{"product_id":"from-steam-to-silicon-the-development-and-diffusion-of-general-purpose-technologies","title":"From Steam to Silicon: The Development and Diffusion of General-Purpose Technologies","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e \u003cdiv\u003e \u003cdiv\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"A fascinating history of innovation that manages to be sweeping without becoming abstract, rigorous without seeming dry, and urgent without resorting to hype [...] a narrative history that reads like a sequence of interlinked stories: surprisingly engaging tales of inventors in workshops, artisans displaced by machines, cities growing rapidly, fortunes rising and falling. Technical detail is present, of course, but always in service of the drama of real life.\" --Independent Book Review (independentbookreview.com)\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFrom Steam to Silicon\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e offers narrative histories of five great technological revolutions—the steam engine, electricity, digital computers, the internet, and artificial intelligence—tracing how each developed and transformed society.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe book is a work of narrative synthesis, drawing together technical histories, biographies, and contemporary accounts to follow how successive general-purpose technologies move from isolated experiments to world-shaping infrastructure. By placing these revolutions side by side, it compresses decades of specialized history into a single comparative arc, making visible patterns that are often hidden when each era is studied in isolation.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBlending vivid storytelling with careful research, the book follows inventors, engineers, entrepreneurs, and institutions as they grappled with new machines whose ultimate impact was far from obvious at the time. The story unfolds through vivid narrative vignettes from the lives of inventors, engineers, and financiers—including James Watt, Samuel Morse, Alexander Graham Bell, Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, J.P. Morgan, Gordon Moore, Bill Gates, Marc Andreessen, Frank Rosenblatt, Yann LeCun and many more.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWritten for general readers, technologists, and history enthusiasts, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFrom Steam to Silicon\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e offers a coherent framework for understanding how transformative technologies actually spread—through people, markets, and time—rather than how they are remembered after the fact.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAdditional formats and information are available at fromsteamtosilicon.com.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003c\/div\u003e \u003c\/div\u003e \u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Books Prime","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45914069500095,"sku":"243f406d-42cc-4998-baf8-06d697034eb2","price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0761\/7550\/7647\/files\/c59e16a41e9584a2990eede596615eaf.jpg?v=1785054290","url":"https:\/\/books-prime.com\/products\/from-steam-to-silicon-the-development-and-diffusion-of-general-purpose-technologies","provider":"Books Prime","version":"1.0","type":"link"}