To put it slightly differently: In my longer projects, I’m trying to pay close attention to certain aspects of our past so we can better understand the present, and perhaps the future. My books, however, focus on historical episodes that have had a significant but underappreciated influence. My magazine and newspaper stories mainly address contemporary issues in science, technology, and business. My journalism and book reviews have also appeared in Wired, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. (Mar.In addition to writing books, I’m a longtime contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine.
Scientists, tinkerers, managers, and HR professionals will find plenty of inspiration here. Gertner follows these odd and brilliant thinkers to the end of Bell Labs in the 1980s and to their own ends, providing readers with insight into management, creativity, and engineering that remain applicable today.
According to Pierce, the Bell Labs environment nurtured creativity by simply allowing scientists and engineers the time and money to research its management was able to "think long-term toward the revolutionary, and to simultaneously think near-term toward manufacturing." Readers will glimpse the inner workings of the famed scientists, particularly Shannon, who "frequently went down the halls juggling or pogoing"%E2%80%94and occasionally doing both. From Bell Labs personnel%E2%80%94working for AT&T as well as the government during wartime%E2%80%94came an astonishing array of technology, from the telephone (which originally didn't have a ringer), to radar, synthetic rubber, and the laser. "To consider what occurred at Bell Labs.is to consider the possibilities of what large human organizations might accomplish." Tracing the lives of key contributors%E2%80%94including Bill Shockley, John Pierce, Claude Shannon, and Mervin Kelley%E2%80%94Gertner provides a compelling history that moves quickly through an era that provided many of the advancements of modern life. New York Times Magazine writer Gertner provides a view of American research and development that will take engineers, scientists, and managers back to the golden age of invention in the U.S.
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