The Pinball Effect: Journeys Through Knowledge: The Extraordinary Patterns of Change That Link Past, Present, and Future

by James Burke

Book Overview

The Pinball Effect takes the reader on many different journeys through the web of knowledge. Knowledge, it turns out, has many unforeseen and surprising effects. The book, for instance, owes its... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316116025
• ISBN13: 9780316116022
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Little Brown and Company
• Length: 310 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Brains or balls?

History of technology or history as technology, this book is an entertaining guide through the human adventure of the past few centuries. You may quibble with precise cause and effect connections the author proposes but the overwhelming effect is to drive home one irrefutable message: "We all live on the great dynamic web of change". No other book that I have ever read justifies better the first sentence in its introduction (not even the Tale of Two Cities)But who has made the next connection, ie that the pinball effect is another manifestation of the Howard Bloom's Global Brain (ISBN: 0471419192)? Once you dispose of the preconception that brains have to be conscious then you can better see that technological development is the learning experience of our collective brain. The balls flying from pin to pin are the interactions of agents in the complex adaptive system that is modern civilisation. Treat the book as fun and you will see connections that you were never aware existed. Treat the book as a guide and you will be lead on a non-linear path through the history of ideas, invention and technology. Treat the book as recipes for invention and you will find there are no rules. Treat the book as mind food and you will realise that the human condition is more interesting and meaningful than any fundamentalist has ever dreamed of... But read it, dip into it, return to it and follow up some of the exciting ideas that may find a new home in the next century.

A fascinating read.

A previous reviewer has pointed out that much of what is described in the book is coincidence. This is true but misses the point entirely. The author does not mean to imply cause and effect; the world is too complex for that. The point is that there are several sets of scattered events that can be joined together; the fascinating thing is that such events and connections exist in the first place. Burke gives examples of such, and does so in such a way that you know he is only sampling from a much larger collection of them. For example, the following sequence of events comes from the first chapter of the book:Rowland Hill is best known for introducing the idea of postage stamps. The first printer that the British government hired was an American named Jacob Perkins, who later turned his new printing techniques to the problem of mass producing printed cotton cloth. For this he used a special gum imported from West Africa called Senegal gum. This was made possible by the French who had colonized that part of the world. That in turn was made possible by the 17th century statesman called Jean-Baptiste Colbert, who modernized much of France and in particular its navy. He was responsible for the building of the Canal du Midi that cut a swathe in France from the Atlantic to the Med. One of the engineers who worked on this massive undertaking was Sebastien Vauban, a brilliant inventor who also came up with a new method of siege warfare that was used by French and American troops to defeat the British at Yorktown. The American victory led to a huge number of loyalists fleeing to Nova Scotia. One of them was Abraham Kunders, who saw an opportunity in transporting the other group of refugees sweeping into that part of the world, namely Scots who had been kicked off their lands. After some time this transatlantic traffic was beginning to wane. Meanwhile, Hill's Penny Post had just begun, and Kunders was quick to realize that this would mean a huge amount of mail requiring transportation across the Atlantic, and made sure his company was there to ship a good deal of it. This made him rich, and started a successful family business which by the twentieth century and a clerical error was the Cunard shipping company, that built such well known liners as the Lustiania and the Queen Elizabeth II.And that's just part of the first chapter, remember.

The Pinball Effect - another stellar work by Burke

Although, I'm not even finished yet, I know I'll be re-reading this at some time to take advantage of the inspired gateways scattered throughout the text. I remember watching the original 'Connections' series on PBS years ago, and his work fascinated me even then. This work is easily readable, and makes itself readily available to young and old, the scientifically minded and those just looking for a good read. 'Pinball' is a fun excursion through science, technology, and history! If you don't realize just how connected life is, this book will certainly open your eyes to the web of a world in which we live.

Really fun story about history and connections ...

July 16, 1999I first became aware of James Burke work through the Discovery/TLC channels and when I stumbled across his audio novel Connections I had to try it out. Connections was great and so I was encouraged to try out his other audio novels, The PinBall Effect which were just as ingenious and entertaining.The quality of James Burke's work set the stage for what has become a new age in bedtime stories. My new born son then 3 months was quickly introduced to the art of the audio novel as his new bedtime stories.Its been well over a year now after several dozen audio novels the little guy has now turned 18 months old. The very creative story of The Pinball Effect still gets a replay every few months and he enjoys it every time.The only sad part about the James Burke audio novels is that I haven't seen a new one in a very long time.I highly recommend this creative story about history and the connections which brought us to where we are!Arnold D Veness

"Pinball" is exactly the point

This latest edition of Mr. Burke's unique perspective of history is aptly named. Unlike his previous, best known works, "Connections" and "The Day the Universe Changed", James Burke does not examine the events bearing on a specific topic indepth. This volume, of 20 chapters, contains a plethora of persons and events in each. It has an exhaustive index of 18 pages and 447 points of reference in the margins. Taking a different literary approach from his previous works, Burke makes his point of the connections between seemingly disjointed and unforeseen events in history remarkably well. Aptly titled "The Pinball Effect" James Burke coherently outlines events leading from one point of reference to a completely unforseen outcome. He does not examine the advent of a specific discovery or human insight exhaustively. In prose style, it is a true outline, giving very brief summaries of the interactions of events and persons. This gives a whirl wind, fast paced tone to the work. Additionally, adding to the the pinball pace of the book, Burke has added to the margins of each page "gateways", cites to other pages in the book, where the event is mentioned. Based on the premise that history can be recorded as timelines, and these timelines invariably cross innumerably, these "gateways," as Burke terms them, show how preceived unrelated events are indeed related. The major premise of this work is that these relationships are impossible to determine contemporaneously and it is only with the benefit of hindsight can the implications be devined. Since knowlege expands exponentially, each new insight building upon the former, and chaotically, with each individual mind developing it's own thought patterns, the possbilities are exhausting. These inexhaustive combinations and the tangentery implications that may be drawn therefrom is the "Pinball Effect." Thus, this departure from Burke's previous approach is well suited to his premise. This work is not a companion book to the television series "Connections 2", although many chapters cover topics of these episodes. In an interview to the Boston Phoenix newspaper, on debute of the "Connections 2" series in 1994, Burke stated that the indepth examination given in the hour long episodes of "Connections" and "The Day the Universe Changed" were not accessible to today's television audience, accustom to soundbite TV. Therefore, "Connections 2" consisted of facer pased, half hour shows. Whether or not this premise is true, "The Pinball Effect" is not a dumbing down of knowleged for the masses by it's outline technique. It is fascinating, fast paced reading as such, but is is also an excellant reference book. Every bookshelf should contain a copy for this reason alone. Almost the whole of Western scientific history and it's impact on society is in this book. The excellant index and bibliography enables one to look up characters and events divergent as: Josiah Wedgwood, Luigi Galvani, Immanual Ka