English 102 - Week 2 discussion post

For my English 102 class we had to read the following article: http://www.gladwell.com/2008/2008_05_12_a_air.html

and comment on it. I was this weeks discussion leader, so i got to write the question for the group. 

The following is the question, followed by my own response. Please read the article first, it's a great read.

Subject: On Gladwell's "In The Air"

Firstly, I would just like to point out that I have never, honestly, I have not once before in my life been so powerfully moved and educated by a single document. 

Then, because I could write a 24 volume series of novels on the subjects prompted in the article, I would like to give you the question now, so that you wont have to read through potentially a hundred thousand words before you find the assignment.

So here it is: After thoroughly reading "In the Air", comment on how the idea of multiplicity, (that innovation is nothing unique), changes anything in regards to humanity's progress.

Subject: Re:On Gladwell's "In The Air"

In my opinion, knowing that it doesn't matter if I think of it or not whether something will be invented doesn't change my own quest for knowledge. It's still possible that I file the patent first. It's a race, and competition fuels ingenuity. There's even a reward associated with winning the race, which is all the more reason why an individual should not give up on pursuing his or her own inventions. I found it very interesting that this article said a whole lot with out really saying much of anything. Gladwell is a brilliant writer, I will say that flat out, but I think this article is a whole lot of not very much. What I mean is that he provides an enormous amount of support to prove a point that does not have nearly any significance. Sure, it's interesting, no doubt, but what changes? How does the fact that two or more people have the same idea at the same time versus an individual change how innovation and progress works? It really doesn't. I think that there is a much bigger and far more important point to this article: that while it may not matter who comes up with an idea, the speed at which ideas are developed increases dramatically when people collaborate. Think tanks are very powerful, this is nothing new. But beyond the scope of an individual idea, the entire progress of humanity could potentially be accelerated dramatically by cooperating even more than exists today. Then again, I am defeating my own argument by saying this. As the article made clear, I am not the first person to realize this, thus there are already, and have been for sometime, inventing conglomerates formed to specifically address the idea that collaboration is better than individual competition. If necessity is the mother of invention, than curiosity is the father. Is it depressing or hilarious that before I read this article i was bent on the idea of creating a research company that sold patents...I though I had a great idea...I guess i did, but so did many, many others. So what should I do with my life? What's the point in pursuing my dream when so many have already done it? Speed. I'm willing to bet that if I.V. and the think tanks of IBM, Intel, nVidia, and the likes got together one day we would have a quantum computer that works in two months rather than each of them inventing it separately in two years. By that notion we could have cloning it 5 years instead of 50, fusion in 10 years instead of 100, interplanetary colonies in our lives rather than our children's lives. Sure it make take 3 months to get to mars...so what? It used to take a month to get across the Atlantic not some 400 years ago. We as humanity won't be done learning until we know absolutely everything there is to know, and at that point, we will literally become god, able to control the whole of existence. So, the idea that eventually our universe will cease to exist doesn't startle me one bit, because I know that we will have figured out how to stop that from happening, or, we may just create a whole new universe, or several. We will stop cancer, we will clone humans, we will eventually extend our lifespans well past 200 years. We will colonize the entire universe until there is no more universe left and we will not stop there, we will continue to spread outward into infinity with absolutely no end. For that matter we may not be the first, and for that matter there may be no first. Who knows...well, no one at the moment...but eventually we will figure it out. Curiously the behavior of Human beings is very similar to that of a virus. Whether or not that says much of anything about us is debatable. - Info