Imagining crowd-sourced problem-solving
I had a dream last night that I was playing in a celebrity golf tournament, and I hit a hole-in-one with my Dad in my foursome. I’ve never had this dream before, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a top-ten midnight movie for golfers everywhere. Pretty standard dream fodder—make your Dad proud of you at the game he enjoys the most. I loved the accolades from both my Dad and the crowd. Then the dream sliced into the rough.
Since we were at a high-profile, televised event, my par 3 shot was recorded by CBS with a camera in the ball. No need to get hung up on technical issues with a golf ball-sourced video; we all know the day is coming. The troubling part of my dream was the fact that the ball’s memory of the experience was recorded and owned by a third party. It was surely going to be more interesting than my verbal version, even with swooping hand motions added in for effect.
An accomplishment that by every measure should be joyous was derailed because I feared someone else would own my moment—the asset of my accomplishment. Why couldn’t I download my thoughts? I need a magic wand and pensieve to convert this memory to an NFT so I can monetize it. The dream faded away at this point with no solution, but prompted me to consider the question:
Where’s the ownership line between my thoughts and the public domain?
Google law (not a thing…yet) tells us that when the use is commercial, you have the right to publicity, which is the right to control the commercial exploitation of your name, image, or persona. But when the use for news, information, or public interest purposes it is not a violation. To address the more specific question of thought ownership, the law provides some protection in the form of copyrights and patents if you actively pursue these protections.
The strongest protection is just to keep our thoughts to ourselves, so they are protected without question, but what good are they then? If they are bad thoughts, they protect us and others. If they are good, productive thoughts they are worthless to the outside world until shared. Disclosing your thoughts to others can come with a high degree of risk if you’re looking to commercialize your idea someday but an idea that could make the world a better place is worth the risk. Ideas feed on passion so let your idea grow and develop by sharing it with others and getting their perspective. It’s those questions and comments that will generate the most accurate view of the idea’s capability. Don’t worry that someone else is going to run off with your idea, it’s your passion for an idea that maintains your ownership.
To illustrate my point, I’m going to put an idea out there to see where it takes us. I’ll report back on the comments and discussions at the end of this article. My idea to crowdsource problem-solving:
I’ve found YouTube to be a great resource for problem-solving common issues with the car, plumbing, electrical, etc. Most of the help comes from a gaining bit of knowledge or learning a new skill. The combination of an effective search engine along with ratings to filter the best content combines to give a decent chance of finding a solution within the first few videos and 5-30 minutes of my time. The ROI on time and money is high and it also provides confidence which reduces frustration. It’s a good problem-solving system, but it’s still sub-optimal and has a relatively narrow breadth of problems. To support their efforts, creators may be compensated for popular videos, but that value is more likely to be related to production value and marketing expertise than the value to the user.
How many times is the wheel reinvented every day? What if problems and solutions were provided in a decentralized way so they could be processed to find the best solution and compensate the source based on the value of their contribution? Imagine a smart version of a knowledge base. Of course, artificial intelligence would be needed to make the system practical for low-cost or low-occurrence problems. I’m sure there a similar big data algorithms working right now to search for threats or run response scenarios (see Palantir).
What I would like to see is an open-source version that works on the everyday problems of people and organizations so they can be more productive. Furthermore, if you work from the premise that a new idea is just a solution to a problem, you could use the system to replace the current patent system since it would encourage everyone to freely disclose their ideas because they would be confident of their compensation and idea protection.
Between now and the time someone steals my idea and puts it on a blockchain and powers it with a coin, don’t smother your ideas by holding them too tight.
Update (+5 min)
Since I joked that there would be a coin, I thought I should look. Of course, there is: IdeaChain (ICH). It’s not exactly my idea, but the core tracking concept and monetization approach are present. Since they started in 2020, it looks like I’m adding to their idea. There’s a whitepaper with a rudimentary plan and the blockchain contains a single patent.
Image by Golfer from Pixabay
