000			02170nam a22002057a 4500
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020			_a9780262551014
082			_a600 _bSMI
100			_aSmil, Vaclav _98510
245			_aInvention and innovation: _ba brief history of hype and failure
260			_bMIT Press _aCambridge _c2023
300			_a219 p.
365			_aUSD _b19.95
520			_aThe world is never finished catching up with Vaclav Smil. In his latest and perhaps most readable book, Invention and Innovation, the prolific author—a favorite of Bill Gates—pens an insightful and fact-filled jaunt through the history of human invention. Impatient with the hype that so often accompanies innovation, Smil offers in this book a clear-eyed corrective to the overpromises that accompany everything from new cures for diseases to AI. He reminds us that even after we go quite far along the invention-development-application trajectory, we may never get anything real to deploy. Or worse, even after we have succeeded by introducing an invention, its future may be marked by underperformance, disappointment, demise, or outright harm. Drawing on his vast breadth of scientific and historical knowledge, Smil explains the difference between invention and innovation, and looks not only at inventions that failed to dominate as promised (such as the airship, nuclear fission, and supersonic flight), but also at those that turned disastrous (leaded gasoline, DDT, and chlorofluorocarbons). And finally, most importantly, he offers a “wish list” of inventions that we most urgently need to confront the staggering challenges of the twenty-first century. Filled with engaging examples and pragmatic approaches, this book is a sobering account of the folly that so often attends human ingenuity—and how we can, and must, better align our expectations with reality. (https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262551014/invention-and-innovation/)
650			_aInventions--Defects--History--Popular works _922348
650			_aSystem failures (Engineering)--History _922349
650			_aNew products--History _922350
942			_cBK _2ddc
999			_c8592 _d8592