Knowledge vs “IP”

There is an article on this subject here which highlights the absurdity that is IP. It’s better expressed, via examples, than I could ever manage:

“Fundamentally, the stuff we call “intellectual property” is just knowledge – ideas, words, tunes, blueprints, identifiers, secrets, databases. This stuff is similar to property in some ways: it can be valuable, and sometimes you need toinvest a lot of money and labour into its development to realise that value.
…
But it is also dissimilar from property in equally important ways. Most of all, it is not inherently “exclusive”. If you trespass on my flat, I can throw you out (exclude you from my home). If you steal my car, I can take it back (exclude you from my car). But once you know my song, once you read my book, once you see my movie, it leaves my control. Short of a round of electroconvulsive therapy, I can’t get you to un-know the sentences you’ve just read here.”

In this context, I think it may be appropriate to include the text of an email received by Richard Stallman, last year:

” Your site is an interesting one. Some of the ideas seem useful; some of them are amusing, and would qualify as chindogu. (Look that up on wikipedia.org.)

However, it’s really very bad to use the term “intellectual property” to describe what this is about. That term doesn’t have a coherent meaning; it is an overgeneralization that covers up confusion and makes it appear meaningful. Whoever the term “intellectual property” is typically either confused or trying to confuse others.

One of your posts, a few items down from the top, was about the patent system. It speaks of “a share of the IP”. Do you mean “a share of any income from patent licenses”? If so, would you please correct it to say that, and thus avoid the term “IP”?
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html for more explanation of this problem.
Worse, it seems to me that by demanding secrecy to create monopoly, the patent system is seriously damaging innovation.

I agree. I just made a link to
http://cepr.net/publications/drug_patent_alternatives_2004_09.htm which explains just how bad this is.

The article used to have a different URL which used the term “intellectual property”, but I convinced the author to change it so as to avoid that term. He changed it today 😉 . “








And here’s a view from Arthur C Clarke, just before his recent death:


“I’m often asked why I didn’t try to patent the idea of communications satellites. My answer is always, ‘A patent is really a license to be sued.’ “

												
 
						
		
	

	
	
	

				
		
			
			

				#518: Two-for-one
			

						

							
	
		

		
									

						
If you have some religious objection to ordering home deliveries via the internet then you may even think that the shopping trolley is a good design. In fact, for those still compelled to do the Ben Hur thing around the local store, the problems include steering eccentricity, injuries to people’s fingers, cost of making, stacking and keeping the damn things, back injuries due to bending down inside them etc., etc.


Today’s invention addresses an additional issue: manoeuvrability. When your trolley is filling up, it becomes a massive weight which must be rotated about a vertical axis not far from the shopper’s body. When corners need to be taken, even at snail’s pace,  this imposes huge loads on people’s arms and backs.




So, my suggestion is to replace every large trolley with two small ones…shops frequently have to supply two sizes anyway to deal with this very issue. The difference is that, for the majority of shoppers who need to buy a truckload at each visit, I’d supply a bridge mechanism so that two small carts can be joined temporarily together. This would allow the shopper to walk between them, steering using the usual handle on the front one, but with a very much lower moment of inertia for an equivalent amount of shopping…ie much easier turns (about nine times less effort, in fact). 


The bridge component would attach to top edge of one side of the two small trollies (as shown) and would be customer-owned so that when the shopping is done, it goes home too, leaving the trollies to nest neatly in the carpark as usual.

												
 
						
		
	

	
	
	

				
		
			
			

				#517: Wristware
			

						

							
	
		

		
									

						
Buying and wearing an expensive watch can be a pain. Today’s invention is for people who don’t want to have to take great care of an expensive timepiece, but who still want some of the character which these products embody (and without buying a counterfeit lookalike).


For many years it’s been possible to get rather unexciting radio-controlled watches. Imagine one of these which receives via radio an image of the face of a very expensive timepiece, physically located safely on a shelf somewhere. 




This need only be updated with each new position of the second hand, reducing the bandwidth requirement. You might also choose to receive and play the actual ticking of the particular watch in question. 


This would allow people to ‘wear’ a new, highly-expensive watch each day -without the cost of buying and the care required of an actual owner. A wrist-based receiver could also have a back face and display the inner workings of a watch equipped with a rear window.


