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| 5/25 |
| 2005/1/13-14 [Science/GlobalWarming, Computer/Companies/Google] UID:35707 Activity:very high |
1/13 Can ordinary people still change the world with ingenious inventions
and patents (like Edison and light bulb) (or at least make themselves
rich) or is this now completely in the hands of large corp with
crackpots making noise on the side? This is a serious question, not
a troll about bad patents.
\_ http://66.70.64.5/news/0501,essay,59733,2.html [village voice]
\_ I know for a fact that there are independent inventors who make
good money, and occasionally millions off of their inventions.
As far as changing the world the way Edison or better yet
Tesla did? Probably not.
\_ On a vaguely related note, I hate Edison. I think he's a nasty
glory hound, and an ass. You forgot the google founders, you
can reasonably say google changed the world. -- ilyas
\_ ilyas, don't you think these are precisely the quality that
made him a successful man in the real world?
\_ Probably. -- ilyas
\_ Not really. The preceding engines (altavista, webcrawler,
etc.) weren't dramatically different... Google just did
better, but also avoided making the main page an ugly adfest.
The concept of building a searchable web index is also a
rather natural extension of the world wide web which is the
underlying innovation.
\_ And the www was really just a friendly front end to
ftp, which is simple a way to move information around,
much like a pile of tapes in a truck or even books on
a horse drawn wagon, and there is no new thing under
the sun.
\_ ftp simple? have you looked at the protocol?
\_ By this reasoning the light bulb was just a natural
evolution of the candle which, in turn, the sun was the
underlying innovation. Heh, nothing new under the sun
indeed. If you're religiously inclined, the underlying
innovation was when God said ``Let there be light.''
\_ No, that's not my reasoning at all. My main point was
that Google didn't invent crawling search engines.
My secondary point is that even without that, I think
the interactive WWW would retain a big part of its
usability. It would take too long to defend that idea
to you motd rabble.
\_ Google's main contribution isn't crawling, but
using links to rank. That's what makes (made?)
google good. The problem is that link popularity
is succeptible to collusion, which is a nasty
can of worms. I don't know how you use the
net, but my usage would suffer a lot if
google went away. Of course, I use scholar
for 50% of my queries, and link ranking works
great for publications. -- ilyas
\_ I was used to using more terms/exclusions/phrases
to get results, and first switched to Google for
UI and speed. Google is good, and something like
scholar didn't exist I guess. But the ideas here,
well, I remember searching periodicals on the
library PC way back. The concepts don't seem like
genius to me but the execution is excellent.
\_ The concept of link ranking may not be
genius to you, but neither one of us thought of
it. It's easy to be a hindsight innovator.
-- ilyas
\_ Actually I don't know if I thought of it.
I can remember reading some stuff about
search engines and ranking schemes way back.
If it occurred to me that linking is a
measure of relevancy I wouldn't have done
anything with it... I mean there are only
so many basic parameters associated with
web pages. I know what you're saying but
look at the speed involved. If Google didn't
do that someone else would in short order.
\_ I think that's true for almost any
significant innovation. -- ilyas
\_ If Google went away you could use lycos,
hotbot, altavista, and so on. I actually
dislike using Yahoo! now compared to when it
ran Inktomi. I don't see any value-added in
Google over any other search engine.
\_ Recent people in history in IT who have changed the industry:
Jobs and Wozniak (Jobs was a slacker, Wozniak was an i
engineer at HP)
Mitch Kapor (he used to be a disc jockey and
entry level programmer)
The guy from napster (just a college kid)
Nolan Bushnell was supposedly just a second rate EE when
he stumbled onto Pong.
Linus Torvaldis - smelly kid from Finland who had too much time
on his hands and fate conspired to kill
BSD because of the lawsuits.
\_ What about coming up with a great idea that is not patented
(a couple times) already, then have someone else bring it to
market? All the above examples are people who got help from
VC and built the stuff they conceived. (Except Linus, but
he falls in a different category altogether.) They are more
entrepreneur than inventors. Not all inventors are or want
to be entrepreneurs.
\_ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison
Edison was an entrepreneur also.
\_ Bill Gates - Before Gates, everybody in IT thought only good
or okay products could dominate a market.
\_ Some other people who have changed the world w/ their ideas and
inventions are: K&R (no unix/c w/o K&R), James Gosling (most ugs
\_ unix was created primarily by ken thompson.
don't even learn C these days), Larry Wall, Seymour Cray (invented
the multi-proc concept), Shockley (no computers w/o transistors),
Tim Berners-Lee, &c.
\_ Ordinary people never change the world. That's why they're
ordinary. (BTW I'm ordinary)
\_ I think the OP meant "individual people".
\_ How about people like George Soros or Charles Schwab? Do people
who invent new understandings of economics or who invent new
ways of doing business count in your book?
