Celebrity

I got a book several years ago about the life of Nikola Tesla, the great Serbian-American inventor of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I only just started reading it recently, and have found it to be quite excellent. Tesla was an extremely interesting fellow, revolutionizing the world with every thought.

Nikola Tesla invented AC electricity, which slowly replaced Thomas Edison's DC electricity systems world-wide. He was the first to convert water energy into power with hydroelectricity on a large scale, pulling power from Niagara Falls. He was also the first to figure out how to harness and deliver this immense amount of power, powering the cities of Buffalo, Albany, and New York City. He invented many components for and perfected the use and production of "wireless transmissions" - or the radio.

As I'm reading through, I'm struck by his celebrity. He was a regular subject of newspaper articles. Banquets were thrown for him when he completed a project. Tesla was a household name worldwide by the late 1800s, and he rubbed shoulders with the likes of Mark Twain, JP Morgan, John D Rockefeller, Lord Kelvin, the Vanderbilts, and George Westinghouse - the man to whom he sold many of his inventions. In Tesla's day, our nation celebrated ideas, literature, knowledge, and accomplishment in business.

And then I thought about celebrities today: Sarah Palin, Justin Bieber, Madonna, Kobe Bryant, Tom Hanks, Kim Kardashian, and Lindsay Lohan. Today, we celebrate voice, athletic ability, controversy, physical appearance, and the ability to pretend. We have parades for sports teams who won a few games in a row. We have TV show that follows around parents with eight children. We pay upwards of $10-15 to watch a movie for a couple hours.

How many famous inventors can you name from the last 20 years other than Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, or Steve Jobs? How many authors are mentioned in the media on a weekly - or even monthly - basis? How many physicists can you name? Even NASA is shrinking! What happened in the last hundred years to shift our focus and praise?

I'm not entirely sure, but I am certain that I don't like it.

The Fashion Industry is the Pinnacle of Capitalism

A non-violent anarchist co-worker of mine said something the other day that really got me thinking. In short, said that the fashion industry is the pinnacle of capitalism.

He was telling me how he believes that government is entirely unnecessary because there are always social (or legal) contracts that people can engage in to solve the same problems. Because I think of this as a bit of an extreme view, I started challenging him. What about national defense, for example? "Corporations and individuals can do the same thing more efficiently and cost-effectively," he said. We touched on taxes and their uses, and we eventually made it around to patents.

According to the US Patent and Trademark Office, a patent is

...an intellectual property right granted by the Government of the United States of America to an inventor “to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention throughout the United States or importing the invention into the United States” for a limited time in exchange for public disclosure of the invention when the patent is granted.

I believe that patents are generally granted for a 50-year term, allowing the inventor to hold a government-condoned monopoly on the product or industry. Naturally, this irks my camo pants-wearing co-worker. He said that this limits creativity of corporations and benefits to consumers. My capitalistic bones pushed back. "Doesn't it instead reward inventors and innovators by allowing them to reap the rewards of their hard work?" He said that it didn't, and to prove his point, he referenced the fashion industry.

I was a bit taken aback. "How does this camo pants-wearing computer programmer know anything about the fashion industry?" After I repented for judging him, I listened. The fashion industry, he told me, has virtually no patents. While, yes, product can be "reverse engineered" or copied, the big designers still make money. Lots of it. Plenty of people still like buying Chanel, Nike, Prada, Ralph Lauren, or Dolce & Gabanna. Their designs are copied or mimicked, quality is diluted, and these designs slowly make their way down the fashion chain to the common man (or woman) in places like Target, Sears, and Old Navy. The consumer is left with everything in between to choose from - nice and fancy to inexpensive and plain. This, he said, maximizes product variety, trend reach, and options for consumers. In the end, the best products will always win.

I was blown away. He certainly had a point! It got me thinking - what if the technology industry had no patents? I bet people would still buy Apple products just because it's Apple. I bet the vast majority of computers would continue to run on Windows. In his world, I would continue buying Apple products because they're really good and extremely user-friendly. But what else would be out there that doesn't and can't exist yet because of various patents that Apple has?

I certainly don't think that all government needs to go away, but I definitely think its reach has gone too far. How would our economy be affected by zero patents? How would innovation change? I'm not sure, but it's something I'm considering for the first time. What do you think?

As a final thought, The Devil Wears Prada had a really great scene about this very subject. Meryl Streep's character, Miranda Priestly, is admonishing Anne Hathaway's character, Andy Sachs, because of her choice of clothes and attitude toward the fashion industry. Check out monologuedb.com for the text.