Those with a keen sense of irony could opt for the Vista desktop clock, since it’s the best thing about that whole operating system.

												
 
						
		
	

	
	
	

				
		
			
			

				#516: Viewalk
			

						

							
	
		

		
									

						
Photographs of landscapes don’t really enthuse me much. I’m generally much happier with scenery which contains a few wind turbines…I suspect that’s because, apart from being an elegant, quiet design, they also add some sense of scale (and distance). Even the most beautiful view means little to me without that.


Today’s invention therefore is a way to add this to even the most featureless of photographs.




Mountain walkers frequently carry GPS units which record in great detail the path taken on a digital map (as well as a check on the altitude, as indicated by the map’s contours). A walker could take his photographs (using a camera which similarly recorded position, compass direction and elevation/declination). Later, each of these shots could have the path taken superimposed on it (imagine the translucent digital image, correctly oriented, being looked through -at a CAD-like model of the terrain on which the route appears eg as a red line. Such a line could easily be projected onto the ‘screen’ of the image itself). 


This would then allow injection of digital images of eg a person -scaled appropriately for different locations along the route. For added realism, it would even be possible to inject a synthetic shadow each time, knowing the time of day at which the image was taken.

												
 
						
		
	

	
	
	

				
		
			
			

				Rise of the Creative Class
			

						

							
	
		

		
									

						
I was reading some brochure material from the Glasgow School of Art recently (superbly creative people, but I think they need some serious organisation). Anyway, I came across this inspiring quote from a Professor Richard Florida


Creativity is now the decisive source of competitive advantage. In virtually every industry, from autombiles to fashion, food products and information technology itself, the winners in the long run are those who can create and keep creating…creativity has come to be the most highly prized commodity in our economy.


I think he’s right although, sadly, many of our organisations and businesses don’t think in the long term.  Those that do, tend to prosper.

												
 
						
		
	

	
	
	

				
		
			
			

				#515: Turbojetsam
			

						

							
	
		

		
									

						
According to a brief online search for background data, everyone in the US generates about 1/2 kilo of rubbish every day that isn’t capable of being recycled. This is the stuff that we will continue to have to put somewhere ‘out of the way’ whilst we develop a healthier attitude towards consumption.


Today’s invention is to tip it in the ocean…but not just over the side of a barge as we currently do. The material which we can’t recycle would be loaded into egg-shaped, reinforced concrete pods. These would be floated out to sea, and then allowed to sink. Each would be equipped with a water turbine and a cable to the surface. The fall would attain a terminal velocity of perhaps 30mph, generating a supply of electricity via the turbines. 




At the bottom, the waste would be disgorged and the empty shell pulled slowly back to the surface for refilling. The pod’s shape would exhibit low drag, both on descent and on return to the surface.

												
 
						
		
	

	
	
	

				
		
			
			

				The Curse of Knowledge
			

						

							
	
		

		
									

						
When it’s time to accomplish a task (open a store, build a house, buy new cash registers, sell insurance) those in the know get it done the way it has always been done, stifling innovation as they barrel along the well-worn path.


This article, in the New York Times, is a good introduction the idea of ‘zero-gravity thinking’: when a company invites in an outsider who is smart and creative -and bold enough to ask the really fundamental questions about their products and processes.


This is one of the services which I provide to organisations that have become mired in their own expertise.


Contact me via pra@patrickandrews.com to escape from outdated patterns of thinking.

												
 
						
		
	

	
	
	

				
		
			
			

				#514: PageMarks
			

						

							
	
		

		
									

						
I’m addicted to sending people interesting links to things I’ve read online (all of this stuff also ends up here )


One frustration, though, is that the noteworthy bit(s) is often embedded and dispersed within the body of a mile-long page of text and images and adverts…just sending someone a link to the page usually won’t allow them to get the intended nugget.




Today’s invention is a way to highlight only components of a webpage for the benefit of other readers. 


A browser plugin interprets your clicking on a webpage and highlights the bits you deem important. It then sends this information to a filter site initially.


You send your friend a link to this filter website, with some extra parameters telling the filter what real page to fetch and what the important parts are. Then the filter spits back the original page, to the intended recipient, but hacked so as to highlight the interesting bit(s). It’s a kind of TinyURL for bits of webpages.

