Johnstone, Bob

views updated

Johnstone, Bob

PERSONAL:

Born in Scotland.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Melbourne, Australia.

CAREER:

Journalist, writer, and editor. Japan correspondent for New Scientist; technology correspondent for Far Eastern Economic Review.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Knight Science Journalism fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1990-91; Abe Foundation Program grant recipient, 1996.

WRITINGS:

We Were Burning: Japanese Entrepreneurs and the Forging of the Electronic Age, Basic Books (New York, NY), 1999.

Never Mind the Laptops: Kids, Computers, and the Transformation of Learning, iUniverse (New York, NY), 2003.

I Have Computers in My Classroom—Now What?, Heinemann (Portsmouth, NH), 2006.

Brilliant!: Shuji Nakamura and the Revolution in Lighting Technology, Prometheus Books (Amherst, N.Y.), 2007.

Contributing editor and writer for Wired.

SIDELIGHTS:

Science and technology writer Bob Johnstone was born in Scotland and lives in Australia, covering electronics topics in the Far East for various magazines. In addition to journalism, Johnstone also writes book length works on technology. He conducted some one hundred interviews while researching his book We Were Burning: Japanese Entrepreneurs and the Forging of the Electronic Age. Japanese success in business is often attributed to that country's team management style, but Johnston credits the risk-takers and entrepreneurs who brought Japan to the forefront of the consumer electronics industry during the 1980s. His book "illuminates the differences between U.S. and Japanese company culture," wrote Joseph W. Leonard in Library Journal. Johnstone's book relates how the disarmament pacts that followed World War II allowed Japanese engineers and scientists to concentrate on consumer rather than military projects. At that time transistor technology was in its infancy, and antitrust legislation required some major American companies to license patents to Japanese interests. The Japanese Ministry of International Trade is often given credit for the country's rise in the electronics industry, but Johnstone points out that in fact, the government bureaucracy prevented Sony from becoming the first company to get the transistor radio on the market. He also notes that Japanese entrepreneurs did not merely copy American technology, but in many cases adapted and improved technology abandoned by U.S. firms.

Johnstone profiles both well-known and little-known engineers and scientists, such as Seiko's Yamazaki Yoshio; Sony co-founder Morita Akio; Sasaki Tadashi, whose concentration on miniaturization led to the handheld calculator; and Kuwano Yukinori, whose independent research in amorphous materials resulted in the solar-powered calculator. Johnstone also provides histories of other Japanese companies, including Canon, Yamaha, and Casio, and includes contributions made by U.S. firms. He predicts that the Japanese economy will continue to prosper in the future, inspired by the entrepreneurs who have contributed, often without recognition, to the country's rise as a financial power. A Publishers Weekly reviewer concluded: "Comprehensive, smartly written and accessible to the lay reader, this book provides a definitive—virtually encyclopedic—account of how the Japanese consumer electronic industry won the world."

In his 2007 title, Brilliant!: Shuji Nakamura and the Revolution in Lighting Technology, Johnstone features another Japanese, the inventor who developed light emitting diodes, or LEDs, in 1993 after rival researchers had been working on the problem for decades. Johnstone demonstrates how Nakamura's invention ultimately is leading to a revolution in solid-state lighting, which consumes far less electricity than other lighting and lasts for upwards of 100,000 hours. As with We Were Burning, Brilliant! relies heavily on personal interviews for much of the text. The author creates "a powerful blend of science and biography" in Brilliant!, according to a reviewer for California Bookwatch. Additionally, the section of the book detailing Nakamura's technological breakthrough and the legal squabbles that ensued—once the inventor broke ranks with his employer and moved to the United States—offer, as a Publishers Weekly reviewer explained, "an interesting window into the differences between the Japanese and American approaches to scientific research."