Inventology

Author: Pagan Kennedy
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0544324013
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 309

Book Description
Find out where great ideas come from in this “delightful account of how inventors do what they do” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). A father cleans up after his toddler and imagines a cup that won’t spill. An engineer watches people using walkie-talkies and has an idea. A doctor figures out how to deliver patients to the operating room before they die. By studying inventions like these—the sippy cup, the cell phone, and an ingenious hospital bed —we can learn how people imagine their way around “impossible” problems to discover groundbreaking answers. Pagan Kennedy reports on how these enduring methods can be adapted to the twenty-first century, as millions of us deploy tools like crowdfunding, big data, and 3-D printing to find hidden opportunities. Inventology uses the stories of inventors and surprising research to reveal the steps that produce innovation. Recent advances in technology and communication have placed us at the cusp of a golden age; it’s now more possible than ever before to transform ideas into actuality. Inventology is a must-read for designers, artists, makers—and anyone else who is curious about creativity. By identifying the steps of the invention process, Kennedy reveals the imaginative tools required to solve our most challenging problems. “There’s ample interest here even for readers who aren’t actively inventing anything.” —The Boston Globe

Summary of Inventology by Pagan Kennedy

Author: QuickRead
Publisher: QuickRead.com
ISBN:
Category : Study Aids
Languages : en
Pages : 21

Book Description
Find out the science behind invention and how we have dreamed up inventions that have changed the world. When people think of inventors, many might conjure up images of mad scientists mixing chemicals in laboratories, creating dangerous concoctions, wearing white coats with bloodshot eyes from working hours into the night. In reality, many of the most successful inventors simply brought their ideas to life in their homes, probably wearing pajamas! Take Jake Stap, for example, who in the late 1960s worked as a tennis coach in Wisconsin. His problem? His back ached from stooping down to retrieve hundreds of balls a day. Surely there was a better way. One day, he discovered that the ball could squeeze through metal bars and take a one-way trip into a wire bin. After fooling around at home with various baskets and wires, he created what he called a “ball hopper.” Soon, everyone wanted one. People see the invention today and say, “I could’ve thought of that.” Yet, it took nearly a century of tennis-playing for someone to create a seemingly obvious invention. So what does this invention have in common with others? As you read, you’ll discover the common denominator that many inventions have, how lucky people are more likely to create something, and how the Wayne Gretzky Game can help you invent something revolutionary. Do you want more free book summaries like this? Download our app for free at https://www.QuickRead.com/App and get access to hundreds of free book and audiobook summaries. DISCLAIMER: This book summary is meant as a preview and not a replacement for the original work. If you like this summary please consider purchasing the original book to get the full experience as the original author intended it to be. If you are the original author of any book on QuickRead and want us to remove it, please contact us at [email protected].

Who Built That

Author: Michelle Malkin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476784949
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Book Description
The conservative columnist shares stories about inventors who have shaped American technological progress through the innovation of everyday objects, from bottle caps to bridge cables.

We Have No Idea

Author: Jorge Cham
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735211523
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Book Description
Prepare to learn everything we still don’t know about our strange and mysterious universe Humanity's understanding of the physical world is full of gaps. Not tiny little gaps you can safely ignore —there are huge yawning voids in our basic notions of how the world works. PHD Comics creator Jorge Cham and particle physicist Daniel Whiteson have teamed up to explore everything we don't know about the universe: the enormous holes in our knowledge of the cosmos. Armed with their popular infographics, cartoons, and unusually entertaining and lucid explanations of science, they give us the best answers currently available for a lot of questions that are still perplexing scientists, including: * Why does the universe have a speed limit? * Why aren't we all made of antimatter? * What (or who) is attacking Earth with tiny, superfast particles? * What is dark matter, and why does it keep ignoring us? It turns out the universe is full of weird things that don't make any sense. But Cham and Whiteson make a compelling case that the questions we can't answer are as interesting as the ones we can. This fully illustrated introduction to the biggest mysteries in physics also helpfully demystifies many complicated things we do know about, from quarks and neutrinos to gravitational waves and exploding black holes. With equal doses of humor and delight, Cham and Whiteson invite us to see the universe as a possibly boundless expanse of uncharted territory that's still ours to explore.

Black Livingstone

Author: Pagan Kennedy
Publisher: Santa Fe Writer's Project
ISBN: 0988225247
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 144

Book Description
A largely untold story of an extraordinary historical figure, this biography sheds light on the life of William Sheppard, a 19th-century African American who, for more than 20 years, defied segregation and operated a missionary run by black Americans in the Belgian Congo. This work shows how Sheppard returned to the United States periodically, and traveled the country telling tales of his adventures to packed auditoriums. An anthropologist, photographer, big-game hunter, and art collector, the man billed as the &“Black Livingstone&” helped expose the atrocities that occurred under the reign of King Leopold, and this stirring work tells how he eventually helped to break Belgium's hold on the Congo.

