Facebook is No Trifle

In a Wall Street Journal article “Why Our Innovators Traffic in Trifles”, Nicholas Carr claims that Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest are examples of “innovation’s turn toward the trifling”. The evidence, he says, is that such technologies are merely “altering internal states, transforming the invisible self or its bodily container.” Truly big inventions, according to Carr, are directed “outward” and pertain to “changing the shape of the physical world” or of “society”.

While it is true that Facebook is about information and ideas, and steam engines—which Carr puts in the second category—are about machinery, it does not follow however that the former are inherently less valuable than the latter. Contrary to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which Carr invokes, man cannot fulfill even his “primitive physiological requirements” without “self-actualization”. Imitating Boromir, One Does Not Simply Reshape the Physical World. Knowledge is a necessary precondition to action; and Facebook is essentially a tool to disseminate and obtain knowledge.

Historically, it has been inventions such as phonetic language, paper, and Guttenberg press that have served man’s “desire for self-expression and self-promotion”—a desire that Carr finds to be “small” and presumably not noble enough when being fulfilled by Facebook. Yet he could not honestly label the ancestral “complex systems of communication” as trifling, and rationalizes by characterizing those as being “outward” directed, by which he means "selfless". And selfless is exactly what their inventors and users were not. It does not make any difference whether you declare “what’s on your mind” on a remote retina display or a papyrus. Both are acts of “self-expression and self-promotion”. The same goes for the steam engine: there is nothing selfless about creating a powerful machine that reduces your physical labor.

Carr’s harmless-sounding call to “enlarge our aspirations” is a deceptive cover for his call to murder the self—the only entity with the capacity to aspire. Our ancestors had to selfishly choose to lift themselves from the caves. And that makes them big, not “small”.

A steam engine or Facebook can both serve the self. Either technology can be more valuable to a man than the other. The body and mind are integrated; there is no dichotomy between “tools of survival and tools of the self.”

ATLOSCon 2012: The Method of Invention

I will be presenting a talk on The Method of Invention at ATLOSCon 2012.

Here is the description:

Did the greatest inventors in history succeed by chance, intuition, or indiscriminate and arbitrary experimentation, as is commonly alleged? Or, did they ask and answer the right questions, and seek the relevant facts? Drawing upon the history of steam engine—the invention that powered the industrial revolution—Atul Kapur will present his hypothesis that each invention requires the identification and integration of three specific and distinct causal relationships, which he terms as “aberrational”, “essential”, and “differential”. James Watt, as well as his predecessors, will each be shown to have sought and successfully identified these three relationships. The topics to be discussed include: the relationship between discoveries, inventions, and concept-formation; the difference between invention and innovation; the crucial role and difficulty of experimentation; and why even the proper use of inventive method does not guarantee success. The lecture will end with an audience-driven discussion on the importance of reinstating the heroic status of inventors as a part of our cultural battle, and a note on why that requires untangling and demystifying the inventive method.

[Slightly modified from original]

The conference will take place May 24-28, 2012 in Atlanta, GA.

Click here to view the information on all classes and speakers. The registration is still open. And, it costs $75 or less!

Further information:

ATLOSCon is an annual conference organized by the Atlanta Objectivist Society (ATLOS).

Slide-to-Unlock --> When Geniuses Apply for Patents

The internet LOL’d when news broke out that Apple has been awarded a patent for Slide-to-Unlock—a design element apparently so trivial that almost every smartphone user blushed upon hearing the news. On a serious note, many complained that the legal practice of granting patents to components, instead of actual devices, doesn’t make sense. Defenders of Windows 8, which uses the same mechanism specified in the patent, claimed that since the implementation is "different" there is no issue of infringement.

Is there anything wrong with the Slide-to-Unlock patent? Let me first state that I’ve never been to law school, and I understand that arguments for patent laws are not always trivial, but let me tell you two remarkable stories from history that might make you lean in favor of the patent.

The first story begins in Scotland; the year is 1769. James Watt has invented a remarkable steam engine that has more than thrice the efficiency of the best existing engine. He is applying for a patent. The specifications in his patent application are different from most patents filed in his time. Six decades earlier, Thomas Newcomen had filed a patent application that included every detail of his breakthrough engine: pipes, valves, and whatnot. But Watt wants to receive patent protection for merely a single component: the condenser. His patent does not include the entire design.

Thanks to the sanity of the patent office, Watt was granted the patent. Needless to say, there were critics. They claimed that Watt is willfully concealing his invention by an incomplete specification. Even today, some cite the patent to question his status as a hero of industrial revolution, alleging that all he did was invent a small component of the steam engine.

Such claims are absurd. That small component, a separate vessel for condensation, allowed the cylinder to be kept warm such that no steam was wasted in the next cycle. This is what essentially made Watt’s engine remarkably efficient and superior to any previous engine. As Watt himself explained*, he did not specify the other components because either those already existed in existing engines or he didn’t regard the improvements he made in those to be “significant”. His purpose was not to conceal his improvements in those components, rather to only protect what was truly essential. Sure enough, later when he or others made enough improvements in other components, they filed separate patents.

