Here is Clay Shirky’s talk at Web 2.0 (Apr 23, 2008), called Gin, Television, and Social Surplus.

My favorite bit: “The way you explore complex ecosystems is you just try lots and lots and lots of things, and you hope that everybody who fails fails informatively so that you can at least find a skull on a pikestaff near where you’re going. That’s the phase we’re in now.”

Read it.  Seriously.

An interesting article from Chandler Burr in today’s New York Times, about the invention of scent molecules in the perfume trade.
Here’s the first paragraph:

Its scent is reminiscent of a mixture of a just-picked apple and a rose in its prime. But to the Takasago International Corporation, which manufactures this synthetic material, it smells even sweeter.

As they say, read the whole thing!

( I wonder if the perfume folks are as agitated about patent reform as big pharma … )

“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.” - Linus Pauling

“The past is never dead.  It’s not even past.”

- William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun, Act I, Scene 3.

Today’s New York Times has a delightful story about British t-shirt company Last Exit To Nowhere. Its shirts feature logos made famous by works of fiction.

A bit from the story:

Consider the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. It’s part of the fictional universe depicted in the 1979 film “Alien” and its sequels; Nostromo, the spaceship freighter in the first movie, is a Weyland-Yutani vessel. The company doesn’t do much in the way of branding in, you know, reality. But as it turns out, it’s possible to buy yourself a Weyland-Yutani T-shirt, or even a Nostromo T. It also turns out many people have.

LastExitToNowhere.com specializes in designs relating to “some of the most memorable places, corporations and companies in 20th-century fiction.” Other popular T-shirts on the site, which went up in June, include one for Tyrell (“More Human Than Human” is its motto), maker of genetic replicants in “Blade Runner,” and Polymer Records, a music label in “This Is Spinal Tap.” The site’s founder is Mike Ford, a 34-year-old graphic designer and movie fan based in Nottingham, England. Thanks to attention from blogs and, more recently, publicity from the British magazine Empire, Ford says he has shipped about 4,000 shirts to customers in Europe, the U.S., even New Zealand, and imaginary brands are now his full-time job. (With shipping, the T’s cost around $45 for the U.S. shopper.)

Putting aside the intellectual property law questions (e.g., is the matter better analyzed as a trademark matter, or a copyright matter?), the story highlights the fun some experience in wearing their hearts on their chests (rather than their sleeves).

The author, Rob Walker, blogs at http://www.murketing.com/journal/.

Together with my colleague, Geoff Manne, I have organized a conference on the nonobviousness doctrine following the Supreme Court’s KSR case last term.  The conference is entitled, “Nonobviousness - The Shape of Things to Come.”  It’s a great line-up of participants, and should be an excellent conference.  You can find details here.  Here’s the program:

FRIDAY

8:00 a.m. Registration and Continental Breakfast

8:30 a.m. Welcome and Introduction

Lisa LeSage Associate Dean and Director of Business Law Programs
Joe Miller, Associate Professor, Lewis & Clark Law School
8:45 a.m. Morning Session I - Law
Panelists:
Gregory Mandel, The Nonobvious Problem
John Duffy, Racing, Timing, and the Patenting Standard
Rebecca Eisenberg, Pharma’s Nonobviousness Problem

Commenter:
Rochelle Dreyfuss
10:15 a.m. Break

10:30 a.m. Morning Session II - Economics
Panelists:
Suzanne Scotchmer, Nonobviousness, Options and the Scarcity of Ideas
Scott Stern, The Strategic Impact of Patent Office Standards
Vincenzo Denicolo, The Nonobviousness Requirement with Complementary Innovations

Commenter:
Michael Katz
Noon Lunch
Keynote Speaker - Kevin Rivette
Mr. Rivette is currently the Chairman of the USPTO Public Patent Advisory Committee. He recently served as IBM’s Vice President of Intellectual Property Strategy.
1:15 p.m. Afternoon Session I - Psychology
Panelists:
Keith Sawyer
Colleen Seifert, Now Why Didn’t I Think of That? The Cognitive Processes That Create the Obvious,
Steven Smith, Invisible Assumptions and the Unintentional Use of Knowledge and Experiences in Creative Cognition

Commenter:
Janet Davidson
2:45 pm Break

3:15 pm Afternoon Session II - R & D Perspectives
Panelists:
Mark Blaxill, Senior Partner & Managing Director, Boston Consulting Group
Ian Harvey, Chairman, Intellectual Property Institute (UK)
Damon Matteo, Vice President for Intellectual Capital Management, Xerox PARC
Kevin Rivette, Chairman, USPTO Public Patent Advisory Committee

Moderator:
Andy Culbert, Associate General Counsel, Microsoft Corp.

