Introduction
New Thinking by Dagogo Altraide is a book on the technological development that humans have achieved over the decades.
The book presents the stories of the small and big innovation that are integral part of our lives. From the discovery of current and electricity to the fascinating world of Artificial Intelligence, author narrates the story of how it all started.
About Dagogo Altraide
Dagogo Altraide is the founder of ColdFusion, a YouTube channel with over 2 million subscribers.
ColdFusion creates documentaries on the subject of Technology.
Content of the book
The book New Thinking is not just limited to the stories of inventions. It also mentions about the competitiveness that innovating countries were involved during those watershed years.
The book is divided into decades in chronological order from 1900-1909 to 2010-2019. Decade wise summary helps it easier for us to understand how an inventor used information from the previous decades to invent something new, something more appealing.
Also, the title of the chapters on how a decade was defined makes the subject more understandable.
The book also takes us through technological development that took place during world war I and II.
Today, it feels very strange that many of the devices that we use today without thinking who invented it, are actually the outcome of conflicts during world wars. It makes the proverb “Necessity is the mother of Invention” more pronounced.
Whom should read
Reading this book, you will come across many stories of the world war that actually led to the revolution. Though many lives get lost in those deadly wars, these technological discoveries are still serving mankind.
People like to study the history of revolution or civilizations and countries gaining independence but reading the history of technology and how the world benefited from new thinking is as intriguing as any other. In fact, as we increase the usage of technology in our daily lives, it must encourage curiosity within us to know “how it all started”.
You would never know that though wright brothers are regarded as the inventor of the airplane, many people in the past tried their own model too. They also gave their lives hoping to innovate something new.
For there was no CAD( Computer-Aided Design) and they could only test their model at their own risk. Many have also died during the test flight due to the inefficiency of their model. Much like we forgot those unnamed freedom fighters and soldiers, these innovators are also just known as “someone from the past“.
In the Indian Context
India imports technology from the developed countries and at the same time is facing a case of brain drain, which means capable individuals leaving the country for better career opportunities.
Reading this book, one can find that those countries which are the technological heads of the world are at this place because of their youth.
First World Countries and defined by those individuals who try to solve practical problems of the country and when they do get success, the world copies them.
The book takes us through the period of struggle of those companies which are now the leaders of the world. From Bell Labs to Amazon, every company was just an idea.
In countries like India, where entrepreneurship is not encouraged enough, this book helps to understand that everything was just a small idea and its only aim was to solve a particular problem before it became the next big thing and was accepted worldwide
For Students
As the cases of misuse of technology in increasing day by day, New Thinking helps to re-establish the respect for those inventors.
Numerous minds from across the world have worked hard to make this happen. You just born at the right time so you are using this, so please have some respect for those inventors.
Thomas Edison has 1093 US patents under his name. We owe a lot to him and other contributors to human progress. Can anyone today think of contributing so much? No one can.
These lines by Dagogo Altraide from the book is the reality of our times:
As we head toward 2020, we see social media becoming more divisive. People can’t seem to talk to each other without getting angry, but why?
Apart from low empathy causing detachment from others’ points of view, I feel there might be an additional reason: the Dunning-Kruger effect.
The Dunning-Kruger effect was proposed by David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999. They found that, if people have limited knowledge on a topic, they tend to be extremely confident in what they’re saying and grossly overestimates their competence to discuss it. Conversely, as people gain knowledge, they became more shy about expressing it.
If we apply this theory to social media conversations, the people who know the least will be commenting the most because they’re over-confident.
The Dunning-Kruger effect, combined with empathy destruction, could create an environment where those with the least knowledge are the most vocal, yet are unable to comprehend opposing points of view. At the same time, those with the most knowledge are likely to stay silent. Hence we end up with a cesspool of over-confident ignoramuses yelling at each other. Social media, in a nutshell, ladies, and gentleman.
I think it’s safe to say that, if social media giants keep enabling these aspects of human nature, we might see a full-scale social media backlash in the 2020s.
