Technological Genius Is Timeliness, Not Inspiration 255
Hugh Pickens writes "Ezra Klein has an interesting essay in the Washington Post about 'simultaneous invention,' where technology advances to the point that the next step is obvious to multiple people at once, and so they all push forward with the same or similar inventions. While the natural capabilities of human beings don't change much from year to year, their environments do, and so does the technology and store of knowledge they can access. 'The idea of the lone genius who has the eureka moment where they suddenly get a great idea that changes the world is not just the exception,' says Steven Johnson, author of Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, 'but almost nonexistent.' Consider Adam Goldberg's CU Community, created in 2003 at Columbia University, a social network that launched first and had cooler features than Facebook, with options for pictures and integrated blogging software. Klein writes, 'Zuckerberg's dominance can be attributed partly to the clean interface of his site, partly to the cachet of the Harvard name and partly to luck. But the difference between Mark Zuckerberg and Adam Goldberg was very small, while the difference between what Mark Zuckerberg could do and what the smartest college kid in 1999 could do was huge. It was the commons supporting them both that really mattered.'"
Obvious corollary (Score:5, Insightful)
This is one of the reasons software patents are stupid, why patent trolls exist, and why the patent system in general needs cutting down.
Re:Obvious corollary (Score:4, Insightful)
Patent trolls exist because we went from owning implementations to owning ideas. What if Thomas Edison went through 10,000 different materials for filaments just to find the right one and then ran against some patent troll who said "Give me $$$, I own the idea of a filament!!!" Most ideas aren't very useful when run up against initial reality, it's the work done to overcome those obstacles that is useful.
The patent office tries to act almost like a branch of zoology, except instead of classifying and categorizing animals, they do it with ideas. And they just aren't very good at it and the government never will be with centralized planning of this sort. IMO, the more advanced society gets, the more obvious the 18th/19th century character of the patent office becomes and that it's not sustainable. It may be like keeping the booster rockets attached to the shuttle of society, long after it cease helping us get off the ground.
It could work. (Score:5, Insightful)
But the patent office would have to require a WORKING prototype of whatever you're trying to patent.
The biggest problem is that the patent office will now accept patent applications for items that do not exist. This allows companies to block other inventors by having a patent filed prior to the inventor inventing the invention.
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It used to, and it still should.
I can understand that somethings need protection while investors pool funds to actually build a thing, so perhaps the working model should be deferred for a short time BUT until you produce one, you can't go to court and if you don't produce one by the deadline, the patent officially never existed. In the case of software, that deadline should be QUITE short since there is little capital investment needed to at least demo the concept.
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Why do you believe that?
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I'm mostly acknowledging a potential objection. Honestly, for example if someone wanted to demonstrate a new confinement method for hot fusion I could imagine it might cost more than $10 to get a working prototype together.
Re:Obvious corollary (Score:5, Insightful)
Software copyright already gives plenty of protection and it protects only implementations of an idea. The Phoenix BIOS that overthrew IBM's monopoly of the PC and allowed PC clones to exist (to everyone's benefit) had to surmount copyright protections only, and Phoenix had to spend *a lot* of money to surmount copyright. This is from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_BIOS [wikipedia.org]
If we had software patents back then, all the new PC's Macs, Amigas, etc. , almost any device that used BIOS-like ideas would have been stillborn; we'd just have really awful clunky PC's made by IBM for a really long time. Implementations of software are already protected by copyright. Software patents patent the idea; ideas are easy to come by. They prevent competing implementations of an idea, where the real hard work is. A software patent will prevent *any* implementation of the idea, if the patent holder is lazy
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Patent trolls exist because we went from owning implementations to owning ideas.
No, you neither own an idea or an implimentation. You have a 20 year monopoly on it, not ownership. If you own something you own it until you sell it, give it away, or it gets stolen.
Re:Obvious corollary (Score:5, Insightful)
This is one of the reasons software patents are stupid, why patent trolls exist, and why the patent system in general needs cutting down.
Your point is valid but I think it transcends software patents. Some patents, inventions or discoveries are simply a product of timing as the article suggests, and they aren't limited to software patents, or even patents.
A classic example would be the two of the biggest game changers in thinking, and both were co-discovered. Of all the times in history for these ideas to come about, they came about simultaneously from multiple sources:
Calculus: Leibniz and Newton
Evolution: Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace
Also...
