is new to history buffs and not just bring up the old favorites but what i hope it is energizing an inspiring that diving into historys gone some level that optimism how many did get solved with this sense we do have problems we have not figured it all out yet but we made a lot of p progress in the last 300 years and it came from those seeking the economic were. So it makes the show i am a little biased but it makes me think it was not redundant because it again into the broader effect of history we dont get into that theory. And the show was a little more anchored but what does a book do really well and what does a Television Series do really well . In not weaknesses . Other questions . There is a revolution in going on with engineering and innovators. It is staying was engineers should be taught that what theyre doing is a natural extension of biological evolution the is the engineering enterprise. [laughter] you wanted to ask me uneasy question . [laughter] it is interesting. I a. M. Guilty of this in my work in revolutionary terms to describe human cultural activity there is certain resistance to that. Are the resistance it is pretty easy to get around it does not revolve through conscious choice it is through random variation but that process comes across independently so it is independently of all with a similar structure multiple times all around the planet because only a certain number of ways and given enough time and variation you will hit on those same strategies. And the same process happens in a different way with simultaneous discovery is where all the sudden a certain scientific breakthrough becomes manageable than five per tanner 20 people will discover this phenomenon without talking to one another. But it is a network of ideas as people invent the electric label nobody was inventing that he did not understand all this stuff that had to come together so it is a roundabout way to say looking at change in a revolutionary way or compare it to a snail it evolved without a conscious mind the at the same time simultaneous discovery phenomenon is similar to enable that thought the compilation of ideas by this particular moment in time there is a whole booktv written on it may be and will do it one of these days. What do you think are there things that would have that type of innovation in the classroom . Pbs has a Big Education push sometimes i think it is as simple to show the video because it is exciting but i obsess with the idea of simulations there is a whole day of new stuff happening like mine craft it is like an alternate universe built collectively and heres what they do for fun with this shared environment. Then they build things and then somebody will be in tears because somebody burned down their forest. [laughter] my one son was unleashing a sheep so my boy would build a castle the other one would fill the council with thousands of sheep. [laughter] and then he would say he filled my castle with sheep. [laughter] i have no idea what to tell you. [laughter] but in terms of history if you take the simulation of the revolutionary war but where it was the centerpiece listening to lectures and visiting places that people would do the role play in that simulation that you could do, kids would run to School Every Day to have this understanding of what was happening that there was not enough energy for the gun powder we had to get that from france but every now and then it is open ended sometimes you have to say we did win. With that experience to all relationship and not of that is encouraging as a innovative way to make it more electric. Given what you said about the unintended consequences to make innovations and possible how would your architect put together from a policy perspective to in junior to be more predictable . Thankyou. And how this happened with history or does that have been simultaneously . There are things that do make a difference in the same way if you take jefferson had of the last 300 years it would be different but he was an intellectual and interesting figure reallife characters we are human beings so when we look back over 500 years of history so we gradually go to people and their stories so i call this the long sumer approach those properties of silicon dioxide that allows light to transfer through it and the ability to meld that. With those physical properties are crucial to shed not tell that without the physical properties that the same time the community where the glassmakers were and that social political history how the island came about is interesting than the larger system of europe started to circulate it is also part of that story with gutenberg. To tell the truth and then to make it up to go back and forth but has a reader as i am taken on that journey that is more interesting than the individual ark of someones life. But then you are in the sweet spot to do both. In society you want to leave room for unplanned connections so that is one of the reasons why we are heavy on intellectual property restrictions because letting those ideas flow and collide with other ideas increasing that freedom and flexibility can drive them proprietary nature so that balances a little off. But it is true this unintended consequences is where the problems are. General it was someone tries to solve a problem eventually they do in their solution is better there are few cases where we selected inferior technology. Seriously in terms of video quality we chose the Worst Technology but that doesnt have been very often then you have dvd is 10 years later to make all obsolete that the problem is the effect there is a part in the book about airconditioning with the local objective of technology them put the Movie Theater that made the of blockbuster then it was the worst place to go in the summer 98 degrees but then right after world war ii it has the single biggest migration where everybody moves to the sunbelt florida and the desert states basically that were uninhabitable sari. [laughter] but it is hot in scottsdale. But then we have the political map because there is a huge swing from the Electoral College that is part of the story of how Ronald Reagan is elected in 1980 but then locally is also problem keeping people cold in the hot environment and that is hard to do there may not be enough water to support People Living in the desert. That is why it is important to keep our eye on these consequences because that is the downside. I think we have time for one more question. And talk about your children to be passionate about their curiosity with their enthusiasm so was that a conscious plan were due to study ways to help them develop that way . Now you make me feel bad about my parents came. [laughter] i have spent so busy making this show ive no time for my kids. [laughter] and wrote this book mind wideopen it is about the neuroscience of everyday life and i was the kid a big with all these experiments i took mri exam is so what could they teach you about yourself as an individual . And i had very young kids at that point and i had my second boy no experiments on the children. [laughter] i have not been as good about it as i should be by now that im older there are things that i am suspicious of. Like the luxury yacht. But then to steer its twos think about it in ach
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