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> Ostwal could have come up with the plan to use standard cellphones to communicate sooner than he did Probably not. He decided to use cellphones in 2003. See

by chime 16y ago

> Ostwal could have come up with the plan to use standard cellphones to communicate sooner than he did Probably not. He decided to use cellphones in 2003. See this graph: http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&ctype=l&strail=false&nselm=h&met_y=it_cel_sets_p2&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country&idim=country:IND:USA&tstart=441763200000&tunit=Y&tlen=24&hl=en&dl=en http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&ctype=l&s... Only 3 in 100 people had cellphones in India in 2003 and I suspect that number was even lower for rural, poor farming areas. My family is quite well off, lives in a big city, and I know for sure they didn't have cellphones till 2004 because the cost was too high. > If you've read too many success stories that go through a phase of extreme hardship, you might be self-selecting to only remember such stories. Maybe journalists/editors select these stories about fighting against all odds or give the "struggled very hard" angle to every inventor's story. Sounds much more endearing than "he had a cushy job, kickass life, and helped changed the world on the side."

kranner 16y ago
Fair point about the cellphone hack, but there are always other things that might have worked out faster or cheaper in retrospect. My point was that it is plausible that in other universes, the other Ostwals did come across these hacks, by chance, and therefore it does not seem necessary to undergo x units of hardship to obtain y units of success.
- khafra 16y ago
  And there were a vastly larger number of Ostwals that suffered the same amount, and never succeeded. Successful revolutionaries are statistical outliers, almost by definition.
  - kranner 16y ago
    This is an unfalsifiable platitude unless you have data to back it up. And do you have to be a revolutionary to be successful? Is it impossible to go about things in a calm and rational manner that minimizes damage to self, and succeed? I'm not knocking Ostwal because I do not know his circumstances, but surely this is not true for all possible cases. This founder-as-martyr syndrome probably discourages a lot of possible inventors from trying things in cheap, accessible ways that may lead to something big.
    - skmurphy 16y ago
      "All reform comes from below. No man with four aces howls for a new deal." John F. Parker in "If Elected I Promise" "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." George Bernard Shaw Two other models for fostering change are "Appreciative Inquiry" and "Amplify Positive Deviance" See http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2009/12/15/early-customer-conversations-use-appreciative-inquiry-and-amplify-positive-deviance/ http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2009/12/15/early-customer-conve...

by chime 16y ago

kranner 16y ago

Fair point about the cellphone hack, but there are always other things that might have worked out faster or cheaper in retrospect. My point was that it is plausible that in other universes, the other Ostwals did come across these hacks, by chance, and therefore it does not seem necessary to undergo x units of hardship to obtain y units of success.

khafra 16y ago
And there were a vastly larger number of Ostwals that suffered the same amount, and never succeeded. Successful revolutionaries are statistical outliers, almost by definition.
- kranner 16y ago
  This is an unfalsifiable platitude unless you have data to back it up. And do you have to be a revolutionary to be successful? Is it impossible to go about things in a calm and rational manner that minimizes damage to self, and succeed? I'm not knocking Ostwal because I do not know his circumstances, but surely this is not true for all possible cases. This founder-as-martyr syndrome probably discourages a lot of possible inventors from trying things in cheap, accessible ways that may lead to something big.
  - skmurphy 16y ago
    "All reform comes from below. No man with four aces howls for a new deal." John F. Parker in "If Elected I Promise" "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." George Bernard Shaw Two other models for fostering change are "Appreciative Inquiry" and "Amplify Positive Deviance" See http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2009/12/15/early-customer-conversations-use-appreciative-inquiry-and-amplify-positive-deviance/ http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2009/12/15/early-customer-conve...