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Do not confuse ideas about the thing with the thing itself. [1] You can have the idea for the TiVo without ever building a TiVo, just as Babbage had the idea o
by mechanical_fish 16y ago
Do not confuse ideas about the thing with the thing itself. [1]
You can have the idea for the TiVo without ever building a TiVo, just as Babbage had the idea of the digital computer but couldn't find the money or expertise to build one. But you can't watch television with your idea.
And it turns out that you can have a very complicated thing -- a dinosaur, say, or a monkey -- without anyone ever having had the idea of a dinosaur or a monkey.
The connection between great ideas and great things is often exaggerated. A person with no ideas and an auto parts store is more likely to build a great car than a person with nothing but ideas.
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[1] http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/not-ideas-about-the-thing-but-the-thing-itself/ http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/not-ideas-about-the-thing-but...
- mkramlich 16y agoExactly. Arthur C. Clarke is generally considered to be the guy who "invented" telecommunications satellites. But he didn't build the first one. He just had an idea. And he may not really have been the first person to have the idea, just the first one to publish a document describing it that was read widely by others. But if you want to somehow give monetary credit to anybody anywhere who merely "has an idea" for something, without really going into the critical details of making it real, and without making a real thing based on it, then that leads to a world where patent trolls are much more powerful and malevolent than they are currently.