4 ms·

The problem is most modern computing is driven by the single question: "How can I monetize this idea?" It's only hobbyists and academics that really try to impr

by sparkie 13y ago

The problem is most modern computing is driven by the single question: "How can I monetize this idea?" It's only hobbyists and academics that really try to improve the state of computing, rather than having a primary focus on revenue. It's unfortunate that groundbreaking ideas are usually not the moneymakers, else we'd see innovation at a quicker rate. Software patents are another hindrance to innovation too. Often the results of some publicly funded research are patented, and never actually made into end products, and the public has no rights to use the invention funded with their tax money. I'd bet a dozen or more of those hundred ideas are already covered in part by some patents that aren't used in any real products, but serve only to prevent anyone else from developing them. I can't really see most people being so open about ideas as the author of this article precisely because innovative ideas people have will also come with the idea of monetizing it, with the belief that they need a patent to do so. What's more of a shame, is a list like this 100 ideas, doesn't serve to prevent anyone from patenting an implementation of such idea, despite it already being published. Articles like these do not serve as 'prior art' when considering patent applications. Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad if anyone who developed an idea could patent it, but little guys, hobbyists and academics can't afford to without outside funding, whilst the wealthy corporations whose primary motive is profit can patent ideas by the dozen.

microcolonel 13y ago
And if we didn't have a government we wouldn't be funding: , useless research we're not allowed to use , the software patent system , massive amounts of child sexual abuse around the globe by supporting local regimes , welfare addiction , destruction of the economy which was solving poverty before we started "solve poverty" campaigns , wars with which we disagree , the wholesale destruction of personal privacy by people technologically incapable of protecting the data they gather , copyright fear mongering , government-steered news organizations etc. etc. etc...
samsquire 13y ago
Author of the article here. If everyone monetized everything our industry would collapse. It's a balance. Innovation and monetization are different beasts. Some ideas are so awesome they just have to be shared. Techies are smart enough to think bigger if they really wanted and make computing better. I hope my example sets a precedent. Sharing your idea may make technology better than if you kept it secret.
- sparkie 13y ago
  I agree about the need for sharing, it's disappointing that those with profit driven motivation can ruin it for us though. Anyone with plenty of money could take one of your brief idea descriptions, implement the basic idea and apply for a patent on the idea - preventing you from using your own idea in future even. Those small descriptions do not serve as prior art in the US patent system. Putting ideas out there like you've done should automatically put them in the public domain, and void any later attempt for overly broad patents to cover the same ideas. I put many of my own ideas out there, usually in discussion threads though, as I'm not a blogger. There's some overlap between ideas I've had myself and your own ideas, such as the package-manager for package-managers, I've discussed several times and experimented with implementation. It just demonstrates further that ideas that are ready for introduction aren't "inventions" at all: they're inevitable next stages of the evolution of ideas. Yet someone who has the money can claim they invented it, and use the legal system to prevent everyone else using it.
  - samsquire 13y ago
    The HN community could form an idea hub to host and protect ideas and monetize them as products to fund further ideas and products.
    - sparkie 13y ago
      Interesting proposition, but do you have any idea how this could actually work? Where would funding come from initially? Would this be a for-profit or non-profit organization? How would we reach a consensus on anything, given the diversity of the community and other communities? How would we protect ideas, other than developing them? (since this can already be done by anyone, given the resources). I can't picture how we could create such system in a society built around the complete opposite, where the government backs corporations and fails to acknowledge the innovations of individuals, unless they pay for it. On a side note, I have many ideas that I've not released, not because I'm worried about someone stealing them, but because they're so far outside any mainstream convention that I'd be seen as a raving lunatic by many if I published them.
