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Risch conflates an idea with its implementation | 67 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Risch conflates an idea with its implementation
Authored by: mrisch on Friday, November 16 2012 @ 08:26 PM EST
Well, you get right to the key points here. First of all,
the "problem statement" need not be identified as
computable. Take Lodsys, much maligned. Someone had the idea
in 1991 or so to allow fax machines to send a message back
to the manufacturer when there was a bug with the fax
machine and embed that in the fax machine software.

This is not an issue of a computable problem statement
issue. This is an issue of whether anyone in 199x was
anywhere close to thinking that something like this should
be done given the state of technology at the time. That's
one obviousness inquiry. I personally think it was obvious,
but some might disagree.

Now, once you've had that idea, implementing it may or may
not be difficult given the state of hardware at the time.
This is where most engineers tell me everything is obvious,
and that you can compute the things that aren't.

Yes, this is how many other fields work, but not all.
Consider the slinky or the paperclip, both patented.
Thinking of them was hard, making them was much easier.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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