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Here's a little lesson I've learned about claims of theft of revolutionary products: they're always false. Innovation and invention are continuous and gradual p

Here's a little lesson I've learned about claims of theft of revolutionary products: they're always false. Innovation and invention are continuous and gradual processes, with numerous precursors and multiple independent and simultaneous origins. It's basically evolution. There is no such thing as intellectual theft, nor are there revolutionary products, nor are there genius or original inventors. There's just dumb plodding incremental innovation by connecting past ideas together into useful products. Everything is a remix. There are no revolutionaries, only winners writing their own versions of history. Good entrepreneurs copy. Great entrepreneurs steal.

devx 13y ago
Indeed. The Everything Is A Remix series has been great for showing this. The 3rd part actually covers Apple and their "inventions", too, but all are very interesting, and even enlightening: http://everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/ http://everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/
- Tloewald 13y ago
  The idea that everything is a remix is a bit like moral relativism. The fact that things sit somewhere on a spectrum doesn't mean we should ignore the distribution of things on that spectrum.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > The idea that everything is a remix is a bit like moral relativism. The fact that things sit somewhere on a spectrum doesn't mean we should ignore the distribution of things on that spectrum. Tangential to your main point, but that analogy is pretty bad because that's actually nothing like moral relativism, as moral relativism doesn't hold that "everything is on a spectrum". The divide between moral relativism and absolutism isn't between morality being continuous valued and binary valued, but between it being subjective and objective. Anything about morality falling on a spectrum or not is orthogonal to relativism.
    - Tloewald 13y ago
      You're right of course, it was a poor analogy for exactly the reason you cite. What I was probably thinking of was the somewhat related trope: "society is to blame" for the actions of a criminal. It may be that many criminals have shitty childhoods, but plenty of people who have shitty childhoods aren't criminals. The Mac team may not have invented the Mac from nothing, just as Intel didn't invent the transistor, but insofar as they did recycle old ideas, what they created was markedly better in many ways than what they received, and that's how we measure innovation (I think).
- stretchwithme 13y ago
  The remix itself is what is new. That, and the work of refining it into something usable.
cdoxsey 13y ago
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them. (Ecclesiastes 1:9-11)
- thaumasiotes 13y ago
  Or, from Kipling: As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of man / There are only four things certain since Social Progress began / That the dog returns to his vomit, and the sow returns to her mire / And the burnt fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the fire
- javajosh 13y ago
  This is only true until something new comes along. History repeats itself...until it doesn't. After a long period of relative stability, the human population is exploding, for example. Of course, in terms of human motivation, human suffering, sin and virtue, indeed: there is nothing new under the sun. But the instruments of suffering change. Rebecca Sedwick killed herself at the age of 12 because of cyber-bullying. 12-year-old girls have certainly killed themselves for being bullied before; but now the bullying occurs online. Is that new? Governments have always sought absolute information, and absolute power, over the people: power seeks more power. But technology has allowed the US government to seek out this power in secret. Is that new? You can always define things such that there is nothing new: Diana Nyad swam from Cuba to Florida, the first person to do so - and at the remarkable age of 64. But was long distance, open-water swimming through shark-infested waters new? No. Striving hard for what may seem to other people to be a wasteful and arbitrary token of accomplishment? No, that's as old as time itself. (Interestingly, and I think quite remarkably, you can go the other way: in a sense, everything is new. Eating this apple? I have eaten apples before. Others have eaten other apples. But I never eaten this apple, right now, before now. Part of me doesn't like this reductio, but another part of me thinks that it's not ad absurdum at all.)
- asveikau 13y ago
  Perhaps a fair observation for someone living in biblical times. (And with no knowledge of several technological upheavals that came before or after.) OTOH one can do what people tend to do with religious texts rightly or wrongly, look beyond its obvious falseness and charitably reinterpret this. Maybe this is even an expression of conservation of mass; that we are not creating newness, simply re-arranging matter. Or perhaps it says that despite technological change (possibly deemed surface-level change even if nontrivial), some essential part of life and society continues to resemble its former self. I will say this part is much more accurate: > No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them. I'm often bummed out by descriptions of famous and important people from 100+ years ago. Name after name of people you've never heard of, all deceased. It can be depressing to think of our present, or even our future, and the future of those that will come long after us, as appearing in the same light.
analog31 13y ago
We tend to worship heroes. Thus, when we learn that something is cool, we go looking for a lone person who can be identified as the "genius" or the "inventor." If somebody can set themselves up as such a hero, then inventions will be attributed to them by their followers.
mtdewcmu 13y ago
Steve Jobs, in particular, always sounded like he was delivering a sales pitch in his public comments. Maybe it was deliberate; maybe it's just that he ate, breathed, and slept "the game." I think you have to view his inaccurate and hyperbolic statements in that context and not take his public comments wholly at face value.