ryanSrich 13y ago
And here we come to the crux of the free market economy. A system that is purposefully built to harbor unsustainable and frigid behavior. A system that, ultimately, defeats innovation and thinking. Certainly without such restriction the great minds of the world would be free to ponder the future of human-computer interaction and solve real problems. I am vastly underwhelmed at the state of technology in the year 2013.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
chacham15 13y ago
I actually quite strongly disagree here. A LOT of startups start of as: "how can we make something people want" and not "how can we sell people something." Look at history of all the big companies who didnt start with a business model: Google and Facebook for example. Only later when they grew did they start looking for ways to monetize. Dont get me wrong, I am not saying that there arent companies which do do this, but rather that not all are like this (including some of the very successful ones).
- sparkie 13y ago
  This is just part of the acqui-hire culture in silicon valley: throwing shit against the wall to see what sticks. The idea that you don't need a business model as long as you can grab a large enough userbase, then come up with a business model later, or get aquired, only works when you have lots of venture capital, because relatively few of these startups produce sustainable businesses. This model isn't practiced so much in Europe, where if you want to build a business, you better be considering how to monetize it from the beginning, because there aren't many sources of capital for ideas that don't have a detailed business plan.
  - jeffasinger 13y ago
    I think that a lot of startups would benefit not from disregarding thinking about how they're going to make money, but not making it their primary focus. We had an idea a few months back for a product we wanted to exist, talked to some other people that also wanted it, built it (total cost ~$120 and lots of free time), got some people to use it, and one of the first thing several of them said is "I wish I could pay a few dollars to do X". We hadn't thought of that. The point is, we could have said, no there's no point in doing this, the only clear monetization path for us is worth less than the cost in hosting, and killed the idea in January. However, we decided that lots of people would probably use it if it were free, so we built it, and it turns out that we would be able to make it profitable by testing it.
mseebach 13y ago
> The problem is most modern computing is driven by the single question: "How can I monetize this idea?" It's only hobbyists and academics that really try to improve the state of computing, rather than having a primary focus on revenue. It's unfortunate that groundbreaking ideas are usually not the moneymakers, else we'd see innovation at a quicker rate. That is an absolute silly notion. Money is a token of value, so if you're creating value for someone, it shouldn't be too hard to get some money for it. Examples: The Internet, while initially a public research project, did not take off until it was commercialized. Personal computers and mobile phones - completely transformational technologies, the innovations of which went hand-in-hand with making tons of money. Google and Apple both innovates like crazy and they're two of the most valuable companies on the planet because of it. Much of the best open source software projects are off-shoots of commercial ventures.
- Dn_Ab 13y ago
  Exactly. Often it is not the innovators that end up benefiting from showing everyone the value of a new idea (1). Most innovative work is very long term and there are simply not many channels to fund such work. Innovation is often too far up the pipeline for the originators to reliably extract value. As you point out, the original innovators of the internet and desktop computing are not the ones that ended up with the bulk of the rewards. Douglas Engelbart and his team innovated, originated and practically invented all of modern computing paradigms and interactions. Engelbert died unable to garner interest in his grander vision of accelerative bootstrapping. I suspect he saw modern incarnations as bizarro implementations, outwardly similar imitations apart in spirit. Those like Bret Victor recognize that spirit. This list shows some of that spirit. I would argue RapGenius qualifies too. Here's hoping this picks up as a trend. Google and Apple both innovates like crazy I would dispute that Google and Apple innovate like crazy. They do more polishing and acquiring, with most of the innovative work in service of the product, a benefit but not a new paradigm. Voice recognition, self driving cars, heads up displays, multi-touch,internet blimps. For the dozens of researchers who devoted