Re: Fear of Life (was Microsoft, Automation)

Warrl kyree Tale'sedrin (warrl@mail.blarg.net)
Sun, 3 May 1998 22:18:28 +0000


> From: Dan Fabulich <daniel.fabulich@yale.edu>

> Warrl kyree Tale'sedrin wrote:
> >Only rich people are allowed to bring their inventions to market.
> >
> >A poor person cannot bring his own invention to market, because he
> >doesn't have the money -- and he also can't pay up if his invention
> >doesn't work out.
>
> If inventing is expensive, then we should expect this. It's how the market
> rations goods.

But, often, inventing is NOT expensive. Inventing occurs inside a
person's head; developing the invention can be cheap or expensive,
depending on the components involved. Many fabulous inventions
consisted simply of putting readily-available parts together in a way
nobody had thought of before.

Perfecting the invention and bringing it to market, is expensive.

> >Besides, oftentimes even a basic description of an invention is
> >sufficient to reinvent it. For example, try to describe a
> >Frisbee(tm) well enough to garner interest, but *not* well enough
> >that a toy manufacturer could reinvent it himself just from your
> >description.
>
> "It's a disk that flies." "How?" "I'm not telling."

"Go away."

"Tech staff? Make me a disk that flies. What size? It's a toy.
How does it fly? Look around. Toy engines with enough power are
complicated and a tiny niche hobby, this is supposedly going to be
hot. So try throwing it."

"Boss, last night my wife knocked a bunch of plastic lids off a
shelf. She tried to catch them, but of course missed most of them.
Some of them flew a couple yards." "OK, work with that."

>
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