YouSaid · the spoken record

Vannevar Bush

lines on the record: 22
first: 2022-10-06
most recent: 2022-10-06
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Into a lot of roast, which that's the term he uses for fight, he gets into good rose is the way he says it. So he gets into a fight with actually the admiral, the head admiral of the navy. And so he's describing a typical interaction that he has with Admiral King. And he says characteristically, our discussion opened as follows. King would scowl and say, I have agreed to meet with you, but this is a military question, and it must be decided on a military basis, to which you can hardly contribute. So I told him, It is a combined military and technical question, and on the latter, you are a babe in arms and not entitled to an opinion. This was a good start to our discussion.”
2022-10-06 · Founders · #270: Vannevar Bush (Pieces of the Action) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In industry. He was well liked by men with lots of drive and often disliked by those with less. What a great line he was well liked by men with lots of drive and often disliked by those with less. That brought to mind one of my favorite books I've ever read for the podcast, which is actually this biography on Joseph Pulitzer, the guy that the Pulitzer Prize is named after. It's episode 135 if you haven't listened to it yet. But in the early days of his career, when he's starting out, the people that he worked with didn't like him because he outworked them so much. And there's a great line in that book that I have saved on my phone. And it's describing a young Joseph Pulitzer. And it says he was so industrious that he became a positive annoyance to others who felt less inclined to work, be like Putnam, be like Pulitzer. And then I want to give you an illustration of his personality and that Bush is not backing down. He is going to fight you. And so he gets.”
2022-10-06 · Founders · #270: Vannevar Bush (Pieces of the Action) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's where it would sit, and nothing would happen. Sometimes on the other hand, he'd concoct a way to combine it with something else he'd seen, or perhaps to twist it in a way to benefit an entirely different project altogether. This was one of his great talents, the ability to synthesize separate developments and technologies into something previously unimaginable. And I think a way to summarize what's taking place in that Steve Jobs biography is using the words of Van Bush. Rigid lines of authority do not produce the best innovations. And so then he's got a great story about some of the people he works with. I think this guy actually reports to him. And the note I put myself on this page is be like Putnam. This guy's fantastic. So it says, now Putnam, he was a go-getter. In fact, so much, so much so that I had occasional demands from the more unadventurous individuals and organization that Putnam be tamed or suppressed. Demands, which of course never budged me. Putnam had some of the characteristics of the best type of promoter.”
2022-10-06 · Founders · #270: Vannevar Bush (Pieces of the Action) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A few pages later, just one line I want to pause here. This is very similar to how Steve Jobs organized Apple and Bush says rigid lines of authority do not produce the best innovations. When I just reread for episode 265, I read Becoming Steve Jobs, The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader Tobiography of Steve Jobs that I've read now for the second time. I came across this thing I missed the first time, and that's Steve, the synthesizer. And so it says research projects, you're talking inside Apple now, right? So bush just told us, hey, rigid lines of authority don't produce the best innovations. Research projects flowered in pockets all around the company. Many of them, without Steve's blessing, are even awareness. They would come to Steve's attention only if one of his key managers decided that the project or technology showed real potential. In that case, Steve would check it out, and the information he would glean would go into the learning machine that was his brain.”
2022-10-06 · Founders · #270: Vannevar Bush (Pieces of the Action) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is actually really important to understand. He's telling us how to get around these stumbling blocks, and he says the justification of what you're doing is the importance So that's how this ends. This is how it begins. When he knows that stumbling blocks may get in the way of a joint effort in which he is engaged, a man who is light on his feet tries to anticipate them, to figure out where they may arise and why and how best to evade them. This means that he tries to figure out strategies to get them out of the way so that the work can go ahead. Planning strategies means taking into account the personal quirks of some individual who almost always is the source of the blockade. So he says usually you could trace these blocks, these people that are getting in your way down to a single individual. He says you take into account the personal quirks of some individual who almost always is a source of the blockade and devise ways to annul his blockade by disarming him by avoiding him or if by necessary knocking him on the head figuratively of course. The justification for your actions is the importance of the work and the depth of your commitment to it.”