Using laser pointers to amuse cats: Patent 5443036 and anyone who has ever seen a cat and laser pointer
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Dear god that is an actual patent...
Re:Obvious corollary (Score:5, Funny)
I googled it too... my god.
I thought the patent system had some worth... had something redeeming quality.... until I read that.
Primary Examiner:Manahan, Todd E. should be fired, then tarred and feathered.
"A method for inducing cats to exercise consists of directing a beam of invisible light produced by a hand-held laser apparatus onto the floor or wall or other opaque surface in the vicinity of the cat, then moving the laser so as to cause the bright pattern of light to move in an irregular way fascinating to cats, and to any other animal with a chase instinct. "
And no. people love to claim that the abstract isn't a big deal, that the claims section has the real material but no. just no.
Claims:What is claimed is:
1. A method of inducing aerobic exercise in an unrestrained cat comprising the steps of:
(a) directing an intense coherent beam of invisible light produced by a hand-held laser apparatus to produce a bright highly-focused pattern of light at the intersection of the beam and an opaque surface, said pattern being of visual interest to a cat; and
(b) selectively redirecting said beam out of the cat's immediate reach to induce said cat to run and chase said beam and pattern of light around an exercise area.
2. The method of claim 1 wherein said bright pattern of light is small in area relative to a paw of the cat.
3. The method of claim 1 wherein said beam remains invisible between said laser and said opaque surface until impinging on said opaque surface.
4. The method of claim 1 wherein step (b) includes sweeping said beam at an angular speed to cause said pattern to move along said opaque surface at a speed in the range of five to twenty-five feet per second.
Description:BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to recreational and amusement devices for domestic animals and, more particularly, to a method for exercising and entertaining cats.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
Cats are not characteristically disposed toward voluntary aerobic exercise. It becomes the burden of the cat owner to create situations of sufficient interest to the feline to induce even short-lived and modest exertion for the health and well-being of the pet. Cats are, however, fascinated by light and enthralled by unpredictable jumpy movements, as for instance, by the bobbing end of a piece of hand-held string or yarn, or a ball rolling and bouncing across a floor. Intense sunlight reflected from a mirror or focused through a prism, if the room is sufficiently dark, will, when moved irregularly, cause even the more sedentary of cats to scamper after the lighted image in an amusing and therapeutic game of "cat and mouse." The disruption of having to darken a room to stage a cat workout and the uncertainty of collecting a convenient sunbeam in a lens or mirror render these approaches to establishing a regular life-enhancing cat exercise routine inconvenient at best.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an improved method of exercising a cat in normal day and night lighting environments.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a method of providing amusing, entertaining and healthy exercise for a cat.
It is yet another object of the present invention to teach a method of exercising a cat effortlessly at any time.
In accordance with the present invention, a light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation (laser) device in a small hand-held configuration is used to project and move a bright pattern of light around a room to amuse and exercise a cat.
The method is effective, simple, convenient and inexpensive to practice and provides healthy exercise for the cat and amusement and entertainment for both the cat and the owner.
These and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following description and accompanying drawings of one specific embo
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Calculus: Leibniz and Newton
Evolution: Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace
We have had thousands of game-changing inventions in the history of mankind. What percentage of those were arrived at by multiple inventors, independently, and at roughly the same time? Champions of the belief presented by the article commonly bring up the "classic examples" of Leibniz/Newton, Darwin/Wallace, and Marconi/Tesla. Well, how many non-classic examples are there? Seriously, even if there were a hundred more examples, in the face of all the major scientific/philosophical/mathematical discoveries e
Re:Obvious corollary (Score:5, Insightful)
Calculus: Leibniz and Newton
Evolution: Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace
We have had thousands of game-changing inventions in the history of mankind. What percentage of those were arrived at by multiple inventors, independently, and at roughly the same time? Champions of the belief presented by the article commonly bring up the "classic examples" of Leibniz/Newton, Darwin/Wallace, and Marconi/Tesla. Well, how many non-classic examples are there? Seriously, even if there were a hundred more examples, in the face of all the major scientific/philosophical/mathematical discoveries ever made in every field that would still seem statistically insignificant. I mean, c'mon guys, how about a little critical thinking and perspective here...
Here's a quote straight from Wikipedia on RADAR:
"In the 1934–1939 period, eight nations developed, independently and in great secrecy, systems of this type: the United States, Great Britain, Germany, the USSR, Japan, the Netherlands, France, and Italy."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_radar [wikipedia.org]
Eight nations? Independently and in secrecy! The individuals who independently created RADAR showed some critical thinking but the fact that everything up to that point both physics, technology and drive really allowed them to succeed.
Think about what would happen if you were transported back in time to the 1600's. What could you really do with all the knowledge you have about today?
Re:Obvious corollary (Score:4, Interesting)
Nothing. No one needs your steam engine. No one is able to manufacture an internal combustion machine or even refine the gasoline for it. No one has any use for electricity. There is not enough copper being mined to make for a decent wiring. You are missing the whole infrastructure to create large amounts of steel. No one has an idea how to process iron into steel in an industrial process (again a game changing invention with at least two inventors: Henry Bessemer and William Kelly), and the process in a forge with remelting and reforging iron until it is malleable is slow and expensive.
Re:Obvious corollary (Score:4, Interesting)
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No, actually. Patents aren't supposed to reward inspiration, they're supposed to reward work. They're to help with the 99% perspiration [wikiquote.org] that the invention process involves. Even if the particular invention is "obvious", that doesn't mean there isn't a shitload of work to do, and that somebody won't have to put in the hours (with no financial support) in order to develop the idea into any usable form.
Oh, and I am particularly disgusted that you didn't use your first post privileges to make a lame joke about
Re:Obvious corollary (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd say that's what copyright is for. If you spend thousands of coder-hours implementing 1-click purchasing on Amazon, that doesn't mean it's inherently patentable, because anyone that looks at it from the outside can throw the coder-hours themselves at it without needing any special research. They shouldn't be allowed to just come along and steal the codebase, and that's where copyright protects you.
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You yourself stated why patents have everything to do with this subject. If steam engines are destined to happen when it's Steam Engine Time, then no amount of monopoly protection can further incentivize people to "invent" something whose time has come anyway. It will happen regardless of patents, and could be "invented" by any number of people, so why should one person have a monopoly on it?
At best patents do nothing, and at worst they retard technological progress.
Re:Obvious corollary (Score:5, Insightful)
It's serious. Just look at Douglas Engelbart and his team. Google for Mother of all Demos.
He came up with all that but 20+ years too soon, and some of his ideas that aren't widely implemented yet are probably still valid too.
Despite him being too early, his work led to stuff in Xerox PARC, which led to Apple's GUI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_graphical_user_interface [wikipedia.org]
So the patent system rewards those who come up with stuff like "one click" and trolls, but the real innovators often won't get rewarded because by the time the masses "get it", your patent has expired.
To me "Prizes for Innovation" would work better for that. Since hindsight is better than an overworked patent examiner figuring stuff out from vague descriptions. Could have two categories of prizes one selected by the Public, and one by "Experts in the Field".
Inventing the wheel and a chariot before figuring out how to tame a horse or cow, wouldn't get you as far ;). But when someone else finally tames a horse, a horse drawn cart/chariot might be more obvious to them.
Re:Obvious corollary (Score:5, Insightful)
Or here's an idea: if you come up with a great idea, you work with a company to manufacture and sell it (or do it yourself) and make a lot of money until someone comes out with an improvement.
I've always found it interesting that the same people who believe in "free markets" also believe in anti-competitive tools like patents. Does anyone really believe that without the protection of patents there wouldn't be any new products or ideas?
Re:Obvious corollary (Score:4, Insightful)
"Does anyone really believe that without the protection of patents there wouldn't be any new products or ideas?"
But... without patents, the person who originally came up with the idea wouldn't be able to make shitty products until their patent expires! They might actually have to... make a quality product that outdoes their competitors! We can't have that.
Facebook has nothing to do with innovation (Score:5, Insightful)
The network effect has more to do with being in the right place at the right time than on the technical merits of the application. A much better solution that occurred 1 year earlier or 1 year later would have failed in the market. Facebook was "good enough" and that is all that was needed.
But let's not confuse this with innovation.