decades of their lives to this work, the recognition Google and Apple get for things on like that list is bittersweet. This is not to dispute the tremendous innovative thinking and work it takes to package research to a public ready state, I am merely pointing out that true bellwether innovations (2) often go disproportionately unrewarded. (1) With a negative income tax and library->hackerspaces, that would very often be perfectly ok. Such people are moved more by vision than by monetary rewards. (2) Which will themselves be combinations of existing things, the key is they should be the first to inspire with this combination, even if in very rough form. By this definition pagerank and the iphone are the key innovations of Google and Apple.
gambler 13y ago
The real problem is not monetization. The real problem is that most people don't have imagication rich enough to envision how such ideas can improve everyone's lives. I can't recount how many hundreds of times I've heard the notion that current design/technologies are "good enough". Most people don't care about small thing and are totally pessimistic about large things. Pessimism is contagious. Also, there are no outlets for promoting, discussing or finding projects like the ones described here. And, if that's not enough, integrating anything conceptually new with existing infrastructure is usually a royal pain. Regardless, these are good ideas.
eitland 13y ago
Can someone confirm the patent part? From what I heard an idea is unpatentable as soon as it has been described in public even, from what I heard, if it was in a comic.
- sparkie 13y ago
  You're right, my implication that online posts are not prior art was wrong. I have a negative bias against the patent office from past experience, however it's also not a simple as 'an idea being unpatentable as soon as it is described'. Firstly, a patent doesn't cover only an abstract idea, but an abstract implementation of an idea. It's a description with a list of claims about how the idea is acheived, which can cite prior art, but the requirement is that a "non-obvious" invention occurs in the claims, which can unfortunately include "combination" of two or more existing ideas. Given that the author had only described brief ideas, they might serve as prior art, but as they don't really establish claims on what is invented, someone could later come along and take the idea and develop it, coming up with "inventions" in their implementation. Such inventions are probably obvious to someone who takes the time to develop an idea, and would be rediscovered by anyone who starts from the same piece of prior art. A problem is that patent applications always start by using the broadest sense of the "invention" that it covers, and the claims are narrowed down if the application is rejected by the patent office, but applications can be revised and resubmitted many times. The obviousness of ideas really depends on how much consideration is given to each one, so perhaps it would be in the interest of authors to establish claims on how each of their ideas might be achieved, as patents do (although they shouldn't need to be written in legalese.) Maybe a separate hyperlinked article where more detail is given on each, particularly the ones he cares most about, would surely improve the protection against the ideas being taken. One of my concerns is the invention of new terms in patent applications which cover already existing ideas. I've seen patents which cover something very obvious, but choose some unknown term to describe it like it's something new. The other major issue with these ideas is whether they are discoverable by a patent examiner, and proving that they were published prior to a patent application. I had a discussion with a patent examiner a few years ago, and he pretty much expressed that existing patents, journals and scientific publications are preferred as prior art, because they are easier to verify. Other non-patent literature is googled, and archive.org is sometimes used to confirm publication date, but is unreliable. However, I've just been reading the manual on patent examination[1] and it turns out that the scope of online publications is quite broad, and that providing a date on the publication is sufficient for an examiner to consider it prior art. They also need to archive a search strategy for each application. I guess what we can take from that, is to ensure that we always include a publication date, and make an effort to reasonably disseminate the ideas so that they can be easily found by examiners and used as evidence that it was accessible to any patent applicant. Guess that means I should drop a self-hosted wiki and publish on github like the author too. [1]: http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2128.html http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2128.html

