Invention and Innovation

Vaclav Smil's history of human invention is a corrective to the hype that so often greets new technology, from promised cures for disease to artificial intelligence. He explains how invention differs from innovation and shows that a long path of development may yield nothing usable, or an invention that underperforms, disappoints, dies out or does harm. His examples include technologies that never achieved the dominance once promised, such as supersonic flight, the airship and nuclear fission, and others that proved disastrous, such as DDT, chlorofluorocarbons and leaded gasoline. Smil also offers a wish list of the inventions most urgently needed to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century, arguing that expectations must be brought in line with reality.

Bill Gates, in his 2023 holiday list, highly recommended it to anyone who wants to understand how human ingenuity brought the world to where it is now.