He begins each chapter with a beautifully curated history of the idea he is exploring.
In his book, Home: A Short History of an Idea, Witold Rybczynski describes this early form of home automation in a way that sounds like the 19th Century equivalent of a venture backed start-up.
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We've been trying to trace the history of the idea of making the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and all the ocean around them a national monument, and we get as far back as 1999 at the U.S. Department of the Interior.
And I think there is certainly plenty of history to support that idea.
But John Micklethwait, the author of "The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea" and U.S. editor of "The Economist", disagrees.
Intellectually, he may be on the side of modernity, but emotionally and aesthetically he is seduced by the idea of history as a natural cycle which is both forever changing and always the same.
They can point to the fact the revolution was explicitly ruled legal by the Treaty Of Paris of 1783, and that much of British history afterward supports the idea of independence and the dismantling of the colonial empire.
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As he cycled home with a companion, perhaps the most famous bike ride in history, he had no idea he was moving.
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It has been used in Charlotte, Indianapolis and in Phoenix, where the idea has a long history.
It was only at his military funeral when his service history was extolled that we had any idea of the way that he had distinguished himself.
No monument captures Mr Hussein's idea of his own place in history better than Babel, the ruined capital of the eponymous Babylonians.
Given my complex medical history, his practice seemed like a good idea.
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Wreck-It Ralph is a very original idea and considering the box office history for video game movies, it was a risk for Disney to make the film.
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Jon Ramer: Embedded in my history and deep in my bones is the idea that our purpose here on earth is to help mend and heal the world.
Buyers tempted by the idea of owning a piece of architectural history should remember that it's rarely as straightforward as winning a bidding war.
But Britain may have to get used to the idea that, despite all the shared history, as India grows the relationship between the two will become increasingly one-sided.
Eleven years ago, Charles Best was a history teacher in the Bronx with the seed of an idea.
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Further back in history, Confucius would have been appalled by the very idea of the Olympic games, never mind the sour grapes.
The idea of abstraction is so central to the history of modern art that it left its mark on the work of nonvisual artists as well.
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But one of Mr Allen's local authority partners, Eric Milligan, who sits on the Lothian and Borders Police Board, said the idea of a single force betrayed the localised history of Scottish policing and threatened the independence of the force.
Indeed, history suggests that a prejudice against more rules is a good idea.
What is new is the idea that this research can be extended to human history, which Mr Buchanan does not succeed in supporting.
Shortly after A Brief History of Time came out, Ferguson approached Hawking with the idea of writing a book for young people about him and his theories.
Regular TSEs are a good idea in particular for males who have had a history of an undescended testicle or who have a family history of testicular cancer.
We don't like the idea of wannabes trying to horn in on our institutional history.
Anyone who finds either of these two concepts a good idea in times of crisis has not learned anything from history.
When, in the history of American Capitalism, did putting your own money behind an idea that shines the light on others mis-management become a dirty word?
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