IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2023 - 16

Book Review
Invention and Innovation: A Brief History
of Hype and Failure -Vaclav Smil
(Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2023,
232 pp.)
Reviewed by Nicholas P. Miller
retired
Founder, Past President, HMMH
Bar Harbor, ME 04609 USA
 Author VAclAV Smil is a well-known
Czech-Canadian scientist and policy analyst. He is a
distinguished professor emeritus at the University of
Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. His interdisciplinary
research interests encompass energy, food, population,
economic, historical, and public policy studies.
I would not be surprised if what Smil really
wants is greater public skepticism about proposed
advances that would supposedly make all our lives
better. Also, perhaps our lives would be better if we
were not regularly captured by misleading or mistaken
claims of momentous breakthroughs. More
importantly, some of these new advances may take
on political support and get politicians to spend billions
of public dollars, if not fruitlessly, at least for
projects that prove less successful than promised.
All these proposed advances can be put into
the author's taxonomy of tool development beginning
when our ancestors first became bipedal. He
describes this development in the first few paragraphs:
crude stone tools more than 3 million years
ago; larger well-crafted hand axes and cleavers 1.5
million years ago; wooden stone-tipped spears about
a half million years old. Then, only about 25,000
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2023.3270504
Date of current version: 7 July 2023.
16
0278-0097/23©2023 IEEE
years ago, the Upper Paleolithic hunters mastered
the artisanal production of composite tools, adzes,
axes, and accompanying pottery. Following that,
crop cultivation gave rise to farming tools, then
horses for riding and draft animals, and the necessary
tack. Finally, chairs and household furnishings
were developed and eventually mass-produced. Ultimately,
organization and management of production,
information gathering, and data processing led
to the automated production of new tools and methods
to improve all aspects of manufacturing. I am
tempted to liken these many steps to the depiction
in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey of the transition
from a bone weapon to space travel.
Smil offers a few words to distinguish between
the notions of invention and innovation. " The meanings
have a large overlap, but innovation is perhaps
best understood as the process of introducing,
adopting, and mastering new materials, products,
processes, and ideas. " But I find more illuminating
his comparison of the USSR in the mid-20th century,
with China in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
The Soviets had scientists with many notable inventions
and developed weaponry that was competitive
with U.S. advances. The USSR also excelled in
developing the oil fields in Siberia to become, at the
time, the world's largest oil and gas industry. But,
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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2023

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