The Idea Factory Bell Labs and Great Age of American Innovation (Jon Gertner)

P2
parlance

P9
antsy: agitated, impatient, or restless.
valedictorian: a student, typically having the highest academic achievements of the class, who delivers the valedictory at a graduation ceremony.



meritocratic organization

P107
innovation dated back to 16th century England.
the introduction into society of a novelty or new idea, usually relating to philosophy or religion.

P108
Innovation was not a simple action but "a total process" of interrelated parts. "It is not just the discovery of new phenomena, nor the development of a new product or manufacturing technique, nor the creation of a new market," he later wrote. "Rather, the process is all these things acting together in an integrated way toward a common industrial goal."

corollary: a proposition that follows from (and is often appended to) one already proved.

.. If you haven't manufactured the new thing in substantial quantities, you have not innovated; ...f you haven't found a market to sell the product, you have not innovated.




P132
Quip: a witty remark.


P134
An effective solid-state group, for example, required researchers with material processing skills, chemical skills, electrical measurement skills, theoretical physics skills, an d so forth. It was exceedingly unlikely to find all those talents in a single person.



Nine FORMULA

Excursion: a short journey or trip, especially one engaged in as a leisure activity.

P152
(To Kelly), inventing the future wasn't just a matter of inventing things for the future; it also entailed inventing ways to invent those things.


P153
...industrial science and engineering had become so complex that it now rquired men and women who were trained beyond the level that America's graduate schools could attain.
(Communications Development Training program, or CDT)



quake: tremble, shiver, quiver

hector: talk to (someone) in a bullying way.

timorous: showing or suffering from nervousness, fear, or a lack of confidence.

convalesce: recover one's health and strength over a period of time after an illness or operation.



P164
Home entertainment industries.


P165
It must do the job better, or cheaper, or both.


P172
On October 4, 1955, a test project for the solar cells was set up...

1956... solar power was not going to be a marketable innovation anytime soon.

onus

P174
Microwave towers would shape the future of telecommunications, as well as the fate of Bell Laboratories.
August 1951 (Wireless transcontinental line)

Young Turks - with an interest in attacking the hard, fundamental questions of science - something that many people thought could be done in a place like this

bridging the gap between the best science of the academy and the important appliations that a modern society needed.



Charles Townes - inventor of maser

Bill Baker
Jim Fisk

12/13/1960 Focused beam of light to carry a telephone call

Tingye Li

Charles Kao: glass fiber, carrying waves of light, might sovle the transmissin problem

Kompfner

probling the unknown-understood that failure was a large part of the job

Creativity, Inc. (Ed Catmull)

long table VS round table
distance, hierarchy, intrusive
unhindered communication is key

adorn
ancillary

Einstein dared to bend the implications of what we thought we knew.

The Grid (Gretchen Bakke)

In the not too distant future, the companies we now call "utilities" will become stewards of the wires and little more. But the wires... generates no revenues save a small rental fee to those who use them to pass electricity from one cash cow power plant to ... customers.

Every time America changes, whether a little bit or a lot, infrastructure lags behind.. big things and the institutions we invent to support these are far more permanent than the ways we choose to live.

There are 3306 electricity utility companies in the US, yet 2/3 of us pay our bill to one of the 189 big for-profit, investor-owned leviathans.

...government to regulate in ways not too onerous to the utilities' profit margin, had begun to break down. Carter. Reagan deregulation.

Electric power -> monopoly-made/distributed/billed, while all monopoly profits were government-regulated and all electricity prices were regulatorily determined.

Public Utilities Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA) effectively broke the utility's total control over everything that entered, moved through, and exited their power system...

changed the power industry, very slowly, but inexorably and forever.

ve·he·mence

ˈvēəməns/

noun

1. the display of strong feeling; passion.

   "they speak with starry vehemence about their project"

   synonyms:

   passion, force, forcefulness, ardor, fervor, violence, urgency, strength, vigor, intensity, keenness, feeling, enthusiasm, zeal "the recruiters were taught to speak with unwavering vehemence"

com·punc·tion

kəmˈpəNG(k)SH(ə)n/

noun

1. a feeling of guilt or moral scruple that prevents or follows the doing of something bad.

tendril

noun

a slender threadlike appendage of a climbing plant, often growing in a spiral form, that stretches out and twines around any suitable support.

