on c-span2. and watch any of our past programs online at booktv.org. >> host: walter isaacson to my new book coming out this fall. what is it about? >> guest: innovative spirit we talk a lot about innovation these days. the word is almost becomes of the void of meeting through overuse. i wanted to look at how real people into the computer and internet adelle innovation really happened in the digital age. was something that came out of working with steve jobs and before that bill gates to say who made that type of person, how did they end up being successful? so the book is not just about singular people but about teams, but collaboration. one of the things that i discovered in doing this book is that real innovation comes from great teams, not just for a great leaders. >> host: would it surprise you? >> guest: the importance of connecting the arts to

topology. the importance of the liberal arts and the engineering. it begins with a lovely suit is father was a great poet lord byron to of lord byron. she loved poetry to but her mother wanted to be a mathematician. she became of greek mathematician. by the end she is able to combine the notion of poetry at the notion of math and she comes up with the idea of a computer program. the first person to understand that these calculating machines that do numbers will also be able to read patterns and to words or music. and so the notion of the modern computer comes in this idea which really begins to connect the art and the technology. >> host: we think of any act. a great computer. and it was really the first programmable of his own computer.

at the same time in ireland there was this law professor doing a computer down and out of nassau doing it in the basement of the civic spilled. the importance of the teamwork, and that is where they are so successful. >> host: so when this book comes out in the fall and you are asked who invented the computer. >> guest: you would have to say the people who created any act or probably the first to do a programmable electronic computer. and they did it working in teams. one of the leaders of that team even go style and taste the ideas from there. he goes to harvard and sees the computing machines that

baghdad made there. and so what he does is he collects ideas like a bumblebee collect pollen and fertilizers in various places and then gives brings it all together. that is how innovation really works. somebody sitting in the garage all alone. a live ball comes off on his head. get their ideas are many places, pulled together a team. what is going to execute them? so if i were to give credits to the invention of the computer will be the people who did that even though they took their ideas from a lot of other people for especially because they took their ideas from a lot of other people. >> host: who is steve was the act? >> guest: steve jobs partner, the founding of apple. and once again, it shows how partnership and team work should work. because he created the circuit board. he is an absolute genius that knowing how to create

components and ordered to turn it and to a hobbyists computer, the type pekingeses how. he loved giving it away. he takes a sheet and gives it away to all of the members of the computer class of that they can build one. what happens is his friend from just down the street, so, we should go there and sell them. they create a company that they call apple. so what it takes, the person who has the idea. but also the person, how are we going to execute, how are we going to turn this into a commercial regime which is what steve johnston, how are we going to get a power supply, gather in altogether . so the greatest team, whether it is the people who invented the transistor, the best the chip, the personal-computer, and it

usually has a visionary engineering type but also hard-nosed business type, and that team posed together and creates things like apple or intel. >> host: putting innovators together to micro sourcing a little bit. >> guest: you know, the internet was invented in order to allow people to collaborate on research spirit that was the original author net done by the defense department and in the internet which is a gator research center and you want people at different research centers far away to help you shape your work or have this internet so that we can share things. so i thought one night, well , why don't i see if it still works that way. so i took some of the chapters in my book and early drafts of them, very early draft, and i just put them on line for everyone to read. and oddly enough some of the people, i got 18,000 comments in the first week with one chapter. and a lot of it led to some good stuff.

one of the great, wonderful, colorful characters in this book, mr. brown is the guy who invented the well, one of the early on-line services. he invented -- he held to the mother of all demos which is when this guy shows a computer system for the first time. he was there at the creation of so many. the electric kool-aid. dropping acid. been involved in so many things. the home grown computer club meeting. here is what we did. took all of these notes on it. another person said, well, i was actually at it. it was more like these type. so it is light but the pds. the wisdom of the hell to the crowd house to cross our sit. i put a lot of that in the book and obviously gave him. here is what he said when he wrote an early version.

>> host: is it tough to write a book like this when we are in the middle of what is a continual innovation time? >> guest: no. it is a wonderful part, wonderful trajectory where a couple of big old themes. the one, as i said, is really creative people who understand the arts and humaniti, connect. their imagination to the machine and the technology and engineering. that happens with a dead in the 1830's, larry page insert the brandon in creating global. so i want to show that meredith. secondly, another thing is that technology is used to bring people together, social that working source. the little thing you do, and the basement to when the house, we create networks and social the words of prayer computers together. so that is the thing that continues as well.

so one of the things about this book, it seems like things you thought were totally new, that is the part of a wonderful progress of a lot of people, and up with ideas. >> host: were you working or keeping notes for this book? >> guest: i started this book actually ten years ago. sen years ago i was trying to write a book on how the internet came to be. all of these unknown people who would help pull it together. when i was working with steve jobs he said, that's interesting. what is more interesting is in the 1970's and 80's the internet came together at the exact same time personal-computer stand together. you should make it a book about the chart connection of computers and network. so i changed the book. and bill gates said that, too. he said, that's fine, but networks are only half the story. it is network of computers together that make the world magical. so i've been working on

this, you know, ten, 12 years. keeping notes, trying to write this. but by talking to bill gates a lot, a book on steve jobs that expands the nature of what was trying to do. >> host: where does bill gates fit into this narrative? >> guest: the fascinating chapters. i spent a lot of time with it. he invents something that is pretty interesting, which is the notion that software matters. that it is not going to be whether ibm, compaq, hewlett-packard makes the hardware. what is really going to account is he makes the operating system, the software. so when the first personal computer, appeared on the cover of popular electronics magazine and he is at harvard as a sophomore. buys the company magazines, runs to the storm and says the way it is happening without us we're not going to build a computer. we will build the operating system for the computer.

two basic. the programming language, but then by the time the computers come along and create the operating system. and that changes the nature of what computers are. and we realize as the women did when they were programming that the programming is where the magic comes. >> host: a quick preview of walter isaacson fall 2014 book "the innovators: how a group of inventors, hackers, and geeks created the digital revolution". you are watching book tv on c-span2. tv for serious readers. ..