devx 13y ago

Indeed. The Everything Is A Remix series has been great for showing this. The 3rd part actually covers Apple and their "inventions", too, but all are very interesting, and even enlightening: http://everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/ http://everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/

Tloewald 13y ago
The idea that everything is a remix is a bit like moral relativism. The fact that things sit somewhere on a spectrum doesn't mean we should ignore the distribution of things on that spectrum.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > The idea that everything is a remix is a bit like moral relativism. The fact that things sit somewhere on a spectrum doesn't mean we should ignore the distribution of things on that spectrum. Tangential to your main point, but that analogy is pretty bad because that's actually nothing like moral relativism, as moral relativism doesn't hold that "everything is on a spectrum". The divide between moral relativism and absolutism isn't between morality being continuous valued and binary valued, but between it being subjective and objective. Anything about morality falling on a spectrum or not is orthogonal to relativism.
  - Tloewald 13y ago
    You're right of course, it was a poor analogy for exactly the reason you cite. What I was probably thinking of was the somewhat related trope: "society is to blame" for the actions of a criminal. It may be that many criminals have shitty childhoods, but plenty of people who have shitty childhoods aren't criminals. The Mac team may not have invented the Mac from nothing, just as Intel didn't invent the transistor, but insofar as they did recycle old ideas, what they created was markedly better in many ways than what they received, and that's how we measure innovation (I think).
stretchwithme 13y ago
The remix itself is what is new. That, and the work of refining it into something usable.

cdoxsey 13y ago

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them. (Ecclesiastes 1:9-11)

thaumasiotes 13y ago
Or, from Kipling: As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of man / There are only four things certain since Social Progress began / That the dog returns to his vomit, and the sow returns to her mire / And the burnt fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the fire
javajosh 13y ago
This is only true until something new comes along. History repeats itself...until it doesn't. After a long period of relative stability, the human population is exploding, for example. Of course, in terms of human motivation, human suffering, sin and virtue, indeed: there is nothing new under the sun. But the instruments of suffering change. Rebecca Sedwick killed herself at the age of 12 because of cyber-bullying. 12-year-old girls have certainly killed themselves for being bullied before; but now the bullying occurs online. Is that new? Governments have always sought absolute information, and absolute power, over the people: power seeks more power. But technology has allowed the US government to seek out this power in secret. Is that new? You can always define things such that there is nothing new: Diana Nyad swam from Cuba to Florida, the first person to do so - and at the remarkable age of 64. But was long distance, open-water swimming through shark-infested waters new? No. Striving hard for what may seem to other people to be a wasteful and arbitrary token of accomplishment? No, that's as old as time itself. (Interestingly, and I think quite remarkably, you can go the other way: in a sense, everything is new. Eating this apple? I have eaten apples before. Others have eaten other apples. But I never eaten this apple, right now, before now. Part of me doesn't like this reductio, but another part of me thinks that it's not ad absurdum at all.)
asveikau 13y ago
Perhaps a fair observation for someone living in biblical times. (And with no knowledge of several technological upheavals that came before or after.) OTOH one can do what people tend to do with religious texts rightly or wrongly, look beyond its obvious falseness and charitably reinterpret this. Maybe this is even an expression of conservation of mass; that we are not creating newness, simply re-arranging matter. Or perhaps it says that despite technological change (possibly deemed surface-level change even if nontrivial), some essential part of life and society continues to resemble its former self. I will say this part is much more accurate: > No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them. I'm often bummed out by descriptions of famous and important people from 100+ years ago. Name after name of people you've never heard of, all deceased. It can be depressing to think of our present, or even our future, and the future of those that will come long after us, as appearing in the same light.

analog31 13y ago

We tend to worship heroes. Thus, when we learn that something is cool, we go looking for a lone person who can be identified as the "genius" or the "inventor." If somebody can set themselves up as such a hero, then inventions will be attributed to them by their followers.

mtdewcmu 13y ago

Steve Jobs, in particular, always sounded like he was delivering a sales pitch in his public comments. Maybe it was deliberate; maybe it's just that he ate, breathed, and slept "the game." I think you have to view his inaccurate and hyperbolic statements in that context and not take his public comments wholly at face value.