IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2015 - 4

Book Reviews
Nick Webb

Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks
The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution.
By Walter Isaacson. Simon and Schuster, 560 pages, 2014.

hen writing about
the history of the
computer, there are
many perspectives
available to analyze
the development of the technology. Probably most intuitively, we
can focus on the timeline of the
technology itself. Alternatively, we
can focus on the individual steps
required to bring that technology
to fruition, from conceptualization
of the idea to the delivery or use of
that technology as a working product. Or we can look at the climate
of development. What are the driving forces at play in the wider world
that caused, influenced, or accelerated development of this new
device, idea, or fundamental technology? All three of these approaches provide us with a coherent
narrative thread that enables us to
follow through the progression of
technology over time. Alternatively, as in the new book from Walter
Isaacson, we can instead examine
the people behind the development
of the technology, and use these
people and their lives as the lens
through which to examine how
technological progress is made.
In The Innovators: How a Group
of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks
Created the Digital Revolution, Isaa-

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2015.2499341
Date of publication: 17 December 2015

cson brings the people and personalities behind the development of
the computer, and its emergence as
the ubiquitous information machine,
into focus. The book begins with Ada,
Countess of Lovelace, Lord Byron's
mathematically gifted daughter, and
with her role in first translating, and
then significantly embellishing, notes
on the workings of Charles Babbage's
analytical engine, arguably the first
design of a general purpose computer. Interestingly, for a book that
focuses on the innovators behind the
development of digital age technology, this is the only chapter to bear
the name of an innovator, instead of
an innovation. The reasons for this
become clear later.
It is in this first substantive chapter that the problems inherent in
Isaacson's approach become apparent. First, the focus on individuals
requires a non-linear approach to the
development timeline. By necessity
a person is introduced, in conjunction with his or her invention or contribution. Then we need to step back
into the personal narrative of that
individual for the background of his
or her life to this point. We then step
forward again, to further examine
their contribution or influence, during which we are likely to encounter
other new individuals. This in turn
often necessitates a short biography of the life of this new person.
The consequence of all this jumping
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around is that it makes tracking the
coherent development timeline of
the technology significantly harder.
Of course, that isn't necessarily the
focus of Isaacson's text, and yet it
is so fundamentally the backbone
of the narrative that a feeling of discombobulation is hard to overcome.
Second, it is not clear that the
short biography we get of an individual actually contributes much to
the understanding of the development of the technology concerned.
For example, with Ada we hear
details of her life in court, and her
pursuit of mathematics, but none
of this really explains the reasoning
or rationale as to her attraction to
the analytical engine as a device,
or Charles Babbage as its creator,
other than perhaps giving some
insight into her particular interest
in the blend of mathematics and
poetic learning understandably
inherited from her father. Indeed,
the narrative around Ada Byron also
contains details of the lives of her
relatives, her infamous father Lord
Byron's many indiscretions among
them, which seem to have little relevance to her actual contribution
to the understanding of Babbage's
machine. That said, this first chapter
is interesting, more for the concept
it represents rather than the details
it contains. By far the biggest contribution this book makes is to report
on the roles women played in the
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december 2015

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