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Ben Reinhardt
1/ Did you know that Vannevar Bush (you know, the guy who helped enable everything from radar to the manhattan project, the NSF to memexes) wrote an autobiography? Turns out that yes he did, it's been out of print since the 70's, and it's *excellent* BOOK REPORT THREAD
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Ben Reinhardt 30. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @Ben_Reinhardt
2/ Before you even start, it has one of the best forwards I've ever read* and like much of the book, doesn't feel dated at all. "I have drawn on the wealth of the vocabulary of the youth of our times. Theirs is a pungent stock of words, and action marks most of them"
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Ben Reinhardt 30. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @Ben_Reinhardt
3/ Bush is the king of precision and nuance. Studying history can be *both* good (learn from the past) and bad (it can devolve into mythologizing.)
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Ben Reinhardt 30. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @Ben_Reinhardt
4/ Sometimes it gets super meta. He doesn't do a chronological tale of his life at all - instead he cherry picks stories he thinks are the best to learn from.
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Ben Reinhardt 30. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @Ben_Reinhardt
5/ More meta - "yes, I realize there are a bajillion books on the Making of the Atomic Bomb and the Radar* so I will skip those" *I recommend The Making of the Atomic Bomb and Tuxedo Park if you are interested
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Ben Reinhardt 30. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @Ben_Reinhardt
6/ What *is* dated is his oft-repeated concerns about overpopulation. It's a wonderful reminder of how many things we thought would bring about the end of civilization that are now (arguably) non-issues.
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Ben Reinhardt 30. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @Ben_Reinhardt
7/ It's also fascinating which breakthroughs he thought were just around the corner, and which were not even on his radar. Why did he think general antivirals were imminent? Why weren't they? (Would certainly be nice to have right now)
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Ben Reinhardt 30. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @Ben_Reinhardt
8/ Individuals making the difference between success and failure of critical technologies and programs is a huge theme.
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Ben Reinhardt 30. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @Ben_Reinhardt
9/ Specifically, he repeats the theme of innovations only happening because individuals went against the system. Which raises the uncomfortable question - in order to get more amazing sci-fi shit, how do you systematize going against the system?
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Ben Reinhardt 30. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @Ben_Reinhardt
10/ Tons of detail about how they structured organizations like the NRDC and *why* Feels like he's basically giving blueprints for people who want to follow that are easy to understand and hard to execute.
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Ben Reinhardt 30. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @Ben_Reinhardt
11/ He describes the *massive* shift in how science and research was done in the US during WWII. This is where our modern system was born - both the good parts and bad.
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Ben Reinhardt 30. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @Ben_Reinhardt
12/ Today, university administration is basically bloatware. But it actually started as a valuable labor aggregator so researchers could focus on research.
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Ben Reinhardt 30. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @Ben_Reinhardt
13/ This is the moment that Universities began to depend on federal research dollars. I think this started as a good thing, but the relationship has metastasized.
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Ben Reinhardt 30. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @Ben_Reinhardt
14/ From what I can tell, Bush was a *great* manager.
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Ben Reinhardt 30. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @Ben_Reinhardt
15/ Also, apparently F.D.R. was a good manager too. 🤷‍♂️
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Ben Reinhardt 30. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @patrickc
16/ They could review a project in a week and get work started on it *the next day.* More fodder for 's
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Ben Reinhardt 30. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @patrickc
17/ Bush earns his reputation as the person who can go between Military/Government, Academia, and Industry. He gets both how the structures of each of them make sense in their own context, but then clash when they interface.
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Ben Reinhardt 30. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @patrickc
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Ben Reinhardt 30. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @patrickc
19/ Trust in lines of communication is underrated as a goal to strive for.
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Ben Reinhardt 30. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @patrickc
20/ The consequences of these organizational structures today - NASA changes it's goals every 4 or 8 years ...
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Ben Reinhardt 30. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @patrickc
21/ I'm still not sure if Bush or Jewett was right ... Deserves more digging!
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Ben Reinhardt 30. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @patrickc @SafiBahcall
22/ Many of the stories emphasize 's point in Loonshots about the need to manage the transfer of technology from the people who create it to the people who use it. Also hi Millikan! I love how random science heroes just drop into the story.
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Ben Reinhardt 30. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @patrickc @SafiBahcall
23/ "I am a hog on the ice - see how I slide!"
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Ben Reinhardt 30. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @patrickc @SafiBahcall
24/ Committees can actually be good: when there are two groups who think very differently but have a common goal.
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Ben Reinhardt 30. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @patrickc @SafiBahcall
25/ Made me think a lot about the value of coordinating efforts vs. letting a thousand flowers bloom. Where I came down is that you should absolutely have parallel efforts but there is an optimum amount of coordination that isn't zero. Were that optimum lies an open question
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Ben Reinhardt 30. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @patrickc @SafiBahcall
26/ War may be one of the few situations where *massive* numbers of people all have a real stake in the outcome.
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Ben Reinhardt 30. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @patrickc @SafiBahcall
27/ Innovations appearing outside the organizations which find them useful is still a huge problem today.
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Ben Reinhardt 30. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @patrickc @SafiBahcall
28/ To be written of like this: LIFE GOALS
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Ben Reinhardt 30. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @patrickc @SafiBahcall
29/ There are so many things that fall into this category: the concept is straightforward so it's not 'novel' but it takes a ton of R&D and grinding to even get it to the point of a proof of concept.
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Ben Reinhardt 30. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @patrickc @SafiBahcall
30/ I think Bush was a truly kind person. This is the story of what he did for civilians who kept sending him ideas for inventions they thought were desperately important to the war effort.
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Ben Reinhardt 30. sij
Odgovor korisniku/ci @patrickc @SafiBahcall
31/ The duality of command - sometimes commanders need to be obeyed no questions asked, and sometimes they need to be challenged. I love the idea of having a literal physical signal for it. Apparently businesspeople used to use their ties for this too. We've lost these signals
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