1 hr 1 min
Innovating Through Time with Anton Howes Idea Machines
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- Business
A conversation with Dr Anton Howes about The Royal Society of Arts, cultural factors that drive innovation, and many aspects of historical innovation. Anton is a historian of innovation whose work is expansive, but focuses especially on England in the 18th and 19th centuries as a hotbed of technological creativity. He recently released an excellent book that details the history of the Royal Society of Arts called “Arts and Minds: How the Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nation” and he publishes an excellent newsletter at Age of Invention.
Notes
Aton on Twitter: @AntonHowes
Arts and Minds: How the Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nation - Anton's Book
Age of Invention - Anton's Newsletter
The referenced post about Dungeons and Dragons
We don't dig too much into the content of the book because Anton talked about it on other podcasts. He gives a good overview in this one.
How much did a steam engine cost in today's dollars, these sources suggest it was roughly $100k , but as anton noted - it's complicated.
Transcript (Rough+Experimental)
Ben:
the place that I I'd love to start is the,society of arts did something that I feel like people don't discuss very much, which is focused on, inventions that have positive externalities. So you, you talk a lot about how they, they would promote,Inventions that maybe people,couldn't make a lot of money off of they weren't going to patent.
, and it's one of the few examples I've seen in history of like non-government forces really promoting,inventions with positive externalities. And so I was wondering , if you see that. how could we get more of that today? And like, if there were other [00:02:00] things doing similar work at the time and maybe how that theme has like moved forward in time.
Anton: Yeah. That's really interesting question. I'm trying to off the top of my head, think of any examples of other non-governmental ones. I suspect there's quite a few from that period, though, just for the simple reason that. I mean the context in which the society of arts and emerges right, is at a time when you have a very capable state, but a state that doesn't do very much.
Right? So one of the, one of the things you see throughout it is actually the society kind of creating what you might call the sorts of institutions that States now take upon themselves all the time, voting positive externalities as you, as you, which is a very good way of putting it. , you know, Trying to identify inventions that the market itself wouldn't ordinarily provide.
, later on in the night in the mid 19th century, trying to proper state into providing things [00:03:00] like public examinations or, you know, providing those things privately before you have a state education system. But I think one of the main reasons for that is that you don't really have that kind of role being taken up by the central state.
Right. I mean, the other thing to bear in mind here of course, is that a lot of governance actually happens at the local level. And so when we talk about the government, we really mean the central government, but actually a lot of stuff would be, is happening, you know, amongst the, kind of the towns and cities.
It seems with that written privileges, the various borrowers with their own often quite bizarre privileges and like the way they were structured,local authorities for want of a better word, although they kind of. Take all sorts of different forms. And I think you do see quite a lot of it. It's just, it wasn't all done by a single organization at the time.
So I think that's kind of the main underlying context there.
Ben: Yeah. And so I guess sort of riffing on that. , one thing that I was wondering, as I, as I read through the book was like, why don't we see [00:04:00] more of that sort of like non central, central state,Positive externality promoting work done. Now, like you think of philanthropy and it doesn't quite have that same flavor anymore.
And I wonder like do, like
A conversation with Dr Anton Howes about The Royal Society of Arts, cultural factors that drive innovation, and many aspects of historical innovation. Anton is a historian of innovation whose work is expansive, but focuses especially on England in the 18th and 19th centuries as a hotbed of technological creativity. He recently released an excellent book that details the history of the Royal Society of Arts called “Arts and Minds: How the Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nation” and he publishes an excellent newsletter at Age of Invention.
Notes
Aton on Twitter: @AntonHowes
Arts and Minds: How the Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nation - Anton's Book
Age of Invention - Anton's Newsletter
The referenced post about Dungeons and Dragons
We don't dig too much into the content of the book because Anton talked about it on other podcasts. He gives a good overview in this one.
How much did a steam engine cost in today's dollars, these sources suggest it was roughly $100k , but as anton noted - it's complicated.
Transcript (Rough+Experimental)
Ben:
the place that I I'd love to start is the,society of arts did something that I feel like people don't discuss very much, which is focused on, inventions that have positive externalities. So you, you talk a lot about how they, they would promote,Inventions that maybe people,couldn't make a lot of money off of they weren't going to patent.
, and it's one of the few examples I've seen in history of like non-government forces really promoting,inventions with positive externalities. And so I was wondering , if you see that. how could we get more of that today? And like, if there were other [00:02:00] things doing similar work at the time and maybe how that theme has like moved forward in time.
Anton: Yeah. That's really interesting question. I'm trying to off the top of my head, think of any examples of other non-governmental ones. I suspect there's quite a few from that period, though, just for the simple reason that. I mean the context in which the society of arts and emerges right, is at a time when you have a very capable state, but a state that doesn't do very much.
Right? So one of the, one of the things you see throughout it is actually the society kind of creating what you might call the sorts of institutions that States now take upon themselves all the time, voting positive externalities as you, as you, which is a very good way of putting it. , you know, Trying to identify inventions that the market itself wouldn't ordinarily provide.
, later on in the night in the mid 19th century, trying to proper state into providing things [00:03:00] like public examinations or, you know, providing those things privately before you have a state education system. But I think one of the main reasons for that is that you don't really have that kind of role being taken up by the central state.
Right. I mean, the other thing to bear in mind here of course, is that a lot of governance actually happens at the local level. And so when we talk about the government, we really mean the central government, but actually a lot of stuff would be, is happening, you know, amongst the, kind of the towns and cities.
It seems with that written privileges, the various borrowers with their own often quite bizarre privileges and like the way they were structured,local authorities for want of a better word, although they kind of. Take all sorts of different forms. And I think you do see quite a lot of it. It's just, it wasn't all done by a single organization at the time.
So I think that's kind of the main underlying context there.
Ben: Yeah. And so I guess sort of riffing on that. , one thing that I was wondering, as I, as I read through the book was like, why don't we see [00:04:00] more of that sort of like non central, central state,Positive externality promoting work done. Now, like you think of philanthropy and it doesn't quite have that same flavor anymore.
And I wonder like do, like
1 hr 1 min