Bob Johnstone – författare

Are the Japanese faceless clones who march in lockstep to the drums beaten by big business and the bureaucrats of MITI, Japan's miracle-working ministry of international trade and industry? Can Japanese workers, and by extrapolation their entire society, be characterized by deference to authority, devotion to group solidarity, and management by consensus? In We Were Burning, investigative journalist Bob Johnstone demolishes this misleading stereotype by introducing us to a new and very different kind of Japanese worker-a dynamic, iconoclastic, risk-taking entrepreneur.Johnstone has tracked down Japan's invisible entrepreneurs and persuaded them to tell their stories. He presents here a wealth of new material, including interviews with key players past and present, which lifts the veil that has hitherto obscured the entrepreneurial nature of Japanese companies like Canon, Casio, Seiko, Sharp, and Yamaha.Japanese entrepreneurs, working in the consumer electronics industry during the 1960s and 70s, took unheralded American inventions such as microchip cameras, liquid crystal displays, semiconductor lasers, and sound chips to create products that have become indispensable, including digital calculators and watches, synthesizers, camcorders, and compact disc players. Johnstone follows a dozen micro-electronic technologies from the U.S. labs where they originated to their eventual appearance in the form of Japanese products, shedding new light on the transnational nature of twentieth-century innovation, and on why technologies take root and flourish in some places and not in others.At this time of Asian financial crisis and the bursting of Japan's bubble economy, many are tempted to dismiss Japan's future as an economic power. We Were Burning serves as a timely warning that to write off Japan,and its invisible entrepreneurs,would be a big mistake.

"What we all hope for our children''s education is undiminished curiosity and creativeness, and solid practical preparation for adult work. Today, there''s no doubt that easy access to computers is vital for students. Bob Johnstone has brilliantly and passionately told the story of the worldwide struggle to make today''s equivalent of the pencil accessible to all students."-Victor K. McElheny, author of "Watson and DNA"

If every kid had a laptop computer, what would difference would it make to their learning? And to their prospects? Today, these are questions that all parents, teachers, school administrators, and politicians must ask themselves.

Bob Johnstone provides a definitive answer to the conundrum of computers in the classroom. His conclusion: we owe it to our kids to educate them in the medium of their time.

In this book he tells the extraordinary story of the world''s first laptop school. How daring educators at an independent girls'' school in Melbourne, Australia, empowered their students by making laptops mandatory. And how they solved all the obstacles to laptop learning, including teacher training.

Their example spread to thousands of other schools worldwide. Especially in America, where it inspired the largest educational technology initiative in US history-the State of Maine issuing laptops to every seventh-grader in its public school system.

This lively, intriguing, anecdote-rich account is based on hundreds of interviews. In it, you''ll meet the visionary leaders, inspirational principals, heroic teachers, and their endlessly-surprising students who showed what computers in the classroom are really for.

In this inspiring and optimistic story of a green revolution in the making, a veteran science and technology journalist shows how the unrelenting efforts of a small band of grassroots activists have discovered ways to make solar a practical retail energy solution. The crucial driver for the adoption of solar energy has not been technology but policy. Focusing on initiatives in Germany, he describes the use of the "feed-in tariff" as the most successful policy mechanism yet invented to spur on widespread deployment of solar energy. Turning to California, the author reviews the efforts of policy wonks to create new schemes to make solar affordable at the municipal level. Pioneers in both tree-hugging Berkeley and golf-playing Palm Desert have united in common cause, and other towns and cities are planning to follow suit. As with other emerging trends, as California goes so goes the rest of the country. Concluding with a positive view of the future, the author describes the creativity of many startups fueled by venture capital. Innovation is being applied to every part of the process, from silicon production to financing and installation. The details may still be uncertain, but there's no doubt that the solar revolution is underway.

To celebrate the awarding of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics to Shuji Nakamura (along with two other Japanese scientists), this newly updated edition profiles the gifted Japanese engineer who is largely responsible for the coming revolution in lighting technology. Veteran technology writer Bob Johnstone not only was the first Western journalist to meet and interview Nakamura, but also received the brilliant engineer's full cooperation in providing a series of exclusive interviews for this book. This updated edition contains a new preface and an afterword that summarizes Nakamura's most recent accomplishments, including the story of Soraa, a lighting company cofounded by Nakamura and two colleagues. Using an improved crystal growth technology pioneered by Nakamura, Soraa debuted new "second-generation" LEDs that are much smaller and more energy-efficient, produce better color, and have the potential to replace halogen lamps. In learning about this Nobel Prize-winning innovator, readers will better understand the new lighting revolution and its profound impact on the world.