Our second story begins in Dayton, Ohio; the date is March, 1903. The Wright brothers are applying for a patent. It will be nine more months until they fly the first powered airplane in man’s history. But they are confident that they will succeed. Like Watt, they go one step further: their patent application specifies, not a component, but a method—a very uncommon practice at their time. Their application describes the method as controlling of an aircraft by changing the surface angle near the tips of wings.

After an initial rejection, and with the help of an attorney, the US patent office granted their patent. Here cometh the critics. Wright brothers had used wing-warping (twisting) to change the angle near wing tips. One of their rivals later used another method (ailerons) to change the angle. Critics claimed that this does not constitute a patent infringement, and that the method deserves credit by virtue of being "different".

Apart from the fact that the Wright brothers’ patent explicitly stated that the angle of the surface could be changed by any manner, the claim is baseless because an invention, by its very nature, involves an identification of essentials. For example, it is not essential to a telescope whether its scope is made of metal or wood. Galileo invented the telescope. He didn’t invent a wooden telescope! Likewise, the Wright brothers invented the method of changing surface angle as the key to achieving sustained flight. Whether the manner to achieve this is through wing-warping or ailerons is not essential to the invention.

From the two stories, it should be clear that (1) if patents were granted not to components, but entire devices, as some critics of Slide-to-Unlock patent would prefer, it would require the sacrifice of James Watt to his critics, and (2) if a rival is free to implement a patented method in another manner, as some defenders of Windows 8 would prefer, it would require the sacrifice of Wright brothers to their opponents.

Rational patent practices didn’t develop easily. Because of the unconventional way in which they specified their patents, both Watt and the brothers had to pursue lengthy legal battles to protect their inventions from infringement. Some criticize them for spending so much time in courts. But I think it is morally right to defend your property, material or intellectual. As Wilbur Wright righteously wrote in a letter to an aviator, "[it] is our view that morally the world owes its almost universal use of our system of lateral control entirely to us. It is also our opinion that legally it owes it to us." Neither Watt nor the brothers were famous or influential before their respective inventions; they took a bold, but sensible, step when they filed for patents in a manner that they saw effective. The genius of Watt and Wright brothers extends beyond their inventions—they were instrumental in establishing patent practices that will protect inventors, including those of Slide-to-Unlock, for centuries to come.

*A Plain Story (1796)—James Watt’s account of how he came upon invention, and a response to his critics.

Update [Nov. 17, 17:25 UTC]: Slightly edited for clarity.

Watt and Edison Contra Determinism

A common criticism levied against innovators is: “if not him, somebody else would have done it.”

Formally described as counterfactual conditional or simply “counterfactual”, such criticism is used in a variety of contexts: to emphasize competitors, to denounce CEO salaries, to oppose patents, etc.; but, essentially, its purpose is to rob an innovator of the moral recognition that he deserves. A recent example [video] is an Occupy Wall Street protester who used the criticism against Steve Jobs, and concluded it with “To Hell with Steve Jobs!”

The philosophical doctrine underlying such criticism is determinism—the idea that your thoughts and actions are merely a consequence of external past influences. Its product is social theories such as “critical mass” theory of development, the labor theory of value, and ultimately the complete disregard for the individual under Communism.

But man has free will. The very fact that you can choose to disagree with that statement is evidence for it. Innovation requires knowledge and thought. And neither of those is automatic—they require volitional application of your mind. However, my purpose here is not to convince you that man has free will. (If you aren’t convinced, you’re determined to be doomed, anyways.) Instead, I will quote from some brilliant innovators who were, and still are, routinely charged with the “counterfactual”.

Thomas Edison, emphasizing the importance of effort, said:

None of my inventions came by accident. I see a worthwhile need to be met and I make trial after trial until it comes. What it boils down to is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.¹

James Watt answered the criticism directly:

[I am] not so presumptuous as to think that there were not, and are not, numbers of mechanics in this nation, who, from the same or even fewer hints, would have completed a better engine than [I] did. [...] But [I do] not pretend that any body could have done it without thinking upon it, nor without much previous knowledge and some experience of similar things.² [Emphasis original.]

Steve Jobs, on the other hand, pointed out that sometimes even the innovators feel that they don’t deserve full recognition:

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something.³

Although Jobs deserves enormous moral praise for being an “insanely great” producer (and for many other reasons, perhaps), I disagree with him on the source of “little guilt”. Jobs is right that creativity requires mental integration. But the act of “seeing” a “connection” between things is a uniquely human capacity. It requires conscious effort, and is our sole means of survival. Thus, properly understood, creative activity can only be a source of pride. To the extent that a creative person feels guilt is the extent to which he accepts the premise of determinism.

¹ As per Wikiquote, the statement was made in a press conference (1929).

² A Plain Story (1796)—his account of how he came upon invention, and a response to his critics.

³ Wired (February 1995)