In Thing Explainer, Munroe only uses a set of the 1,000 most commonly used words in the English language to explain things – a decision he talks about in the book’s introduction. If you don’t know Randall Munroe, he formerly worked for NASA, now runs the popular web comic, and this is his second book behind the great What If?, in which he gives logical scientific answers to absurd hypothetical situations. It is because, when I think about it, I am very dumb and this book will explain many things to me. That’s just one of the reasons I was so excited for Thing Explainer by Randall Munroe to come out this past week.
The majority of people, myself included, don’t actually know how most things work. This is true for most of us, with many of the things we interact with every day.
Obviously, something was happening to the sound waves in those electronics it was plugged into that made them louder, but he didn’t know how that worked – it was probably magic.
He used one every night, but had no idea how a microphone actually worked – it was just this piece of metal that was plugged into some electronics, and when he talked into it, it made his voice very loud. He said it went from grand scale to small, and as an example he referenced himself using a microphone to talk to rooms full of people. Part of his act was talking about how there are very few actual smart people – most people just used information put forth by smart people without actually understanding the things behind it. I was going to write “recommend” instead of “suggest,” as we do here – but we’ll come back to why I didn’t a little later.
Aloha – I’m Eric Goodchild, and I’d like to suggest a book to you.
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