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Actually the whole story is crap, typical mass media drivel aimed at the worship of the rich and greedy. Truth is, putting together the right team and getting the right support is the real difference between winning and losing. Forget all the crap about worship of the corporate leader driven by public relations ass hats.
The staff counts first, the engineers, the accountants, the coders, the marketing and sales team. Put together the wrong team and your product dies, end of story, time to cut the crap, th
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There are people who actually believe that is possible. People like Niklas Luhmann [wikipedia.org] are trying to figure out how to arrange such a society. BF Skinner was also a man who thought along those lines.
Now, to these people, technological advances are inevitable; based on sheer probability and mathematics, the wheel was 'destined' t
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Now, to these people, technological advances are inevitable; based on sheer probability and mathematics, the wheel was 'destined' to be invented when it did, and so was Facebook. The actual geniuses themselves don't matter, since they would be replaced by another if they weren't around. It is in fact necessary for this to be so, at least to a certain degree, or their entire theory fall apart (how can you otherwise predict the arrival of a genius, a singular event?) The article is basing itself on this line of thought.
Most great advances in civilization are inevitable. In modern times its hard to find humans that aren't connected and therefore unable to be influenced by the advances of others. However, if you look at ancient times there was plenty of inevitable duplication.
Spoken language was independently invented by most societies.
Written language (which is much more difficult) was independently invented 4 times.
The concept of ZERO was invented twice.
Civilization is already mapped, refer to the Kardashev scale:
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Civilization advances and retreats. Because we are in the middle of the quickest advance in all time, it can be hard to see that, but I don't think there is any reason to say that the horse harness, for example, was inevitable; it took thousands of years before it was available. And yet, it
Re:Facebook has nothing to do with innovation (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem I see with it is that genius actually does matter. If we all sit down and wait for new inventions because 'surely someone will do it' then no one will do it. A single person can change the course of a nation, and it is impossible to predict individual people
I think you may misunderstand. The argument is that actual genius doesn't really exist. The argument is that the specific individual who comes up with the "invention" is irrelevant. The argument is that there is no stunning ray of sheer brainpower that makes such an "invention" possible - it is, instead, inevitable.
Imagine, if you will, a train barreling down the tracks towards a helpless puppy. When the train is 1,000 miles away from the puppy, nobody really knows what is going to happen. You can't see the big picture. The folks looking at the puppy don't see the train, and the folks looking at the train can't see the puppy. If somebody were to shout out "oh no, the puppy's gonna get squished!" at that moment in time, it would be genius. But as the train gets closer and closer to the puppy, it becomes more and more obvious. And eventually it is almost impossible not to realize that the puppy is going to be run over.
This is the argument. As technology rolls forward, it eventually becomes almost impossible not to invent something new.
You get enough computers chattering away with each-other... Enough people on the web... Enough folks trying to share photos and connect with other people... Cheap enough server infrastructure.. Ample enough bandwidth... Powerful enough databases... And eventually somebody is bound to say "Hey, why don't we throw together some kind of web page where people can keep in touch with each-other and share photos and stuff?"
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That's an insidious fallacy. There is no 'forward' with technology, it's not like a train that follows the tracks. Technology just evolves in some direction for a while, then switches to another direction, etc. Nobody knows in which direction it goes, and there are plenty of directions that are missed out on and will never be followed. All that anyone can say is that among all the technologies that will be
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That's an insidious fallacy. There is no 'forward' with technology, it's not like a train that follows the tracks. Technology just evolves in some direction for a while, then switches to another direction, etc. Nobody knows in which direction it goes, and there are plenty of directions that are missed out on and will never be followed. All that anyone can say is that among all the technologies that will be found along the path of our civilization, many of the technologies have relatives found earlier in time.
Direction is irrelevant to the discussion. Any given technology has a pile of prerequisites. As those prerequisites are met, we move closer to having the ability to discover/implement that technology. You can call this "forward" if you want... Or "up", "down", "backwards", "hubwise", or whatever the hell you want. You're still getting closer to having everything you need to make whatever it is we're talking about.
Now, if you always call 'forward' whatever direction technology's headed in, then sure, progress looks like it's inevitable. But then you have problems explaining how some civilizations don't seem to go 'forward' in the same direction as us. For example, many South American civilizations did NOT invent the wheel.
Obviously some prerequisite was not met.
