Headline, December15, 2013

''' THIS VERY LONE AND -THOSE- 

VERY LONELY INVENTORS '''

IN PAKISTAN just a few years ago, an inspiring group of local and international students announced that they would change the world.

They promised to put aside every difference, restore hope to those without hope, and begin the process of unifying the world, and make the world proud again 

As evidence shows, these global heroes, were never the lamest of ducks. That's why the global students need a good answer to the very big question: just what would !WOW! and Sam Daily Times set out to achieve in 2014?!

So now the tale and a glance at history and learning:

The legend of the lone inventor is at least as old as Leonardo da Vinci with his flying machines and Thomas Edison with his light bulb and cinema. Even in the globalized world of regulatory bureaus and instant mergers, the individual vision survives.

Inventors persist because bureaucracies create their own weaknesses. Technology is inherently unstable. It cannot be fully fixed, rationalized and regulated without choking  off its own vitality. An invention that is fully planned is not  ''invented''  at all. Improvements can be planned, but inventions cannot. They must be born and then raised.

Like weeds after a forest fire, inventions often spring up during times of war, depressions or rather sudden calamities. If business blows a valve in the dot-com bust, then human ingenuity, will shuffle sideways into the fields of defense or homeland security.

The pampered global consumer of the 1990s, blowing his pocket money on gizmos, becomes the hapless terrorist suspect of the '00s, having his shoes scanned and his body gently riddled by unheard-of T-rays  -Terahertz waves.

There was no way to depict that line of development, but technology's map creates it's own blank spots. Success breeds unexpected opportunities that only a visionary could see. The inventor thrives in this environment because he is small, nimble and expendable, and he doesn't cost much. Qualities like that are hard to automate.

''These days you certainly have lots of big teams, but also small groups of one or two or three or four people,'' says physicist Freeman Dyson of the institute for Advanced Study, and a fellow of the World Economic Forum. ''The individual is as important as he ever was.''

To understand the individual inventor, it helps to consider the life cycle of inventions. the first phase is the question of the mark   -the fertile realm of basic science, free intellectual inquiry and new developments in materials and manufacturing techniques, borrowed from from distant lines of work.

It is rather whimsical world of open-ended tinkering, learned curiosities, amateur hobbies, technological cross-pollination, entertainments and even children toys.

Inventions in their question-mark phase don't make money. Nobody knows what they are goo for yet. The question mark is of no more use than a newborn baby. The infant mortality rate is huge for question marks. Patent offices worldwide are crammed with nifty inventions that go nowhere at all.

Wealth and fame don't reach the inventor until his baby becomes a rising star. This is where everyday people take notice that their world is being changed. Vast, sudden fortunes can be made here, because the owner and developer of a rising star has stolen a march on the competition.

A military rising star, like radar on the A-bomb, can win wars. The Apple 1 computer was a question mark, but the Apple II, equipped with a working spreadsheet, just jumped off the shelves. With a rising star, demand grows, supply is rare and consumers pay big premiums without a second thought.

the third phase, the cash cow, is not news. In this mature period, inventors are given the National Medal of Technology and quietly retired back to the lab. If they unwisely try to stay in full-control of a cash cow, they'll be underpriced, outcompeted and run out of town by canny chief executives who have M.B.A.s and can manage big, serious industries.

A cow is dependable, but she is a creature of the milk stall and the corral. Cash cows live in herds. A cash cow is not a star anymore, merely a large, rather profitable industry. Automatic dishwashers are cash cows; nobody bothers to give them that wonder-word ''automatic'' anymore because dishwasher sells on cost, convenience and reliability, not on high-tech pizzazz.

Visionaries are not needed for cows; their imagination is even troublesome.

The Post continues:

With respectful dedication to the Students of the World. See ya all on !WOW! the World Students Society Computers-Internet_wireless:

''' Tomorrow Now '''

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless