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The Idea Factory
- Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation
- Narrated by: Chris Sorensen
- Length: 17 hrs and 28 mins
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The Idea Factory
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Publisher's summary
In The Idea Factory, New York Times Magazine writer Jon Gertner reveals how Bell Labs served as an incubator for scientific innovation from the 1920s through the 1980s. In its heyday, Bell Labs boasted nearly 15,000 employees, 1200 of whom held PhDs and 13 of whom won Nobel Prizes. Thriving in a work environment that embraced new ideas, Bell Labs scientists introduced concepts that still propel many of today’s most exciting technologies.
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- By: W. Bernard Carlson
- Narrated by: Allan Robertson
- Length: 16 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 354
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 304
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Story4 out of 5 stars 303
Nikola Tesla was a major contributor to the electrical revolution that transformed daily life at the turn of the 20th century. His inventions, patents, and theoretical work formed the basis of modern AC electricity, and contributed to the development of radio and television. Like his competitor Thomas Edison, Tesla was one of America's first celebrity scientists, enjoying the company of New York high society and dazzling the likes of Mark Twain with his electrical demonstrations. An astute self-promoter and gifted showman, he cultivated a public image of the eccentric genius.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A detailed examination of Tesla's work
- By Jean on 02-01-14
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How the Laser Happened
- Adventures of a Scientist
- By: Charles H. Townes
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 29
In How the Laser Happened, Nobel laureate Charles Townes provides a highly personal look at some of the leading events in 20th-century physics. This lively memoir, packed with firsthand accounts and historical anecdotes, is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the history of science and an inspiring example for students considering scientific careers.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great for aspiring physicists
- By James S. on 10-06-18
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Big Science
- Ernest Lawrence and the Invention That Launched the Military-Industrial Complex
- By: Michael Hiltzik
- Narrated by: Bob Saouer
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 116
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 101
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 100
Since the 1930s, the scale of scientific endeavors has grown exponentially. The birth of Big Science can be traced to Berkeley, California, nearly nine decades ago, when a resourceful young scientist pondered his new invention and declared, "I'm going to be famous!" Ernest Orlando Lawrence's cyclotron would revolutionize nuclear physics, but that was only the beginning of its impact.This is the incredible story of how one invention changed the world and of the man principally responsible for it all. Michael Hiltzik tells the riveting full story here for the first time.
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4 out of 5 stars
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An informative and thought-provoking book
- By Jean on 08-23-15
By: Michael Hiltzik
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The Friendly Orange Glow
- The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture
- By: Brian Dear
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 21 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 116
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 107
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 107
At a time when Steve Jobs was only a teenager and Mark Zuckerberg wasn't even born, a group of visionary engineers and designers - some of them only high school students - in the late 1960s and 1970s created a computer system called PLATO, which was not only years but light-years ahead in experimenting with how people would learn, engage, communicate, and play through connected computers.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Memory lane for the cyberist.
- By Robert C. Hickcox on 08-08-18
By: Brian Dear
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The Chip
- How Two Americans Invented the Microchip and Launched a Revolution
- By: T.R. Reid
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 53
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 40
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 40
Barely 50 years ago a computer was a gargantuan, vastly expensive thing that only a handful of scientists had ever seen. The world's brightest engineers were stymied in their quest to make these machines small and affordable until the solution finally came from two ingenious young Americans. Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce hit upon the stunning discovery that would make possible the silicon microchip, a work that would ultimately earn Kilby the Nobel Prize for physics in 2000.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Great narration, sloppy writing
- By Constantly Learning on 10-06-22
By: T.R. Reid
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The Network
- The Battle for the Airwaves and the Birth of the Communications Age
- By: Scott Woolley
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 91
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 80
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 81
This is the origin story of the airwaves - the foundational technology of the communications age - as told through the 40-year friendship of an entrepreneurial industrialist and a brilliant inventor. David Sarnoff, the head of RCA and equal parts Steve Jobs, Jack Welch, and William Randolph Hearst, was the greatest supporter of his friend, Edwin Armstrong, developer of the first amplifier, the modern radio transmitter, and FM radio.
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4 out of 5 stars
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The Classic Struggle
- By Jean on 06-01-16
By: Scott Woolley
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Thinking Machines
- The Quest for Artificial Intelligence - and Where It's Taking Us Next
- By: Luke Dormehl
- Narrated by: Gus Brown
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 60
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 50
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Story4 out of 5 stars 51
When most of us think about artificial intelligence, our minds go straight to cyborgs, robots, and sci-fi thrillers where machines take over the world. But the truth is that artificial intelligence is already among us. It exists in our smartphones, fitness trackers, and refrigerators that tell us when the milk will expire. In some ways the future people dreamed of at the World's Fair in the 1960s is already here. We're teaching our machines how to think like humans, and they're learning at an incredible rate.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Mostly platitudes with no depth
- By Gary on 03-24-17
By: Luke Dormehl
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Hood
- Trailblazer of the Genomics Age
- By: Luke Timmerman, David Baltimore
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
Lee Hood did that rarest of things. He enabled scientists to see things they couldn't see before and do things they hadn't dreamed of doing. Scientists can now sequence complete human genomes in a day, setting in motion a revolution that is personalizing medicine. Hood, a son of the American West, was an unlikely candidate to transform biology. But with ferocious drive, he led a team at Caltech that developed the automated DNA sequencer, the tool that paved the way for the Human Genome Project.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A Revealing Biography
- By Jean on 07-27-17
By: Luke Timmerman, and others
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The Theory That Would Not Die
- How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy
- By: Sharon Bertsch McGrayne
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 487
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 409
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 409
Bayes' rule appears to be a straightforward, one-line theorem: by updating our initial beliefs with objective new information, we get a new and improved belief. To its adherents, it is an elegant statement about learning from experience. To its opponents, it is subjectivity run amok. Sharon Bertsch McGrayne here explores this controversial theorem and the human obsessions surrounding it.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Who is the intended audience?