This isn't some MMOG or RPG where you can look at
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It may be a "noticeable skill" but it is not a *unique* skill. Perhaps a "genius" is required, but it is clear that any one particular genius is not necessary. Had Zuckerberg gotten hit by a buss back in the day, someone else would have put together the "winning formula" for this particular application.
Re:Facebook has nothing to do with innovation (Score:4, Interesting)
It's the argument of someone who isn't a genius to claim that genius does not exist, or is really nothing special. Anyone can throw a football, or bang on a drum. Doing it with the practice and timing to actually entertain, or to reliably reach a wide receiver, or to achieve what Zuckerberg with the interface that people _accepted_ takes some noticeable skill.
Skill != Genius
Being able to entertain somebody with a drum or win a game with a football certainly takes skill. Skill that I do not have. But it does not take genius.
Building a nice website also takes skill. It's a skill that I do not have. But it does not take genius.
Genius is not skill, it is vision. It is seeing things that others cannot. You could argue that perhaps Babbage was a genius, since he saw a computing machine long before anyone else did. But Zuckerberg didn't build his website decades before anyone else. Other folks had the same idea at about the same time. Because it had become virtually obvious.
Which is the whole argument. That as technology progresses, and innovations pile atop innovations, it takes less and less vision to see something new. Until eventually it's right there in your face and somebody is going to "invent" it almost by accident.
"If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants."
If you stack up enough giants, anyone can see anything.
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So the real geniuses are people like Babbage, who shouted "oh no, that train is going to squish that puppy!" before that train was even built, and Leonardo da Vinci, who shouted "oh no, that train is going to squish that puppy!" before the idea of trains was even invented.
Yes. In my opinion that is true genius. That shows some kind of remarkable insight that just simply wasn't available to anyone else at the time. Or for years to come. There was something truly special about those people.
Of course people thought Babbage was a bit of a nutter at the time, and we probably wouldn't even know who Leonardo da Vinci was today if he hadn't also been a great artist.
Yup. Simply coming up with an idea doesn't do you too much good if you can't implement it. And if you're too far ahead of the curve then the infrastructure to implement it doesn't even exist.
Clearly being a real genius isn't of much practical value. The real money is in doing a good job at what someone else already thought up.
Indeed.
Which does take an awful lot of skill, talent, knowledge, foresight, and luck... I'm no
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The beauty of free markets and capitalism (regardless of their flaws) is that profit drives invention. The profit motive will bring out the geniuses to do their thing. Enough geniuses working on the same problem is bound to show results.
In a centrally planned economy, the who is very important. All the central planners know is that they have some vague goal of a type of technology, and it's up to them to make sure the correct person is in place to do create it.
So I would in fact imagine that in communist Ch
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Wow! That makes it doubly impressive how people invented all those important things in the thousands of years before capitalism and markets even existed!
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You think the concept of invention for profit is new?
Re:Facebook has nothing to do with innovation (Score:4, Insightful)
Whereas in a planned economy, the planners must find the person who can make it happen. Like finding a needle in a haystack.
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Wrong. We can sit and wait all day, but some portion of the human population will still do it, because some portion isn't content to sit and wait.
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The network effect has more to do with being in the right place at the right time than on the technical merits of the application. A much better solution that occurred 1 year earlier or 1 year later would have failed in the market. Facebook was "good enough" and that is all that was needed.
But let's not confuse this with innovation.
It also has a lot to do with self promotion and the ability to convince others that you're brilliant (and in some cases even take credit for the work of others). Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg, Ellison. Not known as being nice people.
True genius is rare. You do get people who think so far outside the box that they are decades ahead of eventual discoveries. It's rare. Most of these people don't become famous.
So in other words (Score:2)
If it were timeliness, all of the kids would be using socializing through MySpace on their early style Windows Slates/Tablets/Whatever-they-were-called on an AOL internet connection.
Seems as though the first mover isn't always the winner in terms of market share and/or mindshare.
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I once heard the saying that, "Luck is simply being prepared to act when the time to act presents itself."
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See, e.g, Babbage's Analytical Engine [wikipedia.org].
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Yes, there thesis seems to come from looking at an excessively narrow reference class for their inferences. The real question is not "Why does the same invention happen in several places at once?", but: "Why doesn't the same invention happen almost *everywhere* that the pre-requisites are met?" That is, why only these few people and not 90% of those who were almost there, if it's really "obvious given the related technologies"?