by sparkie 13y ago

microcolonel 13y ago

And if we didn't have a government we wouldn't be funding: , useless research we're not allowed to use , the software patent system , massive amounts of child sexual abuse around the globe by supporting local regimes , welfare addiction , destruction of the economy which was solving poverty before we started "solve poverty" campaigns , wars with which we disagree , the wholesale destruction of personal privacy by people technologically incapable of protecting the data they gather , copyright fear mongering , government-steered news organizations etc. etc. etc...

samsquire 13y ago

Author of the article here. If everyone monetized everything our industry would collapse. It's a balance. Innovation and monetization are different beasts. Some ideas are so awesome they just have to be shared. Techies are smart enough to think bigger if they really wanted and make computing better. I hope my example sets a precedent. Sharing your idea may make technology better than if you kept it secret.

sparkie 13y ago
I agree about the need for sharing, it's disappointing that those with profit driven motivation can ruin it for us though. Anyone with plenty of money could take one of your brief idea descriptions, implement the basic idea and apply for a patent on the idea - preventing you from using your own idea in future even. Those small descriptions do not serve as prior art in the US patent system. Putting ideas out there like you've done should automatically put them in the public domain, and void any later attempt for overly broad patents to cover the same ideas. I put many of my own ideas out there, usually in discussion threads though, as I'm not a blogger. There's some overlap between ideas I've had myself and your own ideas, such as the package-manager for package-managers, I've discussed several times and experimented with implementation. It just demonstrates further that ideas that are ready for introduction aren't "inventions" at all: they're inevitable next stages of the evolution of ideas. Yet someone who has the money can claim they invented it, and use the legal system to prevent everyone else using it.
- samsquire 13y ago
  The HN community could form an idea hub to host and protect ideas and monetize them as products to fund further ideas and products.
  - sparkie 13y ago
    Interesting proposition, but do you have any idea how this could actually work? Where would funding come from initially? Would this be a for-profit or non-profit organization? How would we reach a consensus on anything, given the diversity of the community and other communities? How would we protect ideas, other than developing them? (since this can already be done by anyone, given the resources). I can't picture how we could create such system in a society built around the complete opposite, where the government backs corporations and fails to acknowledge the innovations of individuals, unless they pay for it. On a side note, I have many ideas that I've not released, not because I'm worried about someone stealing them, but because they're so far outside any mainstream convention that I'd be seen as a raving lunatic by many if I published them.

ryanSrich 13y ago

And here we come to the crux of the free market economy. A system that is purposefully built to harbor unsustainable and frigid behavior. A system that, ultimately, defeats innovation and thinking. Certainly without such restriction the great minds of the world would be free to ponder the future of human-computer interaction and solve real problems. I am vastly underwhelmed at the state of technology in the year 2013.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

chacham15 13y ago

I actually quite strongly disagree here. A LOT of startups start of as: "how can we make something people want" and not "how can we sell people something." Look at history of all the big companies who didnt start with a business model: Google and Facebook for example. Only later when they grew did they start looking for ways to monetize. Dont get me wrong, I am not saying that there arent companies which do do this, but rather that not all are like this (including some of the very successful ones).

sparkie 13y ago
This is just part of the acqui-hire culture in silicon valley: throwing shit against the wall to see what sticks. The idea that you don't need a business model as long as you can grab a large enough userbase, then come up with a business model later, or get aquired, only works when you have lots of venture capital, because relatively few of these startups produce sustainable businesses. This model isn't practiced so much in Europe, where if you want to build a business, you better be considering how to monetize it from the beginning, because there aren't many sources of capital for ideas that don't have a detailed business plan.
- jeffasinger 13y ago
  I think that a lot of startups would benefit not from disregarding thinking about how they're going to make money, but not making it their primary focus. We had an idea a few months back for a product we wanted to exist, talked to some other people that also wanted it, built it (total cost ~$120 and lots of free time), got some people to use it, and one of the first thing several of them said is "I wish I could pay a few dollars to do X". We hadn't thought of that. The point is, we could have said, no there's no point in doing this, the only clear monetization path for us is worth less than the cost in hosting, and killed the idea in January. However, we decided that lots of people would probably use it if it were free, so we built it, and it turns out that we would be able to make it profitable by testing it.

mseebach 13y ago

> The problem is most modern computing is driven by the single question: "How can I monetize this idea?" It's only hobbyists and academics that really try to improve the state of computing, rather than having a primary focus on revenue. It's unfortunate that groundbreaking ideas are usually not the moneymakers, else we'd see innovation at a quicker rate. That is an absolute silly notion. Money is a token of value, so if you're creating value for someone, it shouldn't be too hard to get some money for it. Examples: The Internet, while initially a public research project, did not take off until it was commercialized. Personal computers and mobile phones - completely transformational technologies, the innovations of which went hand-in-hand with making tons of money. Google and Apple both innovates like crazy and they're two of the most valuable companies on the planet because of it. Much of the best open source software projects are off-shoots of commercial ventures.

