Looking back at the post “You press a button and we do the rest“. It seems I may have gotten a few things wrong, but in my opinion whoever works hard to push the world forward and make the quality of life better is a pretty successful person. I would give him a very cuddly hug as a reward at least. hehe!
Firstly let’s try to define what Innovation means.
Introduce, new ideas, products or methods to make our and others’ quality of lives better.
In terms of commercial and open source, there are pros and cons that need to be tackled from both sides. I have been thinking about this very much lately as everyone talks about the same thing again and again and again “Innovate or die“.
Commercial
- Runs on the capitalist idea – make something that people want, get it to them and charge them a bit in return. The economics of demand and supply are in work.
- To foster innovation and ensure others don’t steal our great ideas, and allow us to move even further, sometimes we might want to protect it with patents or just maintain control on the intellectual property.
- money can buy the resources to make us happier and more powerful, hence “status and power” are a great motivators to encourage us to put our best. Status and power is somehow hardcoded into every animal’s brains since birth. The survival of the fittest.
- Currently it seems there is a widely observed view that commercial guys push a bit more innovation than the just-academic guys, at least as I have experienced it.
- Sometimes the commercial guys play bad games and stifle innovation with their egos of power and status. The small guys get crushed even before they get a chance. (Insert microsoft history here).
Open Source
- Runs on the “want not, waste not” philosophy. Sharing is caring.
- Specialize and Exchange TED talk by Matt Ridley says it well. Open source promotes the sharing the ideas and source code, as in computing terms copying is not stealing. Everyone gains; it is by this principle that we as humans have come so far ahead.
- The “2020” ericson ideas campaign talks about the notion of “connectiviy is productivity”. Even hardware blueprints by “openfarmtech” are helping solve poverty. Arduino is making frog leaps in hardware. The Internet running on open connectivity seems to be humanity’s biggest invention.
- More and more of the world runs on open technologies. The web runs on open technology protocols. TCP/IP – HTTP – FTP – POP3 – SMTP – SSH e.t.c
- It promotes the hacker ethics :- Information should be accessible to all and free, mistrust authority promote decentralization, innovators be judged by their skills and not bogus criteria such as caste, skin colour, age or gender and technology can change life for the better.
- Great Open Source projects such as Wikipedia show what could be achieved by noble collaboration. Its the largest pool of organised human knowledge.
How do we maximise innovation ?
I guess smart developers need to get rewarded with their talent. The way Silicon Valley pays top bucks for developers who have great talent for execution of their ideas. I saw a documentary “True Story of the Internet”, in Silicon Valley where disruptive tech innovation happens, million dollars is nothing, if you have the next big idea and are able to execute it, fresh grad students from stanford, MIT and hardvard have a great history of becoming the youngest billionaires. This is one reason why once in my lifetime I’d like to work in Silicon Valley (Geek Heaven). Its an experience to be had. This is a city that knows how to reward innovation and brain cycles used to move humanity forward. Its frankly quite amazing how many things happen there. Here is a philosophy I have come up in my life on how to spend my free time.
Invest heavily in solving problems that can make life better. Computers can make increase the quality of life (if you know how). They can help us make better decisions. Computers are becoming an extension of our brains.
Computational Thinking
While talking to a co-worker named Jason Hooker. I quickly drew him a diagram of what I think runs behind every successful web idea. We are heading one step closer each time to a “semantic web”.
- Data Collection – This is either through users filling in forms, uploading media, capturing user activity or some automated web crawling bots trying to make sense of existing web data.
- Data Organization & Storage – This data is then stored in databases which are organized in some meaningful manner, for quick retrieval and computation.
- Data Retreival & Computation – Based on user’s preferences or what goes in his mind, The data that the user wants is computed. This also includes “Recommendation Engines” – giving the user what he wants, before he even asks for it. At the heart of google adwords, facebook friend suggestions, amazon product recommendations, Netflix movie recommendations are some very very smart algorithms.
- Presentation of Data – This is where good interface design, layout design, animations e.t.c comes into play. Data should be able to adapt to different devices and screen sizes. The speed at which it responds to different user queries and how it responds to user queries is also a big player.
In short I now understand that technology is about people and delivering them what they want. Deep inside every human lie some “desires and wants” that are hard coded. We cannot change them, its what makes us “tick” as a being.
I’d like to build some tools that normal users could use to do the about tasks without getting too deep in “geek” land. . Who wants to fund me ?