\_ Burton G. Malkiel, author of A Random Walk Down Wall Street. He
didn't originate the efficient markets theory, but did a lot to
champion it, and arguably is responsible for Vanguard's creation
of index funds that `ordinary' (read people like you and me
without millions to invest) people could invest in. |
| 5/25 |
|
| 66.70.64.5/news/0501,essay,59733,2.html Inventor Nikola Tesla is beginning to remind me of the Michigan Mushroomt hat underground fungus, nearly as large as its native state. He keeps cr opping up unexpectedly like a truth suppressed. In 2004 this once forgot ten scientist peppered films as motley as the smoky Coffee and Cigarette s, the silicone-sleek Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and the sho estring Primer. Tesla, beside inventing the radio (check with the Supreme Court, Marconi fans), the radar, remote control, and alternating current (AC electricit y), also tinkered with a series of dreamy though equally ingenious ideas : plans to light the oceans, photograph thoughts, use insects to create a harnessable power supply, communicate with life in outer space, harves t free energy from the Earth's atmosphere, control the weather with elec tricity, even build a ring about the equator that, by remaining stationa ry while the planet rotates, would make it possible to travel around the entire world in one day. At the start of the last century, Tesla's mind-bending inventions foresha dowed a future in which an enlightened citizenry, wardrobed in silver sp ace suits, would travel about a world where no one was ever hungry and w ar existed only in memorywhere scientific wonders were invented every da y in backyards, garages, and small workshops. Tesla, the cult hero of in dependent invention, is materializing again, a bright-red streak on the gray background of corporatized science, to remind us that something wen t awry. Maybe he's angry that the future he imagined failed to arrive. At the climax of Sky Captain two brilliant Tesla coils, terrific towers t opped by metal balls, spew mini lightning bolts over the heads of Jude L aw, Gwyneth Paltrow, and a covey of wiry-haired, lab-coated inventors, a stereotype of a species who seem to now exist only in film. And one won ders: Where have all our mad scientists gone? Though born in Serbia, Nikola Tesla lived most of his life in New York Ci ty, where from 1884 to 1943 he often toiled independently, at times with out the benefit of a laboratory. Tesla, who had no head for business or capitalism was, despite his germ phobia and unease among actual humans, a humanitarian, a freethinker with a flair for altruism seldom seen toda y He believed that his inventions belonged to the world, not to him. Th is helps explain his laxity in protecting his patents, his lifelong stru ggle to stay financially solvent, and why his legacy is dimmer than the one he deserves. Tesla was one of the last "mad scientists," though mad he was not. Angry, perhaps so, at a time when marketing geniuses such as Thomas Edison reaped great financial rewards from inventions far les s astounding than those of Tesla. Tesla once celebrated America as the place where the artist could become a physician, an electrician, an engineer, a mechanist, or even a financi er and still be an artist. Science and art were, to him, two blooms on t he same vinethough it seems that in the 60 years since his death, the tw o have utterly parted company. America, rightly or wrongly, is quite com fortable with the idea of starving artists. We excuse the artist's pover ty as the wages of such a noble occupation, or at least accept it as the mother of artistic invention. And yet money's interferencein cluding the greed to make more, the conveniently flappable righteousness of investors, governmental meddling, and corporate sluggishnessall help to detach science from its artistic side. Not surprisingly then, the most fantastic scientific transgressions are c oming from the art world. Consider Steve Kurtz, who was recently detaine d without charge, suspected of bioterrorismhis home and entire Buffalo b lock cordoned off because of an art project that used Serratia marcescen s, a pigmented bacteria that turns red and is often used to track germs. Sheldrake, a living heir to the mad scientist mantle, has been working for many years to explore a phenomeno n he calls "morphic resonance"a theory that claims our cells have a memo ry far older than our bodies, a collective unconscious of biology that p roves our interconnectedness. His necessarily low-budget investigations include studying the highly organized, unspoken structure of termite com munities, whether or not people can tell when their photo is being looke d at in another room, the direction-finding instincts of homing pigeons, and why so many people have found that if they think about someone they haven't thought of for a while, that person telephones. In a science th at borrows much from Buddhism, the results of Sheldrake's work do sugges t that we are indeed all one, not just spiritually but materiallyan enli ghtened position Tesla also espoused. Sadly, consequently, Sheldrake, li ke many groundbreaking scientists before him, exists on the fringe of th e scientific community most commonly serving as the butt of jokes. Before Tesla's death, two years prior to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there we re rumors that he had developed a death ray, a weapon so powerful that T esla, a pacifist, believed it would end all war. He argued that when fac ed with the very real possibility of total annihilation, humans would re cognize the senselessness of war. Despite such forward thinking, Tesla's assumptions about human nature were naive. The atomic bomb proved that our inventions could mature into faithless nightmares previously unimagi ned and that responsible science requires ethical regulation. In short, the possibility for free scientific investigation was ruined for the res t of us. It's