I’m a successful time traveller
I’ve invented a lot of things. Or more accurately (in my mind) I noticed the same thing someone else would have noticed, I simply got it to market first.
Or, more banally, wasn’t even thinking of it as an invention, it was just one or several things that had to exist in order for the thing I wanted to build to happen.
You don’t even need to get to market first though. One can argue that a patent is just a bit of fiction backed up by a plausible drawing. Don’t confuse useful or successful — with functional.
The odds are I’ve invented something you have bought, used, or touched
Many decades ago, and for a long time, I was interviewed by hundreds of writers around the world. Not one, but a dozen of my products were featured inside, as well as graced the covers of magazines, newspapers, and even this wild new frontier of the internet.
They would ask me provoking questions, and I would say wild things, the writers would eat it up, with looks of shock and disbelief on their faces as I described the future. And yet, nothing I ever said was very wild at all to anyone familiar with the state of technology. Some things have to come to exist. It’s not an issue of if, but when.
I was once featured in a series of adverts in magazines such as Life, Time, and Business week, along with some really fun talented people such as musicians like B.B. King, writers, painters, and other inventors. They brought several people in to ‘wrangle me.’ One was a classic writer for the NY Times or some such, and the other was a copywriter for a top ad agency. They wanted to capture a long story in a small space. Our conversation was hours long, and it had to be reduced to 50 words. Clearly, they failed.
One thing I find (or see as a pattern) is that when people imagine a future with a new invention, they assume it exists in a bubble.
Much like if we went backwards in time (which is the only thing most people can imagine at all), with a ‘new magic item.’ For example, if you went back to 1632 with a handgun.
New inventions do not go forward in a bubble, magically appearing anachronistically. This is why it is so hard for people to imagine these items working well, or selling well. Most ideas seem horrible or dumb to people.
There are an extremely small group of people that see things more holistically, usually called ‘science fiction writers.’ I see these people as having two talents. In addition to seeing the complex dynamics of several simple inventions at the same time, they can present them in a compelling narrative. Or, in the case of some visionaries that might not have that extra talent, they can physically manifest reality by overcoming the friction of societal transmutation.
Humans are both malleable, and rigid. Or said more succinctly, humans are non-Newtonian; they change as a blob — slowly. They freeze up if asked to move too fast.
What compelled me to write this was that it was expressed to me that Elon Musk, currently bidding for Twitter, might destroy Twitter if he controlled it by allowing for ‘too much’ free speech.
So, sure, we must agree, that history teaches us utter untethered freedom of speech goes awry. But we must also ask: does Elon strike you as one that presents one new trick at a time?
Perhaps someone known for having plans, with backup plans, and challenging conventional views, together with a very talented team (people forget he collects trustworthy smart people), might be just taking some loose pocket change (a few billion in a mason jar), and buying one of the most unconventional social mediums to date. For me, that would be out of character for him.
While I’m not a fanboy, I perhaps see him differently than most. I know for example that what we see through a lens or a pen rarely paints a true story of what is going on. We don’t see the stunning hard work that went into making all the successes he has had. Unless you have slept under your desk for days on end to ensure you squeeze every waking moment to ensure success, you might not be able to relate to him.
Invention is a bloody and painful birth.
He and I are both on the spectrum. This quality works against us (on the spectrum) in most endeavours, but in the field of technology, and invention, we have a strong edge. We start from a position of seeing things differently (uh, er, ‘think different.’ Even Grammarly underlined that in red).
From this perspective, ‘free speech’ has a different meaning. I’m incapable of representing anyone else on the spectrum in what I’m about to express, but this is my view summed up:
- Most people are rude to me, but don’t see themselves as being rude.
- I’ve never been offended, I’ve come to learn I’m meant to be offended by others watching these exchanges. Thus, I’m taught what is defined as rude.
- Since I love deep communication, I adopt the other person’s communication methods, in an attempt to create a baseline for communication, and thus, reply with rudeness as well (this is how I play games like Chess, adopting the other person’s strategy first, exhaust those, then apply my own).
- This evokes anger in them, as they become offended. They tend to view my reply as being offended, as opposed to more communication.
- The game of mirrors is the fastest way I know to filter out people I won’t be able to work with going forward.
- I have no boundaries personally. But, painfully, slowly, am taught what other people think are the boundaries.
- People draw lines in the sand. It’s sand.
- I do not believe in censorship, I believe in censor-choice. (meaning, people should be warned, but not bowdlerized)
- The most important thing I can tell you is ■■■■■ ■■ ■■■■■■ ■■■■■■■.
While being interviewed once, a 1 hour long convo, I asked them at the end when it would be live. It was the early web, and his response was ‘hopefully in a few hours, I’m going to transcribe it and post it, isn’t it fantastic?’
I was taken aback. I was expecting him to go spend some serious time editing it, cleaning it all up. Not to act as a court reporter. It was pages and pages of mindless crap I spewed out knowing (or assuming) he would grab the good bits.
We then got into a heavy conversation about censorship. His view was ‘let people read it all’ my view was ‘sure, but your job is to cut out the boring stuff, and focus on the things your readers care about.’
I captured this dilemma years ago in something I wrote up for my own team The Fire Door of Procrustes.
The solution would have been ‘both.’ He could have posted the edited version, and a link to the full convo as well. This is my preferred model in everything. I wish Apple would give us a magic button, even hidden, that gives us access to the more powerful or specific settings. It is why I don’t buy Apple products. I appreciate them, I just can’t use them personally.
This brings us back to invention. Perhaps, the reason people have difficulty with imagining the future at all (much less — accurately, or not as an abysmal apocalyptic failure) is found in the issues of free speech.
When we look at what infuriates people about ‘things said’ (that are counter to their own beliefs, or considerations), is that they imagine that single thought instantly being in a bubble, without any other ideas and constraints applied to it. It is a lone idea.
It may be difficult to see these as the same thing, but you have to look back into yourself to find the answers. You need to reflect on your own point of view, temporally and culturally anchored in the now, and for many, the past. You have to ask yourself where you stand on the issues of ‘change’ in general. Do you fear change, or embrace it? Are you of a mindset of growth or fixed?
In game theory, Aumann’s agreement theorem is a theorem which demonstrates that rational agents with common knowledge of each other’s beliefs cannot agree to disagree.
The next time you are presented with an unexpected or novel idea, before you instantly look for the first reasons it will fail or be wrong (and admit it, that is what your mind does for you automatically) do your very best to fight that urge, and take the extra energy to imagine how it could be right, or better, or even just, reasonable.
That right there is why most people (neurotypical) don’t, it costs extra energy for the brain. It’s like taking the stairs when the elevator door is already open.
Check out the other path, it may lead to other places.