Shoots were cut, divided into stems with broad leaves, tendrils , flowers, and fruits.

 hiatus

noun

a pause or gap in a sequence, series, or process.

Definitions of falter

verb

start to lose strength or momentum.

Definitions of flummox

adjective

bewildered or perplexed.

he became flummoxed and speechless

beige

noun a pale sandy yellowish-brown color.

collegially

合议

pulverize

verb reduce to fine particles.

difficult --> dispose of surplus power when its produced in excess

blustery day

Fiduciary: involving trust, especially with regard to the relationship between a trustee and a beneficiary.
unperturbed: not perturbed or concerned.

curb customer demand

P143
utility companies' profit margins have been shrinking

dispersed


P144
Investor-owned utilities account for ownership of over 50 percent of the net generation and almoost  80 percent of transmission.

p145
deliberate obfuscation of facts

P146

Money doesn't flow toward a critical part of the grid system–vars

P147
Meddling tentacles of big government



P233
The utilities, so long the only game in town, are not keeping up.

16% German companies


P235
Finding a way to store electricity ... at the top of every ideologue's list
Collective future

Buried hydro in place of pumped hydro storage, giant hydroelectric storage pistons on german plains
Think beyond batteries
perforate
Artificial mountains

compressed air storage in utah, --> wyoming

P238
Collective demand

icebox

unwieldy: difficult to carry or move because of its size, shape or weight
rare earth elements (China)
can be scaled and moved

electrolyte

brine, saline
accretion: the process of growth or increase, typically by the gradual accumulation of additional layers or matter.

scuttle: run hurriedly or furtively with short quick steps.
de rigueur -> fashion
bivouac -> bivouacked: sleep in open


Every battery on the market is a compromise between price, toxicity, reactivity, and weight.

It's about tweaking any number of relationships between metals and electrolytes.

(Machine learning???)

rooftop solar installations don't take people off the grid, and they aren't transforming individual homes into islandable nanogrids or neighborhoods into discrete, sustainable microgrids. Indeed just the opposite. made everywhere and used everywhere. grid stands as it long has between production and consumption; it still interconnects us all.

Military makes their own electricity.

Lithium-ion, accessible, affordable, longevity, lightless


electric cars: big batteries on wheels -- > stabilizer for the grid

doesn't rely upon the quirks of geology or climate
a electric car --> a little money factory

people dont' want a car that forces them to stick close to home.

extant, not ready for the mass market

Fleets, USPS, public vehicles

military -> sole owner of electrical infrastructure and vehicles

Dreams, even ones sketched and prototyped, are the way of the future, the grail is its driver, and today's entrepreneurs, and kooks...

储能 ！= 电池

maximum inclusivity


customers dont' wnat kilowatt-hours; they want services such as hot showers, cold beer, lit rooms.


newfangled

tick

rebar, tar

wisdom is not the product of added computational power (though that helps). It's a mode of systems reform capable of hearing what people say, noticing what they do, and premising thoughtful action upon both.

sentient cities: able to perceive or feel things.

undulaitons

Becoming Steve Jobs (Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli)

What's the truth of your ambition? Do you have the humility to continually grow, to learn from your failures and get back up? Are you utterly relentless for your cause, ferocious for your cause? Can you channel your intensity and intelligence and energy and talents and gifts and ideas outward into something that is bigger and more impactful than you are? That's what leadership is all about.

impulsiveness.. but the response to fighting through that suffering can be tremendous personal growth.

Restlessness is far more important and powerful than simple ambition or raw intelligence.

It is fueled by curiosity, the ache to build something meaningful, and a sense of purpose to make the most of one's entire life.


"if you think something through hard enough, you will get to the inevitable answer."

he wanted Apple's staff to brim with the exceptionalism he had witnessed at Pixar.