For an extreme example, the technology for trains has been around since Roman t
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In the Roman case, the pre-requisites were NOT met. They could make a sort of jet powered curiosity that I suppose could be called a steam engine, but it wasn't at all powerful enough to do significant work. Attempts to scale it to be powerful enough would have hit a wall hard since the technology to make a sufficiently strong boiler (not to mention bearings) just wasn't there.
When that technology did finally come along, so too did the steam engine, but it bore no resemblance to the Roman invention.
As for
!news (Score:5, Insightful)
"There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come." (Victor Hugo)
The internet just mad that stronger.
And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet our society and our legal systems enshrine individual innovations and creations as sacred property, while suffering the very existence of a commons or a public domain barely with tolerance, denouncing it as communism.
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We're also helping creators and their heirs hold legal monopolies on innovations for much longer, extending individual copyrights to the life of the author plus 70 years, for instance. Would we lose so many great ideas if the monopoly lasted only until 15 years after the inventor's death?
[...]
You need intellectual-property rules that ensure space for new ideas and uses. You need a tax code that encourages research and development spending. You need, in other words, to furnish people with an environment in which innovation can take place.
Outliers made the same argument (Score:2)
The book "Outliers", by Malcolm Gladwell, makes much the same argument, and gives a couple very persuasive examples of how pure luck is an absolute requirement for outsized success. One example I particularly like is how professional Canadian hockey players tend to be born early in the year, the reason being that those born earlier will be more physically mature than their younger teammates born later in the year, and the "tracking" that occurs at an early age ensures that those differences are magnified as
Sounds like a reason to abolish patents (Score:2, Insightful)
A useful invention will happen when its time comes. The patent system will not make it happen faster. The only thing patents do is prevent further inventions. This seems to be especially true for software 'inventions'.
There was an electronics writer, Don Landcaster, who spent many column inches demonstrating that patents were absolute poison to the small inventor ( www.tinaja.com/glib/casagpat.pdf ). Patents work for companies that can pay big bucks for lawyers to keep down the small inventor.
The classi
standing upon the shoulders of giants... (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_of_Chartres [wikipedia.org]
"We are like dwarfs standing [or sitting] upon the shoulders of giants, and so able to see more and see farther than the ancients."
Gee, I think that sounds strangely familiar ;^)
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I am a dwarf, you insensitive clod!
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I am a clod, you insensitive dwarf!
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Oh yeah? Well, I'm a dwarf giant and because my two curses are exactly in balance, nobody believes me.
Genius (Score:4, Insightful)
If Facebook is now an example of "genius", what word shall we now use to describe actual genius?
And yes, I'm aware that Zuckerberg gets more ass than I ever will, and probably has more than 100 lifetimes of my wealth. My dick doesn't work that well anyway. Question still stands, IMHO.
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Re:Genius (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, all of those examples you cite may have tanked because their inventors sold them. Think about it. Once the creative drive and the instinct to do what's cool leaves the product, and is replaced by a lot of investment money that wants to monetize the cool in order to realize ROI, what do you think happens?
I predict that Facebook will do well as long as Zuckerberg retains control over it. Once he is no longer in charge of things, it will falter.
Re:Genius (Score:5, Funny)
And yes, I'm aware that Zuckerberg gets more ass than I ever will,
I was listening to a review of the movie on PBS. One of the commentators pointed out that, contrary to the story line, Zuckerberg was (and still is?) involved with one woman during the birth and creation of Facebook.
There's something to the idea that once the problem of 'getting ass' has been resolved, creative people have much more time resources with which to develop new technology*.
*Hence my idea of providing free hookers to engineering ad technology students. This will correct the USA's tech slide in no time.
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"involved with one woman"
Obviously he is not a genius!.
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Wrong. The kind of science productivity that gets you noticed falls off a cliff. Actually useful stuff ends up getting done but on a new steady schedule rather than fits and starts and explosions.
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That's exactly backwards. Science productivity falls off a cliff from scientists who get married.
That's why the plan called for getting scientists hookers, not wives...