Alfred Nobel

Author: Kenne Fant
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
ISBN: 9781559703284
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Book Description
The most complete and only full-length biography of the legendary inventor of dynamite and founder of the prizes that bear his name. As with many extraordinary lives, Nobel's biography reads better than most fiction - born in poverty, his creation of a safe method for detonating nitro-glycerine catapulted him to wealth and fame. Spurned by the woman he loved and dubbed 'the merchant of death' by a press horrified at the capabilities of dynamite, Nobel bequeathed his fortune to the foundation of prizes celebrating peace, literature and scientific achievement.

Why Information Grows

Author: Cesar Hidalgo
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465039715
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
"Hidalgo has made a bold attempt to synthesize a large body of cutting-edge work into a readable, slender volume. This is the future of growth theory." -- Financial Times What is economic growth? And why, historically, has it occurred in only a few places? Previous efforts to answer these questions have focused on institutions, geography, finances, and psychology. But according to MIT's antidisciplinarian Cér Hidalgo, understanding the nature of economic growth demands transcending the social sciences and including the natural sciences of information, networks, and complexity. To understand the growth of economies, Hidalgo argues, we first need to understand the growth of order. At first glance, the universe seems hostile to order. Thermodynamics dictates that over time, order-or information-disappears. Whispers vanish in the wind just like the beauty of swirling cigarette smoke collapses into disorderly clouds. But thermodynamics also has loopholes that promote the growth of information in pockets. Although cities are all pockets where information grows, they are not all the same. For every Silicon Valley, Tokyo, and Paris, there are dozens of places with economies that accomplish little more than pulling rocks out of the ground. So, why does the US economy outstrip Brazil's, and Brazil's that of Chad? Why did the technology corridor along Boston's Route 128 languish while Silicon Valley blossomed? In each case, the key is how people, firms, and the networks they form make use of information. Seen from Hidalgo's vantage, economies become distributed computers, made of networks of people, and the problem of economic development becomes the problem of making these computers more powerful. By uncovering the mechanisms that enable the growth of information in nature and society, Why Information Grows lays bear the origins of physical order and economic growth. Situated at the nexus of information theory, physics, sociology, and economics, this book propounds a new theory of how economies can do not just more things, but more interesting things.

'Zine

Author: Pagan Kennedy
Publisher: Santa Fe Writer's Project
ISBN: 193965016X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 180

Book Description
"An important artifact from the underground past...an inspiration for any aspiring artist or anyone else who has ever felt trapped by mainstream society." -- Amazon Customer A unique and hilarious autobiography of a pioneer of the 1990s zine movement, containing all 8 issues of "Pagan's Head." A young woman named Pagan, having just graduated from a writing program at a very prestigious university, is left with a single burning question: Now what? She then takes an unusual step by deciding to invent her new self—the one the public will know—by starting her own magazine, one that will be written, created, and star none other than herself.

Behind the Silicon Curtain

Author: Dennis Hayes
Publisher: Black Rose Books Ltd.
ISBN: 9780921689621
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : sr
Pages : 220

Book Description
An eloquent, inside account of trouble in the ersatz paradise of Silicon Valley...The expose of the 'clean rooms' will shock readers...Discussions of computer hackers...and desperate entrepreneurs condemn the corporate atmosphere...The documentation and...daring are commendable.--"Kirkus Reviews"

The Problem of Alzheimer's

Author: Jason Karlawish
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250218748
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 269

Book Description
A definitive and compelling book on one of today's most prevalent illnesses. In 2020, an estimated 5.8 million Americans had Alzheimer’s, and more than half a million died because of the disease and its devastating complications. 16 million caregivers are responsible for paying as much as half of the $226 billion annual costs of their care. As more people live beyond their seventies and eighties, the number of patients will rise to an estimated 13.8 million by 2050. Part case studies, part meditation on the past, present and future of the disease, The Problem of Alzheimer's traces Alzheimer’s from its beginnings to its recognition as a crisis. While it is an unambiguous account of decades of missed opportunities and our health care systems’ failures to take action, it tells the story of the biomedical breakthroughs that may allow Alzheimer’s to finally be prevented and treated by medicine and also presents an argument for how we can live with dementia: the ways patients can reclaim their autonomy and redefine their sense of self, how families can support their loved ones, and the innovative reforms we can make as a society that would give caregivers and patients better quality of life. Rich in science, history, and characters, The Problem of Alzheimer's takes us inside laboratories, patients' homes, caregivers’ support groups, progressive care communities, and Jason Karlawish's own practice at the Penn Memory Center.