The Greatest Inventions of the Past 2,000 Years

by John Brockman

Book Overview

Contributors from a variety of fields offer their views of the most important discoveries of the last two millennia--and some earlier ones that bore fruit more recently--including social and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 068485998X
• ISBN13: 9780684859989
• Release Date: January 2000
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.9" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Thought-provoking!

The book is basically just a summary of the exchanges on the Edge mailing list. All the writers have spent some time in their life, thinking about some aspect of humanity in great detail, and all of them have at least published two books. It made me think a lot about life, and many entries in the book are very unobvious. Of course, the average reader will probably not agree with many of the writers' thoughts or opinions. Nevertheless, I would recommend anyone to quickly browse the book to see what are the ideas that have influenced humanity so immensely in the last 2k years.

Diverse ideas from smart minds

This book is a fascinating collection of ideas from some of the best scientific thinkers alive today. The range of inventions is extreme. Cliff Pickover, author of "Surfing Through Hyperspace," selected paper as the most important invention. Physics professor Freeman Dyson, author of "The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet" selected "hay" as the most important invention. There are many surprises in this book and much to be learned.