Re:Genius (Score:4, Insightful)
Depends on who that woman is. I just broke up with one and find myself _flooded_ with free time to spend on coding and other projects.
simple human psychology: (Score:3, Funny)
when you can't get any ass, all you want to do is get ass
when you can get ass any time you want, you lose interest in trying to get it
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If Facebook is now an example of "genius", what word shall we now use to describe actual genius?
And yes, I'm aware that Zuckerberg gets more ass than I ever will, and probably has more than 100 lifetimes of my wealth. My dick doesn't work that well anyway. Question still stands, IMHO.
And your question is valid. It wasn't "genius". It was sheer luck. Nothing more. There were others before Facebook, but his became the "popular" hangout. That's it. No "genius" or even "magic" there. No way am I going to compare someone who hit an Internet "lottery" to some of the greatest minds of the 20th Century.
Besides, someone sitting around acting out a bullshit fake persona for 763 "friends" they hardly knew or know is about as far from being "social" as one can get...Guess I'm one of those ol
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RaymondKurzweil posted: ..and probably has more than 100 lifetimes of my wealth.
But I thought that you weren't going to die?
Friendster, MySpace, Tribe.net, Orkut... (Score:2)
Anyone else remember these social networking sites? I was using them at least a year before Facebook existed, or was at least available to the general public. When Facebook rolled around my thought was "So what? Another social networking site." I only joined when the network effect kicked in and it was obvious the others were falling by the wayside.
Patents (Score:2)
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We do... It is...
Social networking? Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's your best example?
Calculus, dude. It's the calculus. The Newton-Leibniz rivalry is the go-to example of simultaneous invention. What you've got instead is a shaggy dog story set up to let you imply that Zuckerberg is in some way a genius.
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Gosh I can't believe how cynical I've become.
Re:Social networking? Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Also natural selection, with Darwin having sat on the theory for a while, and only publishing after corresponding with Wallace [wikipedia.org] and realizing that Wallace was on his way to beating Darwin to the punch.
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The Newton-Leibniz rivalry is the go-to example of simultaneous invention.
Not to the target audience of the Washington Post, ie the general American populace, most of whom are so fxxking ignorant of science, math, and history, plus, they are also proud of that ignorance. They eyes will glaze over when they see the word "calculus". You might get a couple of them to recognize the name Newton, but you have to hit the lottery for them to know who's Leibniz.
OTOH, mention Facebook and they will pretend they know what's it about even if they don't.
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Most people have a hard time relating to history because they never got to see it from the ground level. Just like in football, people scream for the QB to throw to a guy 30 yards down the field not realizing what it must be like to have a group of 8 300+ pound guys in between you and the open receiver. History is the same, in hindsight we think of it as obvious but for th
Re:Social networking? Really? (Score:5, Funny)
Poke (Score:2)
It was this silly feature that I truly think made all the difference
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And the feature was just like 'finger' from Unix, go figure.
Re:Poke (Score:4, Funny)
Counter Examples (Score:3, Insightful)
The Steam Engine of Alexandria
Archimedes celestial clock device
Concrete
All discovered, then subsequently lost and even as technology advanced beyond the point where each was originally invented no one at the time came up with them until centuries after the point this hypothesis would postulate.
NOT Counter-examples! (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you've missed the point. With the exception of Concrete, these inventions were massively predated as you say, but they didn't prevail. There wasn't much application for such advanced technology, given that less-advanced alternatives were good enough and easier to produce - horse-before-the-cart and all that. To put it simply: Their Time Had Not Come.
Concrete is an interesting counter-example though. As a building material it's remarkable, and there were some things the Romans could (apparently) do
I am not entirey convinced (Score:4, Insightful)
It's arguments like this that trouble me.
That's what happened with Alexander Graham Bell, who in all likelihood invented the telephone after Elisha Gray - and both of them came after Antonio Meucci, who couldn't afford the fee to keep his patent current.
Elisha Gray was the audience while Bell demonstrated his telephone at the Centennial World's Fair in Philadelphia in July 1876.
Gray was no stranger to self promotion.
He was an electrical engineer with a national reputation and a lucrative portfolio of some seventy patents. This is guy who co-founded Western Electric. The guy who would later go on to invent an early and commercially successful "fax machine," the Telautograph.
