The 99 percent.

My wife the historian has a big Idea. She wants to prove that innovation and technology is not something that is created by a few, but actually the result of the collective and social response to solve a challenge. On the surface, it may seem that she is full of steam, but she is right.  Great ideas are the summation of the of many, yet only the great storytellers get the credit.

From an over simplified  standpoint, chemists use the knowledge that they gained in school and life to solve new challenges.  In the same way, engineers use their knowledge to make the world a more functional place.  To say that Steve jobs invented the iPhone is not a complete truth.  Instead, a more accurate statement would be that Apple Corporation invented the iPhone. Considering these examples, one could apply further analysis and make a more encompassing statement; the iPhone was the product of years of research that melded the concepts of accessing digital data on a relatively small handheld device. The fact that Steve jobs gets credit for iPhone discovery is simple.  He told the story.  He presented the Idea of a device that does all the stuff that the iPhone does, but he probably lead his designers to create a product that was beautiful.  And in this society perception is everything. The truth is tertiary.

iPhone was not the first smartphone, in fact before Apple's version of the miniature communication device, RIM ruled with their Blackberry for business (the 1%).  Apple made smartphones for the other 18 percent (relatively expensive) and then came Android for the other 30% (free to manufacturers).  What dictates availability of these technological leaps?  In my view it is utility.  Most people use their smartphone for playing games, communicating with their social circles, and for waking up in the morning.  Are there alternative ways to do all of these functions, sure.  But smartphones add the utility of mobility, and Steve made them seem cool.  And this leads me back to the original idea.  It is true that innovations are the culmination of the activities of the many.  Unfortunately, people are more concerned with the final product and its utility, and good storytellers are the ones who mainly get the credit.

This still does not answer the fundamental question, of the big Idea, which to me is: Why doesn't engineer X get credit for inventing the iPhone? Simple answer, because she was a drone, merly applying the concepts she learned in Engineering 2003, that  Engineer C, PhD. invented (or filed a patent on, or wrote a paper on) 100 years ago. As much as we humans believe that we are better and smarter than the animals, as we devise better ways of analyzing how the brain works and how organisms communicate, we will find out that they are as smart as we are... if not more.

We are all drones subject to the wills of the 50%, 10 %, 1%, 0.1% and the 0.001%.  But, what should be done to give credit to the ones that figure out the kinks in the big idea?  While we muddle through the problem, we need to get out of our line, take the unbeaten path, or become great story tellers.  After all, perception is everything, and humans mainly pay attention to the things that lie outside the line.

Still, I would like to thank the cell that makes up part of my epithelium, of my small intestine, that helps absorb the nutrients that I eat and keep me going... even though that cell died by the time I was done with this sentence.