By his own estimate, Thomas Edison tested 3000 theories for electric
light before he came up with one that worked. It was this epic
perseverance that led him to famously observe, "genius is 99 percent
perspiration and one percent inspiration." It is tempting to believe
that this means tireless dedication can bring anyone to within a single
percentage point of genius, but, alas, this misses the point. What
Edison really meant is that, while brilliance doesn't go far without
hard work, brilliance is nonetheless the vital magic ingredient. The
solitary miraculous percentage point is really what changes the world,
as Edison's amazing life attests. Moments
of Genius is a series of six interviews
running on bigthink.com.
The interviews with a range of modern-day Edisons delve into the back
stories of great discoveries and earth-shattering insights, and tease
out the elusive eureka moments.
One interview is with Leonard
Kleinrock, inventor of packet switching and a "Father of the
Internet". As a young researcher at UCLA in the late 1960s, Kleinrock
was part of the team that tried to get two computers - one in LA, the
other in the Bay Area - to talk to each other for the first time, using
the technology that would make the Internet possible. Running a 400 mile
cable between them, Kleinrock and his colleagues attempt to convey the
first ever email, beginning with the word "log-in".
Another
interview subject is David
Ho, the man most responsible for the successful treatment of
HIV-AIDS over the past 15 years. His background in mathematics and
physics allowed him to develop the cocktail treatments that beat the
virus at its own game, and save millions of lives.
What stands
out from all of the interviews is that breakthrough
innovation rarely
emerges from committee. It is far more likely to be the handiwork
of
individual or small, but united teams who are unashamedly obsessed with
solving a problem and simply won't stop until they crack it.
Unconventional,
unpredictable, fiercely individualistic - there are the inventors,
innovators and problem-solvers that change the world. In the face of
complex challenges like oil spills and climate change, people wonder
whether human society has met a point at which the scale and complexity
of problems have out-paced our ability to innovate our way out of them. s
long as Edison's one-percent rule persists -and as long as great minds
like Kleinrock, Ho and others refuse to take no for an answer- then
radical optimism is surely the most rational state
of mind.
Genius
(BBC)-1
Get fuelled with Monthly Storytelling