- By Billy on 07-21-14
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No Better Time
- The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, the Genius Who Transformed the Internet
- By: Molly Knight Raskin
- Narrated by: Christine Marshall
- Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 65
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 60
No Better Time tells of a young, driven mathematical genius who wrote a set of algorithms that would create a faster, better Internet. It's the story of a beautiful friendship between a loud, irreverent student and his soft-spoken MIT professor, of a husband and father who spent years struggling to make ends meet only to become a billionaire almost overnight with the success of Akamai Technologies, the Internet content delivery network he cofounded with his mentor.
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4 out of 5 stars
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An Overlooked Hero of 9-11
- By Jean on 05-27-16
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The Chaos Imperative
- How Chance and Disruption Increase Innovation, Effectiveness, and Success
- By: Ori Brafman, Judah Pollack
- Narrated by: Drew Birdseye
- Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 64
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 56
Ori Brafman and management consultant Judah Pollack dramatically demonstrate how even the best and most efficient organizations - from Fortune 500 companies to today's US Army - can become more innovative by allowing a little unstructured space and "contained chaos" into their planning and decision-making. Through their consulting work, they realized that while structure and hierarchy are essential both in large corporations and small groups, too much of either can stifle creativity.
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5 out of 5 stars
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a must read!!
- By Kelly Pavich on 05-26-19
By: Ori Brafman, and others
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Whiplash
- How to Survive Our Faster Future
- By: Joi Ito, Jeff Howe
- Narrated by: James Foster
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 366
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 309
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 309
Today, not only is everything digital getting faster, cheaper, and smaller at an exponential rate, we also have the Internet. When these two revolutions - one in technology and the other in communications - joined, an explosive force was unleashed that changed the very nature of innovation. And with any change, we have seen many strategic blunders and extraordinary learning curves along the way.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Just general advice on how to survive
- By A. Yoshida on 09-01-17
By: Joi Ito, and others
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The Department of Mad Scientists
- Inside DARPA, the Path-Breaking Government Agency You've Never Heard Of
- By: Michael Belfiore
- Narrated by: Michael Belfiore
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 170
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 90
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 92
The first-ever inside look at DARPA - the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - the maverick and controversial group whose futuristic work has had amazing civilian and military applications, from the Internet to GPS to driverless cars
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2 out of 5 stars
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meh
- By Patrick on 12-22-09
By: Michael Belfiore
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Broad Band
- The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet
- By: Claire L. Evans
- Narrated by: Claire L. Evans
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 172
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 146
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 145
Women are not ancillary to the history of technology; they turn up at the very beginning of every important wave. But they've often been hidden in plain sight, their inventions and contributions touching our lives in ways we don't even realize. Vice reporter and YACHT lead singer Claire L. Evans finally gives these unsung female heroes their due with her insightful social history of the Broad Band, the women who made the Internet what it is today. Evans shows us how these women built and colored the technologies we can't imagine life without.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Inspiring
- By Jean on 03-29-18
By: Claire L. Evans
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Data-ism
- The Revolution Transforming Decision Making, Consumer Behavior, and Almost Everything Else
- By: Steve Lohr
- Narrated by: Steve Lohr
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 117
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 100
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Story4 out of 5 stars 97
Coal, iron ore, and oil were the key productive assets that fueled the Industrial Revolution. Today data is the vital raw material of the information economy. The explosive abundance of this digital asset, more than doubling every two years, is creating a new world of opportunity and challenge. Data-ism is about this next phase, in which vast, Internet-scale data sets are used for discovery and prediction in virtually every field. It is a journey across this emerging world with people, illuminating narrative examples, and insights.
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4 out of 5 stars
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More business case than serious analysis
- By Godfried Gubbels on 06-03-15
By: Steve Lohr
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- How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age
- By: Rob Goodman, Jimmy Soni
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Claude Shannon was a tinkerer, a playful wunderkind, a groundbreaking polymath, and a digital pioneer whose insights made the Information Age possible. He constructed fire-breathing trumpets and customized unicycles, outfoxed Vegas casinos, and built juggling robots, but he also wrote the seminal text of the Digital Revolution. That work allowed scientists to measure and manipulate information as objectively as any physical object. His work gave mathematicians and engineers the tools to bring that world to pass.
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3 out of 5 stars
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