Notes
- p.2
e.e cummings - with caps "A"!
- p.2,4,5
many hammers (Marx - 500 made in GB alone)
- p.10
wheels are for toys in pre-Columbian Mexico
- p.13
Necessity & invention - tools, fire not necessary for life (food grows) - but success of human is greater than other animals - necessity does not drive evolution, success does
- p.15
Butler (1863) - human machine symbiosis
- p.23
Usher - "cumulative synthesis approach" - design or invention model - c.f. story of lemon squeezer & p.24 inexplicability of insight
- p.27
simplistic understanding of science
- p.30/31
fundamental difference in view - B is focusses on component in isolation (turbine/stone axe), but seems to ignore implications of combinations (c.f. Mithen)
- p.42
unconvincing stories
- p.34
'great' inventions - those built on after (c.f. historic (H) creativity Boden)
- p.49
Edison - "analogies between two such disparate systems" B sees continuity alternative is to see analytic insights
- p.55/56
- Swift's Lagado book writing machine in Gulliver's Travels -
random generation + recognition/evaluation- p.66
homo ludens vs hom faber
- p.82-83
imp. of human knowledge for technology - example of US textile industry after independence
- p.93
steam - science meets engineering
- p.97
role of visual thinking in science and technology
- p.98-101
radio from Maxwell to Marconi
- p.103
Barnett "all imitation" entails "dome discrepancy" … but digital?
- p.111
inventions to suppress workers
- p.138
Kroeber's technological family "tree" - mixtures as well as survival (c.f. viral crossover)
- p.139/140
Edison's potential uses of phonograph
- p.185
the home computer fad
- p.187
invention, replication & discard
- p.191
Japanese woodworking plane is pulled as well as saws
- p.211
evolution but not improvement?
- p.214
progress of culture and species (Childe) - but (me) hominids hand tools - to what extent is homo sapiens an evolved cyborg - technology & biology together succeed
- p.13
Marx - worst human architects superior to best insect - humans envision structures in their imagination before erecting them
- p.76
catalogue of unfindable objects - Bad Ideas!!
- p.75-78
the importance of scientific fantasy