nearly impossible to operate your own independent lab these days. Sc ientists are beholden to those with legal power and capital: the Departm ent of Defense, Monsanto, or the pharmaceutical companies who, though pe rhaps making strides to save lives, are more interested in improving the bottom line than improving the human condition. In order to be independ ent one needs to be a millionaire, like Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segw ay, the motorized scooter briefly hailed as the invention that would rev olutionize our mode of transportation, our cities, our entire lives. And even then, money does not always purchase access to the necessary suppl ies such as stem cells or particle accelerators. The consequences of such a stifling scientific climate is that as we lose independent inventors, democracy will lop off the extreme endsthe artis ts, the Teslasand thus create a mean. Design by committee is all too com mon in the bureaucracies of government and corporations, and produces ho mogenized ideas. No more brilliant plans, periodbut here comes another remedy for male erectile dysfunction! Even more terrifying, scientists and inventors who cannot operate laborat ories without government funding find themselves bound to a near medieva l morality. President Bush, in an August 2001 speech delivered at his ranch in Crawfo rd, Texas, stated, "I'm a strong supporter of science and technology, an d believe they have the potential for incredible goodto improve lives, t o save life, to conquer disease." In such a climate, what will happen to the independent scientist? Somewhe re they are toiling in suburban basements, on city rooftops with well-th umbed copies of Popular Mechanics piled by their sides, but with evoluti on being labeled "just a theory" in some textbooks, try building a subme rsible airplane in your garage or grafting your own DNA with the great b lue heron's today. Try building a ring around the equator or drafting pl ans for population control that read like poetry. Chances are your neigh bors will turn you over to the Department of Homeland Security. And so a fter praying for a winning lottery ticket, independent scientists should start to pray for a government that doesn't use prayer to draft scienti fic policy. Samantha Hunt, author of The Seas (MacAdam/Cage), is working on a novel a bout the life of Nikola Tesla. |
| en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison Most of these inventions we re not completely original but improvements of earlier patents, and were actually made by his numerous employees - Edison was frequently critici zed for not sharing the credits. Charles Cros) were contemplating the notion that sou nd waves might be recorded and reproduced, Edison was the first to publi cally demonstrate a device to actually do so, and this was so unexpected by the public at large as to appear almost magical. It was the first institution set up with the specif ic purpose of producing constant technological innovation and improvemen t Most of the inventions there carried Edison as the inventor, though h e primarily supervised the operation and work of his employees. Most of Edison's patents were utility patents, with only about a dozen be ing design patents. Many of his inventions were not unique, but Edison d emonstrated an abilirty to win the patents and beat his opponents by inf luence and better marketing. Edison took the features of these earlier designs and set his worker s to the task of creating longer-lasting bulb. After Edison purchased th e Woodward and Evans patent of 1875, his employees experimented with a l arge number of different materials in order to increase the bulb's burni ng time. By 1879 they had achieved the goal of increasing the burning ti me enough to make the light bulb commercially viable. Nikola Tesla and Edison became adv ersaries due to Edison's promotion of DC for electric power distribution over the more efficient alternating current (AC) advocated by Tesla, wh o patented AC in Graz, Austria. Edison presided personally over several electrocutions of animals, primarily st ray cats and dogs, for the benefit of the press to prove that his system of DC was safer than that of AC. HVDC) transmission systems have become more common in certain situations. HVDC systems are presentl y used for some specialised applications like the underwater interconnec tion of power systems. edit Work relations As exemplified by the light bulb story, most of Edison's inventions were improvements of ideas by others, achieved through a diligent and industr ial approach and team-based development. He was the undisputed head of t he team but usually did not share credit for the inventions. He himself said: "genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspirati on." Nikola Tesla, possibly Edison's most famous employee and who w ent on to be a great scientist and inventor in his own right, said about Edison's method of problem-solving: "If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to ex amine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculat ion would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor." Edison Illuminating Company), Charles Batchellor (Manager of the Edison works) and Nikola Tesla, one of the group suggested guessing weights and Tesla was induced to step on a scale. Edison guessed that Te sla weighed 152 pounds (69 kg), to an ounce. Johnson confidentially rela ted to Tesla that Edison could guess individuals' weight as he had devel oped the skill when he was employed for a long time in a Chicago slaught er-house where he weighed thousands of hogs every day. Edison's influenc e on the history of film stretches beyond that of the instigator of film production and must be given credit for establishing the standard of us ing 35 mm (then 1 and 3/8 inches) film with 4 perforations on the edge o f each frame that allowed film to emerge as a mass medium and not just a vaudeville novelty. |