2022-10-06 · Founders · #270: Vannevar Bush (Pieces of the Action) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He is leading a group of engineers and he just calls them scientists to get around this personal human bias. Among older military men, the engineer was at first regarded as a thinly disguised salesman, and hence they kept them at arm's length. In this mistaken view, the engineer was a kind of second class citizen compared to the scientist. This is the way things were at first in our relations with the military in our war effort. So all of my personnel were promptly renamed scientists. And the result was now the military men was like, oh, okay, I mean, the same exact person goes to present to the people in charge of the military, and they say, hey, I'm an engineer, and they're dismissed. That same person is not a scientist, and they're listened to. So then he has an entire chapter dedicated to getting around stumbling blocks, right? So anything that gets in the way of what you're trying to achieve on an individual or an organizational level, I'm going to read the last sentence of this paragraph at the beginning because I think”
2022-10-06 · Founders · #270: Vannevar Bush (Pieces of the Action) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some of FDR's political theory and practice. But when war came, I took the attitude that loyalty to the chief must be absolute and untarnished. That is the get rid of anyone that is not loyal to you and your company mission, part of the advice. And he talks about why he thought FDR was a great leader. He gave me a tough job to do, never interfere with me, and always back me up in a pinch. What more could one ask? So the idea is you give your team a tough job to do, you don't interfere with them, you actually allow them to do the job you hired them to do, and then you always back them up when need be. And the end result is Bush had fierce loyalty to FDR. Then he talks about how do you deal with personal biases and personal quirks of humanity. And in so one case, like you have this older generation that had come from World War I, now they're still around during World War II, and they had a mistaken view in Bush's eyes of what an engineer actually does. So the way he gets around that is he renames his engineers.”
2022-10-06 · Founders · #270: Vannevar Bush (Pieces of the Action) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Making can actually push away good people, which I'll get to. This is now Bush talking. There should never be, throughout an organization, any doubt as to where authority for making decisions resides or any doubt that they will be promptly made. And then he gives us an example, and then you'll see his personality. I remember one time when a section walked into my office and resigned as a body, so a group of people, okay? So I just told them, one does not resign in a time of war. You chaps get the hell out of here and get back to work, and I will look into it. They did, and I did. And so his point being they knew that he was the one in charge. Jeff Bezos has this idea. So he says, okay, first of all, there can be no doubt. They have to know where the authority for making decision lies, right? And then not only that, once you have the decision, you can now make decisions slowly. This is something that Jeff Bezos realized in building at Amazon. And he has this comes from the book, Invent and Wander.”
2022-10-06 · Founders · #270: Vannevar Bush (Pieces of the Action) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“no technical contribution whatsoever to the war effort. Not a single technical idea of mine ever amounted to shucks. At times, I have been called an atomic scientist. This is hilarious. This is the first indication of this cheeky, you know, that's one way to put it, irreverent personality that Bush had. It would be fully as accurate to call me a child psychologist. Now he's going to tell us where the actual technical ideas came from. The key ideas arose in the special groups that were working for months and years with the problems. And they arose from nowhere else. So you can think of half the book as, hey, how do you make yourself into a formidable individual and then formidable individuals to be truly effective, they have to know how to build organizations that can actually function. And so he's going to go back and forth between those two messages. This is the first example. I wrote companies are benevolent dictatorships. And then Jeff Bezos' idea that slow decision.”
2022-10-06 · Founders · #270: Vannevar Bush (Pieces of the Action) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really, you could think about this is the problem. You know, he's working hand in hand, he's coordinating private engineering and science with the government, right? So the way you think about this paragraph is this is the problem that he had to solve. We were agreed that the war was bound to break out into an intense struggle, that America was sure to get into it one way or another sooner or later, and that it would be highly technical struggle, and that we were by no means prepared in this regard, and most importantly, that the military system as it existed and as it had operated during World War I would never fully produce the new instruments that we would certainly need. So in other words, how do we win a highly technical war? We do it with engineering, innovation, and science. So then looking back after the war, he's like, okay, well, who actually made the technical contributions during World War II? And you can think about it like who makes the actual innovations that turn into products today? And so he says, I had plenty to do. Second, I made...”
2022-10-06 · Founders · #270: Vannevar Bush (Pieces of the Action) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You had to overcome this where you had better technology. So he tells the story of something called the Orlakon gun and the different countries adopted this superior technology at different times and that the difference was the individual. And so I'm just going to give you the punchline here because the story goes on for a long time. But it says it is pleasant to turn to situations where conservatism or lethargy was overcome by far-seeing energetic individuals. Amen. The way I think about what he's talking about there is like, listen, this roadblock was overcome by a person, one person, a far-seeing and energetic individual. This reminds me of what my friend Sam Hinkey says, one of the best lines I've ever heard him say, is that people are really a power law and that the best ones can change everything. And so then Bush is describing what these state of affairs was before America jumps into the war.”
