In his new book, The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hacker, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution (S&S, Oct. 7), Walter Isaacson credits not one historical figure but teams of collaborative people that, over time, "made Steve Jobs possible."
As keynote speaker yesterday morning at 10 a.m., interviewed by the Slate Group's Jacob Weisberg, Isaacson explains that these teams, having met at the intersection of the Internet and computers, were responsible for the evolution of the digital age. "During the Vietnam War, academics avoided the draft by going to work for the Pentagon," he says. "They worked on classified computer programs." During this time, Robert Noyce founded the Intel Corporation and came to be known as "the father of Silicon Valley," a visionary leader who didn't believe in hierarchy and likened his team to a group of madrigal singers, all working in harmony. "Putting together the right team is the key to innovation," Isaacson says. "Collaborative people are responsible for sustaining that innovation."
Isaacson's previous book, Steve Jobs, provided insight into the value of collaborative efforts. "When he was at Pixar, Steve designed the office with the bathrooms in the center of the large work space. This was no accident. He wanted people to have serendipitous encounters at work, to bump into one another on the way to use the facilities so they could share ideas. The Internet was invented for collaborative innovation."
Although The Innovators doesn't favor one person over another, Isaacson told the audience that he is particularly taken by the story of Lord Byron's daughter, Ada Lovelace. "She was a creative person, a poet, and caught in the middle of her parents' bad marriage. Lady Byron objected to Ada's poetry writing and insisted she be tutored in math instead," Isaacson says. Still a poet at heart, when Lovelace was taught how to use a loom she took its punch-card system to the next level, finding ways to program patterns, colors, and fabrics together to create designs. "She was one of the first to combine liberal arts and beauty with science, much as we've learned to program how to connect software to hardware." Isaacson mentioned that his next book might be a biography of Lovelace, whom he credits for being an early digital innovator.
Isaacson, it turns out, is a fan of paper books. "Paper itself is interactive, it's a great technology," he says. "We're going to have to keep using it for books." On the other hand, Isaacson's vision of the next phase of publishing is "Wikified multimedia books" that can be accessed by readers interested in leaving comments or, in some cases, even revising the contents of the book."
Isaacson then surprised the audience by saying, "I love Amazon," explaining that he buys a lot of clothing and books on the website and lauds its customer service. "But when you screw with authors and publishers the way Amazon is doing now, you have a problem."