The first Bell telephone exchange opened in Hartford, Connecticut in January, 1878. By 1882 this single exchange had gone through two stages of expansion to become Southern New England telephone.
If Gray had a working telephone in 1876, what the hell was he doing with it?
The answer to this riddle is that - like all the others who had grown up with Western Union - he probably thought all he had in his hand was a plaything.
Bell was the outsider. Bell was disruptive.
An investigating committee established by the British Parliament found Edison's work on the electric light "unworthy of the attention of practical or scientific men." Edison himself thought his phonograph "not of any commercial value."
The renowned British physicist Lord Kelvin announced in 1897 that "radio has no future." A decade later a business executive told radio pioneer Lee De Forest that he could put in a single room "all the radiotelephone apparatus that the country will ever need." De Forest himself announced in 1926 that, "while theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially I consider it an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming."
So it goes: Year after year, decade after decade, century after century, our ancestors have made fools of themselves. We always laugh at the electrical toy; van Gogh never sells his paintings; Melville always dies unrecognized. The only safe prediction is that people will go on making dumb predictions.
Hindsight, Foresight, and No Sight [americanheritage.com]
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Bell was the outsider. Bell was disruptive.
No he wasn't. The telephone is a classic example of "an invention whose time has come".
There were dozens, if not hundreds of persons and groups at the time all over the world trying to improve the telegraph, including trying to transmit audio, to make recordings and to create automated switching fabrics. Many knew the importance of those things. Bell was lucky to be first, nothing more. Read his biography. He spent the rest of his life, and considerable wealth, b
It was the chIcks that made FB (Score:3, Interesting)
You remember those hot babes who were Florida Gators fans who ended up in Maxim? THEY made Facebook take off.
Not just timeliness, but ability to execute (Score:2)
Multiple people may get the same idea at once, but those who succeed are also those who also have to skills to pull it off. I guess that's obvious. But it may go into explaining why Facebook succeeded where others did not. Zuckerberg managed to develop a UI that people preferred, even if the number of features was smaller. Here, his skill was greater intuition or better training in how to build a usable and attractive system.
Clean interface? (Score:2)
'Zuckerberg's dominance can be attributed partly to the clean interface of his site...
...what kind of hell-spawned interface did the other guy make if Facebook is clean by comparison?
Problems with basic definitions (Score:2)
Zuckerberg and genius in the same thought? Clearly the author and I have differing views on what is considered "genius".
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Of course, that really only counts if you ignore Archimedes.
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Re:Tech Genius != Financial Success (Score:4, Insightful)
Neither Mark Zuckerberg nor Bill Gates nor Steve Jobs could program a fucking VCR.
But Ballmer can throw one quite a distance.
This is known as "big man's disease" where the belief that physical size, the ability to bellow and pound on a desk has some economic value in the management of a modern business. Back when I worked for a power company, there was some value to this. The foreman on a line crew had proven himself in a largely physical profession and was therefore accorded some level of respect.
They can't program a program either their skill is in finding someone who can and telling them to "get it done" then having the resources to write their paycheck.
Which raises the question of why the generic talents like managing an office, raising capital, keeping the stationary cabinet full, etc. commands higher wages than the people who actually build the systems.
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Which raises the question of why the generic talents like managing an office, raising capital, keeping the stationary cabinet full, etc. commands higher wages than the people who actually build the systems.
If the actual work is commoditized, most of the reward will go to those who risk time and money — either theirs or other people's. The winners are the bold and wealthy or the bold and convincing.
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ever tried building a system without an office, stationary(or the digital equivalent), or capital? Exactly.
Yes. On my kitchen table (more or less).
Ever try to build a system with an office, capital and a nice mahogany board of directors' table but no talent. Exactly.
The problem arises when you get something up and running and need capital to expand. The cost of that is to put the VC's idiot nephew on the board, hire MBAs from his Alma Mater's frat house and give them the checkbook.
Re:Next up (Score:4, Funny)
0-click ordering
Its called Government.
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That was invented long before 1-click. It thrived for quite a while until a series of PSAs in the '70s telling people that if they receive stuff in the mail they didn't order they can consider it to be a gift.
Re:Ezra Klein is a political shill (Score:4, Insightful)
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Patents are patently un-libertarian. If a libertarian believes in government promoted monopolies, he doesn't understand what he advocates.