Twin Tracks: The Unexpected Origins of the Modern World

Additional Twin Tracks: The Unexpected Origins of the Modern World Information

Each chapter starts with an event -- such as the U.S. attack on Tripoli in 1804 -- that generates two divergent series of consequences. After tracking each pathway as it ranges far and wide through time and space, Burke shows how the paths finally and unexpectedly converge in the modern world.

Twin Tracks pinpoints the myriad ways the future is shaped, whether by love, war, accident, genius, or discovery. For instance, in "The Marriage of Figaro to Stealth Fighter," Burke's twin tracks start with the composer of the opera and the French spy from whose play he stole the plot. The tracks then encompass, among other things, freemasonry, the War of Independence, Captain Cook, jellyfish, Jane Austen, and audio tape. Ultimately, the convergence of the two Figaro tracks sets the stage for the development of Gulf War Stealth aircraft.

Wonderfully accessible and lucidly written, Twin Tracks offers an amusing and instructive new view of the past and the future.

What Customers Say About Twin Tracks: The Unexpected Origins of the Modern World:

Unfortunately there are too many (for my taste anyway) cases of Mr. Y who became famous for something completely different. Although enjoyable, this is not James Burkes best work. X was working on this invention and then he was walking on the sidewalk across from Mr. Because this work concentrates on torturously linking together people rather than connecting the innovations the narrative tends to blend together. This does indeed seem more like "Six Degrees of Connections" at times. Without revealing any sequences here, there are cases that demonstrate Burke's "Trigger Effect".

The tabulating company created by Hollerith later evolved into IBM. It is possible that we would have come to it by an different avenue, but that is not the point. Burke is an excellent source for people getting an introduction to what is interesting about the history of ideas- in particular the history of techological and scientific ideas. This is a superficial analysis and unfair. The way we came to computers was dependent on the development of the cam. This mechanism of cams as used by complicated bell ringing instruments that used a rotating drum with pegs to trip the bell at the correct time. Punched cards were used as an innovation and later were used by tabulating machines to conduct the 1890 US census.

Just because there is no linear causality or intended outcomes between these innovations, does not mean that they are not an accurate recording of a complicated stream of dependencies between these events. Not at all.

Use of the water wheel in medieval europe employed a cam to lift hammers for use in things like beating metal. Is the sequence an exercize in 6 degrees of freedom.

The reviewer Loveridge suggests that the connections are something like a superficial hopping about, and that really everything is related to everything using the principle of 6 degrees of freedom. It was a simple matter to jump from storing numbers to storing instructions in these binary patterns.

This is the way it happenned, and it was cirucuitous, and like following a bouncing ball. Without giving away sequences in this book, consider a well known sequence of Burke's related in his popular Connections series.

This system of using trips recorded on a passing pattern of "0"s and "1"s, (do something or don't do something) was used in the Jaccard loom to create complicated patterns in woven cloth.

Like "six degrees" you find that almost anything in this world is related to almost anything if you draw our the relationships thin enough. And he does this again and again and again. Isn't that amazing.

If you've ever played the game of "Six degrees from Kevin Bacon" you'll at least understand this book. Then another such series is also described with the same start and end point. The unexpected origins of the modern world.

Wow. After the third or fourth thread I was exhausted at trying to follow the bouncing ball and gave up on the book. Whether you enjoy it or not depends on how much you can focus your attention because this is one hop, skip, and jump book.

The author takes an event and shows how it is connected to another event much later in time by a series of meetings, mentors, friends, coincidences, etc.