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Founders: #271 Vannevar Bush (Engineer of the American Century)

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What I learned from reading Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century by G. Pascal Zachary. ---- Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- [7:31] Acts of importance were the measure of his life and they are the reason that his life deserves study today. [8:10] Suspicious of big institutions Bush objected to the pernicious effects of an increasingly bureaucratic society and the potential for mass mediocrity. [8:20] He believed the individual was still of paramount importance. "The individual to me is everything," he wrote "I would restrict him just as little as possible." He never lost his faith in the power of one. [8:57] Pieces of the Action by Vannevar Bush (Founders #270) [9:32] Dee Hock — founder of VISA episodes: One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization by Dee Hock (Founders #260) Autobiography of a Restless Mind: Reflections on the Human Condition Volume 1and Autobiography of a Restless Mind: Reflections on the Human Condition Volume 2 by Dee Hock. (Fo

[00:00:00] On his death in 1974, the New York Times honored Bush with a front-page obituary, calling him the engineer who marshaled American technology for World War II and ushered in the Atomic Age. Jerome Weisner, science advisor to President Kennedy, judged Bush's influence on American science and technology so great that the 20th century may not yet produce his equal. Acts of importance were the measure of his life, and they are the reason that his life deserves study today. He was a contrarian skeptical of [00:00:33] easy solutions, yet willing to tackle tough problems without a…

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