2022-10-06 · Founders · #270: Vannevar Bush (Pieces of the Action) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Says the other is to have a top. This is how you lose is to have a top commander with poor judgment. History is full of examples. And so he used the example a few times in the book, even if you assume the Germans and the Americans were equal military might, the Germans were going to lose because they had Hitler in charge. You had a top commander with extremely poor judgment and most likely high out of his mind, by the way. And one example of his poor judgment that Bush uses and that you and I have talked about in past podcasts is the fact that a lot of the scientific achievements in the world happening at this time came from Jewish scientists and physicists and Hitler expelled them out of the country and many of their ideas flowed to the Allies. So let's go over that real quick. You need two ways you can that you're going to lose is you have confused lines of authority. That's number one and the other is you have the top commander with poor judgment. And so then he talks about telling a story about how organizations kind of get bureaucratic and they move really slow and even during times of war.”
2022-10-06 · Founders · #270: Vannevar Bush (Pieces of the Action) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Company level. There are two primary ways in which to lose a battle or a campaign, assuming nearly equal antagonists. One is to have confused lines of authority. And so he repeats that over and over again. You have to have one person in charge and everybody else has to know that they're in charge. I think he uses an example of like Truman, President Truman doing this effectively later, where they're having a cabinet meeting and one of the cabinet members like, hey, we're going to, you know, we're seeking consensus. It's like, no, Truman, Truman's like, no, no, that's not what we're doing at all. You guys are here to give me advice, but I get to make the decision and I will make the decision. This is not, oh, there's 10 of us and we have to get to six of us to agree. And so Bush is going to use examples over and over again of that. He's like, you can't.”
2022-10-06 · Founders · #270: Vannevar Bush (Pieces of the Action) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have been overcome through intelligence and innovation. And then we get to a point where he has explicit advice for us. Really think about this next paragraph is like, this is what Van Bush wants us to do. And this is why if you're going to pick a mentor, if you're going to pick up a book in hopes of getting a mentor, he's one of the best people you can actually use to serve that function in your life because he holds you to a very high standard. We need a revival of the essence of the old Pioneer spirit that conquered the forests and the plains, that looked at its difficulties with a steady eye, labored, and fought. and left its thinking and its philosophy for later and quieter times. This is not a call for optimism. It is a call for determination. A lot of the book has to do with what's taking place in World War II. He's seeing what is an effective organization, what is an effective government, what is an effective leadership, and what is not. And this he's about to talk about on a country level or maybe even on an organization level. I think it applies for the purposes of you and I on a country.”
2022-10-06 · Founders · #270: Vannevar Bush (Pieces of the Action) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then from here, we just have random sentences or thoughts. And in some cases, they might turn in aphorisms into your brain that are just going to be helpful that I thought were interesting. This is just a great line. We cannot help the weak unless we are strong. Therefore, much of this book will be devoted to how we can keep our business rolling in the right direction. He wants you to be on an individual basis and on a country level rich and strong and smart. So he's constantly talking about using technology to grow the size of the economy. Another random piece of advice. Humans are always going to claim to know things that they can't or they don't know. And so at this point in history, they're saying, hey, by the year 2000, there's going to be so many people, we're not going to be able to feed them. And this is what Van said about that. I hear that by the year 2000, there will be so many people on Earth that they can't possibly be fed. I don't believe it. And he uses the basis of not believing that is the fact that these predicted disasters throughout human history.”
2022-10-06 · Founders · #270: Vannevar Bush (Pieces of the Action) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Those death series of choices, what do you do? You build that personal relationship. That is the main theme that I picked up on in the book. So let's go back to this paragraph because the second half of the paragraph is really exactly why founders exist and why you and I get together and go over these books, right? It may well be worthwhile to recite a few events here and there with the thought that through them, meaning his experiences, some chap, I love that he calls everybody a chap, by the way, some chap coming along a similar road may learn something. not be taught but learn something that will ease his journey. And then I have to include one sentence because you might get to the end of this podcast like, David, why didn't you talk about the Manhattan Project? Why didn't you talk about the development of radar, which is what Van Bush's, you know, he's tied to these things. And his point is like, listen, nothing in this book I'm going to cover if it's been covered exhaustively and extensively elsewhere. So he says, I do not review in any detail the drive towards control of the atom or the birth of radar for those who have been described many times.”
