The power of ideas
Almost everything you use in a normal day began as someone's idea. A smartphone screen that responds to your finger and a passenger jet lifting off a runway both started as a new way of thinking about a problem. Each one changed how people communicate, work and travel.
A Time magazine feature on 100 ideas that changed the world points out something odd about ideas. You cannot see them, weigh them or hold them, because they have no material substance at all. Even so, they are able to shift the direction of history. The French writer Victor Hugo put it more sharply. He said that armies can be resisted, but 'one cannot resist an invasion of ideas'.
Hugo's point is about change, the key concept for this chapter. Ideas and innovations spread, and as they spread they alter the way people live. The statement of inquiry for the chapter sums this up. Innovations and ideas come from many different causes, and they can bring long-lasting change to individuals and to whole societies.
Hugo compares ideas to an invading army, but with one big difference. Soldiers can be stopped at a border. An idea can cross in a conversation, a letter or a picture, and once people understand it, it is very hard to take away again.
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