:INFO
The Technology History That Starts With a Poet
The Innovators opens with Ada Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron who wrote what is considered the first algorithm more than a century before computers existed. Walter Isaacson uses her as a frame for the book's central argument: that the great technological achievements of the digital age were collaborative, not solo, and that the myth of the lone genius inventor misrepresents what actually happened. The Ada chapter alone is worth the price of the book.


:COUNTER.half
560 Pages
|
:GOAL.half [target:5, current:2]
Isaacson biographies finished

:QUOTE [quotetype:plain, subtitle:Walter Isaacson]
Innovation comes from teams. The genius inventor is mostly a story we tell afterward.


:JOURNEY
Reading The Innovators
5 Best portrait
5 Changed my thinking
4 Myth-busting
3 Least surprising

:PROFILE
Ada Lovelace
London, England
Mathematician and writer, 1815 to 1852. Daughter of Lord Byron. Wrote the first algorithm in 1843 fo

:POLL
Did The Innovators change how you think about collaboration versus individual genius?
Yes completely, the team model now seems obviously correct
Somewhat, I already suspected this but the examples made it concrete
Not much, I still think individual vision is the primary driver
I have not read it yet