2022-10-06 · Founders · #270: Vannevar Bush (Pieces of the Action) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To understand the ways of men. And that is the first hint that he gives us, that hey, you need to realize that formal relations of men, what we think as professional relationships, are actually intertwined with the personal relationships behind the professional relationships. And he'll remark time and time again how malleable the world is when you have a personal relationship with somebody in power and that learning how to cultivate these relationships is fundamental to actually achieving the goal that you have. And so somebody that he wind up having a professional relationship and then had to learn how to build a fundamentally profound personal relationship was FDR. And he says, listen, I didn't like FDR's political theories or his policies, but that was irrelevant. I had to build a personal relationship with him because we were working together and he was the person in charge. He could make me just on the basis of our personal relationship, he could make me effective or ineffective.”
2022-10-06 · Founders · #270: Vannevar Bush (Pieces of the Action) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Process. You and I are going to fit into this group, you and I fit into the group currently. One day, we will be the older generation transmitting all that we learned to the next generation. But right now, we're the many young people. So he says, many young men like to get the oldsters talking, provided the talk helps them pick up a better grasp of human nature to discern neat ways around obstacles and to realize how the formal relations of men are intertwined with personal relations. I'm not done with the paragraph. I want to pause there. So you're saying, why are young people learning from older people? Because they're hoping to learn something that helps them through life. We mean you just covered that, right? But this idea is something he repeats over and over again. He thinks of him primarily himself primarily as an engineer. And so something he's also going to repeat is that it's not good enough just to have great, to build great inventions, to grow great products, great research organizations. You have”
2022-10-06 · Founders · #270: Vannevar Bush (Pieces of the Action) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I want to remember it. And if I want to remember it, I might as well tell you. And one of the main themes that he talks about over and over again is the importance of education and how he defines it is fantastic. So he said, learned hand, and that's the guy's actual name. He's actually a judge. He was a U.S. Circuit Court judge. So Van Bush is about to quote from him. So he said, learned hand remarked that while both men and monkeys are curious and monkey around, man remembers and transmits his experiences to the next generation, which is exactly what Bush is doing, right? And the monkey does not. So in the end, man keeps the monkey in a cage. The writing of this book is so crisp. I hope you buy it. This is a fantastic paragraph. The essence, and to me, this is the end of the paragraph. To me, he is really defining what he, like his definition of education, right? The essence of civilization is the transmission of the findings of each generation to the next. And then he's going to talk about this process.”
2022-10-06 · Founders · #270: Vannevar Bush (Pieces of the Action) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then he has a line that's really important that I've already mentioned one time. And he says, there will be no ordered account of my life in this book. This is considered his autobiography, but it leaves out a ton about his personal life. He's going to talk about his dad, and in many ways his dad was a hero to him. But the way I think about the book and the way I want to talk to you about it is like, listen, we're just getting together right now and we're going to have this 80-year-old genius that's had one of the most unique life experiences of any human that ever lived. And he's going to sit here and say, hey, this is what I went through. This is what I learned about it. This may be helpful in your journey because he's at the end of his life. He dies four years from now. And he's unfortunately in very poor health and kind of lost his spirit shortly after he published this book. And so the way I think about it is like, these are the ideas that were useful for my life. My life's at the end. I'm documenting them so future generations, it may help you with your journey as you progress through your life. And so some of this is just random highlights that I thought, hey, this is really smart.”
2022-10-06 · Founders · #270: Vannevar Bush (Pieces of the Action) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Today, that they told him when he was young, and he was young in like the 1940s. This is, I think, 1945 is when he wrote this first essay. And this is going to sound again a lot like his friend Edwin Land. So it says, I remember when I was told that the frontier had been occupied, that all of man's wants and needs have been met. I was also told that all industry was now in the hands of a few great companies, meaning great big companies, monopolies, right?”
2022-10-06 · Founders · #270: Vannevar Bush (Pieces of the Action) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so his first chapter is titled Sixty Years, which is how long his career has lasted. And he says a lot has happened in the last 60 years. Today, as I write, I find people are worried. What do we worry about? Well, just about everything. And so to me, what he's really saying in this section is that history doesn't repeat human nature does. I remind myself, the North myself is I remind myself of this all the time. Why are you worrying, David? This is not unique to your life experience. Youth has always been in rebellion and should be if society is not to become static. And then he says something that was true in 1970 that you're still here today. Respect for us as a country has overseas has dwindled. Yet as I look back, we have always been worried about something and often about the same things that we worry about now that is so important, such an important observation from studying history. Let's read it again. As I look back, we have always been worried about something and often about the same things that we worry about now. And then he's going to repeat things that you hear people say.”
2022-10-06 · Founders · #270: Vannevar Bush (Pieces of the Action) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source