												
 
						
		
	

	
	
	

				
		
			
			

				#513: DexteriSee
			

						

							
	
		

		
									

						
There are lots of repeated, manual tasks which need to be learned before they become ‘second nature’ -such as doing up one’s laces or tie.


Today’s invention is to supply a wide range of small movies to people’s cellphones, each of which illustrates how to do one of these tasks, slowly and from the doer’s point of view. There’s no point showing me some bow tie knot being done up from

 the standpoint of a helpful assistant who’s not there.




This could be applied to other tasks, such as lace tying, conjuring tricks, calligraphy, knitting or making fishing flies… 


Given that watching such actions seems to fire up mirror neurons in the brain of the observer, it may be that this approach offers direct support for rapid, mimicry-based learning -so that the phone need only be used in this way a few times for each new task.

												
 
						
		
	

	
	
	

				
		
			
			

				‘Efficient’ invention
			

						

							
	
		

		
									

						
Research and Development… they’re essentially the same thing, aren’t they (“Arrandee”)?   Well, no…and failing to  make the distinction is costing a fortune.


1. Research is about investigating nature by thinking up and actually doing experiments (disproving and improving theories). You can’t plan scientific research any farther than the next experiment. It’s literally like playing a game in which imagination guides your next move. Werner Von Braun said research was what he was doing when he didn’t know what he was doing. Invention has essentially the same character. As companies like 3M have begun to discover, you can’t necessarily generate a brilliant idea today just because it appears on some project plan. The more pressure you put on people, the more they generate only derivative results.


2. Development (a.k.a. Technology, Engineering) is about applying research results in a highly controlled way to deliver some benefit to people. This can and should be planned. You can apply your Six Sigma methodology or whatever to Development and it can reap huge benefits in terms of heightened efficiencies and quality.


These two activities are fundamentally different, even if the world is full of people who can’t be bothered to understand that.  My working definition is that if a solution to your current problem is known to exist and you seek an improvement or efficiency increase, then you are doing engineering or development work. If no solution is known to exist, then it’s research.


The reason that this matters is that it is possible to invest a massive amount of money in a development project only to discover that it contains a research question hidden within it. At that point, the plan is derailed, because you have to start doing experiments -a haphazard, stumbling process with many blind alleys. The good news is that research is the only known process for gaining really big advances.


People who demand budgetary estimates or deliverables in connection with a research project (or an inventive task) are unaware of the true nature of the endeavour.


There are, however, some ways in which the mysterious process of invention can be improved and supported. Here are some techniques I seem to use.


    

  • introduce asymmetry e.g. everyone is not the same, so why should we all have the same seats provided?
    • 

  • look at stuff that’s “always” true (people walk forward) and challenge that
    • 

  • concentrate on real problems. They are sometimes hard to find because we just take it for granted that certain things are always going to be with us
    • 

  • as you wake up, pause and relax into a state of semiconscious reflection: it seems to disable that internal voice which usually says, “that’s a stupid idea”…invention seems to start as a right-brain, holistic thing.
    • 

  • look at things from a different perspective eg underneath or from space
    • 

  • improve on a good idea, eg velcro (what if it could also generate static sparks for illumination purposes?)
    • 

  • combine old and new approaches…sometimes reversion to paper and clockwork can yield a great idea
    • 

  • sometimes, just changing quantity can have a qualitative effect (eg twin-engine planes are safer than single-engine ones by a factor >>2)
    • 

  • spot ‘metaphors‘ eg a laptop is superficially like a book, so why can’t we have a multiscreen laptop, analogous to pages?
    • 

  • go to new places, experience new things…it seems to make useful connections, behind the scenes
    • 

  • only a small fraction of ideas will ever be any use: so have lots.
    • 



Actually, it was Linus Pauling, winner of the 1954 Nobel Prize in chemistry and the 1962 Nobel Peace Prize, who said, “The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas.”


I’ll be attempting to add to this list as I become more aware of how the mechanisms of inventiveness may work. 


Here are some techniques for better ideas generation.


This NYT article talks about how epiphanies occur only after prolongued grinding away at hard problems. Personally, I think that somehow conscious work on a problem activates the unconscious mechanisms that actually deliver valuable results. It’s certainly true that many ideas will be crazy, but if you overrule the crazy ones internally, the good ones get suppressed too.