Dn_Ab 13y ago
Exactly. Often it is not the innovators that end up benefiting from showing everyone the value of a new idea (1). Most innovative work is very long term and there are simply not many channels to fund such work. Innovation is often too far up the pipeline for the originators to reliably extract value. As you point out, the original innovators of the internet and desktop computing are not the ones that ended up with the bulk of the rewards. Douglas Engelbart and his team innovated, originated and practically invented all of modern computing paradigms and interactions. Engelbert died unable to garner interest in his grander vision of accelerative bootstrapping. I suspect he saw modern incarnations as bizarro implementations, outwardly similar imitations apart in spirit. Those like Bret Victor recognize that spirit. This list shows some of that spirit. I would argue RapGenius qualifies too. Here's hoping this picks up as a trend. Google and Apple both innovates like crazy I would dispute that Google and Apple innovate like crazy. They do more polishing and acquiring, with most of the innovative work in service of the product, a benefit but not a new paradigm. Voice recognition, self driving cars, heads up displays, multi-touch,internet blimps. For the dozens of researchers who devoted decades of their lives to this work, the recognition Google and Apple get for things on like that list is bittersweet. This is not to dispute the tremendous innovative thinking and work it takes to package research to a public ready state, I am merely pointing out that true bellwether innovations (2) often go disproportionately unrewarded. (1) With a negative income tax and library->hackerspaces, that would very often be perfectly ok. Such people are moved more by vision than by monetary rewards. (2) Which will themselves be combinations of existing things, the key is they should be the first to inspire with this combination, even if in very rough form. By this definition pagerank and the iphone are the key innovations of Google and Apple.

gambler 13y ago

The real problem is not monetization. The real problem is that most people don't have imagication rich enough to envision how such ideas can improve everyone's lives. I can't recount how many hundreds of times I've heard the notion that current design/technologies are "good enough". Most people don't care about small thing and are totally pessimistic about large things. Pessimism is contagious. Also, there are no outlets for promoting, discussing or finding projects like the ones described here. And, if that's not enough, integrating anything conceptually new with existing infrastructure is usually a royal pain. Regardless, these are good ideas.

eitland 13y ago

Can someone confirm the patent part? From what I heard an idea is unpatentable as soon as it has been described in public even, from what I heard, if it was in a comic.

sparkie 13y ago
You're right, my implication that online posts are not prior art was wrong. I have a negative bias against the patent office from past experience, however it's also not a simple as 'an idea being unpatentable as soon as it is described'. Firstly, a patent doesn't cover only an abstract idea, but an abstract implementation of an idea. It's a description with a list of claims about how the idea is acheived, which can cite prior art, but the requirement is that a "non-obvious" invention occurs in the claims, which can unfortunately include "combination" of two or more existing ideas. Given that the author had only described brief ideas, they might serve as prior art, but as they don't really establish claims on what is invented, someone could later come along and take the idea and develop it, coming up with "inventions" in their implementation. Such inventions are probably obvious to someone who takes the time to develop an idea, and would be rediscovered by anyone who starts from the same piece of prior art. A problem is that patent applications always start by using the broadest sense of the "invention" that it covers, and the claims are narrowed down if the application is rejected by the patent office, but applications can be revised and resubmitted many times. The obviousness of ideas really depends on how much consideration is given to each one, so perhaps it would be in the interest of authors to establish claims on how each of their ideas might be achieved, as patents do (although they shouldn't need to be written in legalese.) Maybe a separate hyperlinked article where more detail is given on each, particularly the ones he cares most about, would surely improve the protection against the ideas being taken. One of my concerns is the invention of new terms in patent applications which cover already existing ideas. I've seen patents which cover something very obvious, but choose some unknown term to describe it like it's something new. The other major issue with these ideas is whether they are discoverable by a patent examiner, and proving that they were published prior to a patent application. I had a discussion with a patent examiner a few years ago, and he pretty much expressed that existing patents, journals and scientific publications are preferred as prior art, because they are easier to verify. Other non-patent literature is googled, and archive.org is sometimes used to confirm publication date, but is unreliable. However, I've just been reading the manual on patent examination[1] and it turns out that the scope of online publications is quite broad, and that providing a date on the publication is sufficient for an examiner to consider it prior art. They also need to archive a search strategy for each application. I guess what we can take from that, is to ensure that we always include a publication date, and make an effort to reasonably disseminate the ideas so that they can be easily found by examiners and used as evidence that it was accessible to any patent applicant. Guess that means I should drop a self-hosted wiki and publish on github like the author too. [1]: http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2128.html http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2128.html