The Shape of Things To Come? I hope not.
Geeks and Suits
The Shape of Things To Come? I hope not.
Author: JP
Fraunhofer Lines
Wikipedia defines Fraunhofer lines thus:
In physics and optics, the Fraunhofer lines are a set of spectral lines named for the German physicist Joseph von Fraunhofer (1787–1826). The lines were originally observed as dark features (absorption lines) in the optical spectrum of the Sun.
The English chemist William Hyde Wollaston was in 1802 the first person to note the appearance of a number of dark features in the solar spectrum. In 1814, Fraunhofer independently rediscovered the lines and began a systematic study and careful measurement of the wavelength of these features. In all, he mapped over 570 lines, and designated the principal features with the letters A through K, and weaker lines with other letters.
A set of dark features in the optical spectrum of the Sun.
Hmmm.
A set of 574 dark features identified by Joseph von Fraunhofer.
The same Fraunhofer after whom a certain Fraunhofer Society was named.
The same Fraunhofer Society who invented MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, commonly referred to as MP3.
The same MP3 patents at the heart of the Microsoft/Alcatel-Lucent patent lawsuit.
The same Microsoft whose Chairman, Bill Gates, presciently said in 1991:
“If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today…A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose.”
The same patent system that allows patents like this one:
| United States Patent Application | 20060259306 |
| Kind Code | A1 |
| Roberts; Timothy Wace | November 16, 2006 |
Business method protecting jokes
The specification describes a method of protecting jokes by filing patent applications therefor, and gives examples of novel jokes to be thus protected. Specific jokes to be protected by the process of the invention include stories about animals playing ball-games, in which alliteration is used in the punch-line; a scheme for raising money for charity by providing dogs for carriage by Underground passengers; and the joke that consists in filing a patent application to protect jokes. A novel type of patent application, one that claims itself, and hence is termed `homoproprietary`, is disclosed.
Sean asked me what I thought of the Microsoft versus Alcatel-Lucent spat. Something I’ve been thinking about for a while. So what’s my answer?
Sean, I feel sad. I think we’re heading for a period of more and more intense patent lawsuits as the system crumbles under its own weight. I think we’re already at a stage where companies genuinely believe they have to have a bunch of patents in their armoury, in order to do battle with other companies with other patents in other armouries. I think we’ve already gone past the offensive/defensive/frivolous stage, we now have creatures like cross-patents and even self-referential ones.
I think there are people around who would prefer to employ patents rather than people.
And I think creativity will suffer as a result of all this. For a while.
As long as we have sets of dark features obscuring the Sun of our creativity, dark features that make up our broken patent system.
Taking action against Patent Spam
I’ve written about it before, how the patent process is fast approaching spam levels. We now have offensive patents (offensive in more ways than intended), defensive patents, speculative patents, frivolous patents, even downright fraudulent ones.
The New Scientist informed me that:
100 patents are issued by the US Patent and Trademark Office every working hour, overstretching staff there, Congress heard last week
So I thought I’d check on precisely what the USPTO guys told Congress. Here’s a quote:
Patent examiners completed 332,000 patent applications in 2006, the largest number ever, while achieving the lowest patent allowance error rate — 3.5% — in over 20 years. At 54%, the patent allowance rate also was the lowest on record. Patent allowance rate is the percentage of applications reviewed by examiners that are approved. The agency also processed a record number of trademark applications in 2006. USPTO trademark examining attorneys took final action on 378,111 trademark applications, a 36% increase over the previous year, and achieved a record low final action error rate, with mistakes found in only 3.6% of the trademark applications reviewed in FY 2006.
Link.
Maybe it’s time to publish lists of the top 10 patent applicants by volume; we publish car emissions and gas consumption, so why not do this?
The Gates and Jobs YouTube Series
You’ve probably seen a number of these at one time or the other. But this one is special, it is really worth watching. Check out this link.
There will come a time when nobody watches ads any more, except the ones they choose to. Which may be time- and place- shifted anyway.
What they will watch is stuff like this. I for one am looking forward to it.
Connected, not channelled
Those of you who’ve made the time to read the kernel for this blog will be familiar with the phrase “connected not channelled”….. that’s what came to mind when I read John Battelle’s fascinating interview of Michael Wesch of That Video fame.
Here are the quotes I really identified with:
For me, cultural anthropology is a continuous exercise in expanding my mind and my empathy, building primarily from one simple principle: everything is connected. This is true on many levels. First, everything including the environment, technology, economy, social structure, politics, religion, art and more are all interconnected. As I tried to illustrate in the video, this means that a change in one area (such as the way we communicate) can have a profound effect on everything else, including family, love, and our sense of being itself. Second, everything is connected throughout all time, and so as anthropologists we take a very broad view of human history, looking thousands or even millions of years into the past and into the future as well. And finally, all people on the planet are connected. This has always been true environmentally because we share the same planet. Today it is even more true with increasing economic and media globalization.
My friends [……..] are experts in relationships and grasp the ways that we are all connected in much more profound ways than we do. They go so far as to suggest that their own health is dependent on strong relations with others. When they get sick they carefully examine their relations with others and try to heal those relations in order to heal their bodies. In contrast, we tend to emphasize our independence and individuality, failing to realize just how interconnected we are with each other and the rest of the world, and disregarding the health of our relationships with others.
So if there is a global village, it is not a very equitable one, and if there is a tragedy of our times, it may be that we are all interconnected but we fail to see it and take care of our relationships with others. For me, the ultimate promise of digital technology is that it might enable us to truly see one another once again and all the ways we are interconnected. It might help us create a truly global view that can spark the kind of empathy we need to create a better world for all of humankind. I’m not being overly utopian and naively saying that the Web will make this happen. In fact, if we don’t understand our digital technology and its effects, it can actually make humans and human needs even more invisible than ever before. But the technology also creates a remarkable opportunity for us to make a profound difference in the world.
That’s why our battles on identity, intellectual property rights, digital rights and the use of the internet are so crucial. If we get the battles right, we can really make an impact. But only if we get them right.