4:30 pm Reception
SATURDAY

9:00 am Morning Session I - Law
Panelists:
Katherine Strandberg, Nonobviousness and Nerd Culture
Joseph Miller, Are Erroneous Patent Denials Better Than Erroneous Grants?
R. Polk Wagner, KSR, the Supreme Court and the Future of Patent Reform

Commenter:
Robert Merges
10:30 am Break

Noon Lunch & Conference Close

This weekend’s New York Times has an engaging story about the Olin College of Engineering, an engineering program that retools the connection between technical and humanities education.

Here’s a taste:

At its tiny campus in Needham, Mass., outside Boston, Olin is trying to design a new kind of engineer. Most engineering schools stress subjects like differential calculus and physics, and their graduates tend to end up narrowly focused and likely to fit the stereotype of a socially awkward clock-puncher. Richard K. Miller, the president of the school, likes to share a professional joke: “How can you tell an extroverted engineer? He’s the one who looks at your shoes when he talks to you.” Olin came into being, Miller told me last spring in his office on campus, to make engineers “comfortable as citizens and not just calculating machines.” Olin is stressing creativity, teamwork and entrepreneurship — and, in no small part, courage. “I don’t see how you can make a positive difference in the world,” he emphasized, “if you’re not motivated to take a tough stand and do the right thing.”

If you’re interested in engineering, education, or both, take a look.

Great story in today’s New York Times about the first International Development Design Summit at MIT this summer.

From the story:

The workshop was developed over the last year by Ms. Smith, Dr. Pickar and others after a meeting to discuss a “design revolution” — a shift in focus among companies, universities, investors and scientists toward attacking problems that hamper development in the world’s poorest places.

“Nearly 90 percent of research and development dollars are spent on creating technologies that serve the wealthiest 10 percent of the world’s population,” Ms. Smith said. “The point of the design revolution is to switch that.”

She added: “There are several different places where that revolution has to take place. We started thinking, ‘How do we train engineers so they might start thinking of this as a field of engineering they’d want to pursue?’ ”

Fantastic!

I think there’s wide agreement that one of the key indicia that an invention would not have been obvious is that it defied conventional wisdom in the art.  Rossman has this to say on the point …

We must remember that a man inexperienced in a given field often has a distinct advantage over the men who are experienced in that field.  First of all, he has nothing to lose, for his professional reputation is not at stake.  He also tackles his problem without any preconceived notions or theories.  He is, therefore, free to formulate his own theories or possible solutions of the problem.  He is not bound by any precedent in that field and he respects no authorities, because he is ignorant of the traditions and the achievements of this field.  He is less likely to follow the old groove than the man experienced in the field, for he has a fresh and unhampered outlook on the problem.  Another important advantage lies in the fact that he brings to the field a knowledge and outlook that the others in that field do not have.  This enables him to form novel and unusual combinations which would be considered folly by the experienced men even if merely suggested as a possibility.  The ignorance of the failure of others is also in his favor for he is not hesitant and doubtful.  He attacks his problem with confidence, courage, and great energy.  For these reasons an electrical engineer never connected the idea of sound transmission with an electromagnet.  The electrical engineer was immersed too much in his own field to see beyond it or combine it with facts from other fields.  The southern planters cleaned their cotton for many years by the manual labor of slaves.  They took it for granted that this was the only way it could be done, until Whitney came from New England where machines were replacing human labor and he showed them how it could be done.  The carriage makers could not possibly visualize any other motive power except horses for their carriages.  In the same way, we often find the experienced men in their respective fields to be conservative and with limited vision.  They accept what they find and seldom question authority.  For these reasons the amateur or the so-called outsider very often makes important inventions and discoveries.

Joseph Rossman, The Psychology of the Inventor: A Study of the Patentee 144-45 (2d ed. 1931).

See also Rossman Excerpt #1, and #2, and #3, and #4, and #5, and #6.

Are inventions primarily the product of the inventor’s creativity and acumen, or primarily the product of the problem situation’s structure and demands? (This is one of the key questions that has sparked my strong interest in the psychology of creativity.)

Rossman makes in interesting aside on this point …

Most of us have been taught to attribute the origin of an invention to a definite and known individual. The public loves to worship heroes in all walks of life and this is particularly true of inventors. Many of the popular stories of inventions appeal very greatly to the imagination. The biographers of the famous inventors have been chiefly responsible for stressing the genius of their inventors as the sole cause of their inventions. This is the heroic theory of invention which asserts “that without the one man whose life they are chronicling, a particular invention could not, or would not readily have been forthcoming.”

Joseph Rossman, The Psychology of the Inventor: A Study of the Patentee 134-35 (2d ed. 1931) (quoting R.C. Epstein, Industrial Invention: Heroic or Systematic?, 40 Q.J. Econ. 232 (1926)).

See also Rossman Excerpt #1, and #2, and #3, and #4, and #5.