..Audacity of his demand was matched by his cool and accurate appraisal of the landscape.

fiduciary repsonsiblity

if you weren't good at your job, he owed it to the rest of the team to get rid of you.

it's all in the preparedness...

develop patience...

calculated decision..

Steve pushed Woz, cajoling him, berating him, and challenging his thinking.

Civilization and its discontents (Sigmund Freud)

1.
oceanic

infantile


2.


Three measures
Powerful deflections  --> scientific activities
substitutive satisfactions  --> art
intoxicating substances --> influences our body and alter its chemistry


dichotomy

the program of the pleasure principle

mild narcosis

delusional remoulding of reality

religion, presupposes an intimidation of intelligence

altering the world to suit his wishes
psychical infantilism
unconditional submission

3
bodily organism --> transient

order and cleanliness

anal-erotism
excretory, parsimony

sublimation is a vicissitude
it is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built up upon a renunciation of instinct


4
transforming the instinct into an impulse with an inhibited aim

The more closely the members of a family are attached to one another, the more often do they tend to cut themselves off from others, and the more difficult is it for them to enter into the wider circle of life.

phylogenetically

Detaching himself from his family becomes a task that faces every young person

source of pleasure
no substitute for it as a means of propagating the human race


5

neurotics
inertia of the libido
instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness

unfair to reproach civilization with trying to eliminate strife and competition from human activity.
(undoubtedly indispensable)

psychological premisses on which the (communist) system is based are untenable illusion

expedient or advantageous

6
utter perplexity
Sadism was clearly a part of sexual life, in the activities of which affection could be replaced with cruelty.

Neurosis was regarded as the outcome of a struggle between the interest of self-preservation and the demands of the libido, a struggle in which the ego had been victorious but at the price of severe sufferings and renunciations.



7

the tension between the harsh super-ego and the ego that is subjected to it, is called by us the sense of guilt; it expresses itself as a need for punishment.

as fear of loss of love

one renounce one's satisfactions in order not to lose its love
the child's ego has to content itself with the unhappy role of the authority

intensification of the sense of guilt
ever-increasing reinforcement of the sense of guilt

inextricably
tormenting uncertainty and with restless groping.

8
remorse, can be older than conscience.

the sense of guilt as the most important problem in the development of civilization and to show that the price we pay for our advance in civilization is a loss of happiness through the heightening of the sense of guilt.

primal guilt, which has also the beginning of civilization, was acquired.

guilt, super-ego, conscience

abstained
ambivalence: the state of having mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about something or someone.


the commandment is impossible to fulfill; such an enormous inflation of love can only lower its value, not get rid of the difficulty. Civilization pays no attention to all this; it merely admonishes us that the harder it is to obey the precept the more meritorious it is to do so.


man's judgements of value follow directly his wishes for happiness–they are an attempt to support his illusions with arguments.

immortal adversary

precept: a general rule intended to regulate behavior or thought.

revolt, precept, repression

distribution of libido between ego and objects;

omniscience of the super-ego
omnipresent

Where Good Ideas Come From (Steven Johnson)

tropical atolls

The Adjacent possible
Serendipity

oscillation between Asexual and sexual reproduction

noise and error are needed

exaptation

aqueduct
vine trellises
cretaceous

archaeopteryx

cross-disciplinary coffeehouse break
lots of hobbies

scleractinia


meticulous

[non- | ] market x [group | individual]

Go for a walk; cultivate hunches; write everything down, but keep your folders messy; embrace serendipity; make generative mistakes; take on multiple hobbies; frequent coffeehouses and other liquid networks; follow the links; let others build on your ideas; borrow, recycle, re-invent. Build a tangled bank.

Poor Dad, Rich Dad (Robert Kiyosaki)

Money isn't real
it's about the things you don't know
profit created when you buy (not sell)

Poor people are more greedy than rich people. if a person was rich, that person was providing something that other people wanted.

First need to give

Overcoming bad habits


hamster in the wheel
sales
direct marketing
overspecialization --> union protection

learn more VS earn more

sell, communication

know a little about a lot

'if you're going to go broke, go big'

balanced people go nowhere. To make progress, you must first go unbalanced.