Stardom of reinventing

How strange this might sound to one’s ears, the truth remains that the world we live in has become perplexed and competitive. Masses have become impatient and appreciative of only the finished goods and products. The irony is that no one remembers or cares about the poor guy who came up with the idea in the first place. In the end, it’s all about perfecting the final product. So what is the image that comes to your mind when you read the word ‘inventor’? Let me tell you what I think of an inventor; a petite skinny nerd wearing glasses, messy hair dressed up in a lab coat, playing with a computer or some gadget. As sad as this picture might sound, it’s the hard-line truth.
Interestingly enough, this hasn’t always been the case for there have been times when inventors too were in the limelight and mattered. They were revered and regarded as towering, romantic figure geniuses such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Alexander Bell or Thomas Edison. But sadly, with the passage of time dynamics have changed and it seems like the inventors have lost their aura. If you ask me how this all happened and how the inventors lost their charm, then I’d blame the modern day marketers who with their linguistic charm and skills to market and present an idea, stole the show; analogous to someone stealing a candy from a baby. The most recent and significant example that comes to my mind is that of Steve Jobs and I do not mean to discredit or take anything away from him. He was a true genius in every way who went on to revolutionise at least four different industries. Jobs had a natural gift which was to perfect other people’s inventions; he would optimise them and had the nag to buff and polish other people’s ideas in such a manner that they would turn into gold mines and simply irresistible commodities. In a way you could say that Steve was sort of a con artist or a remix artist. Take for instance the case of the spectacular graphical user interface of the Machintosh computer; the idea which Jobs very conveniently borrowed from Xerox PARC.
Have you ever thought about or wondered who in the world invented the first digital music player or for that matter, the smart phone? I don’t know and I am sure you don’t either. These people never saw any fame come their way or were never on the cover page of Forbes or Time magazine. But we all know who came up with the iPad and the iPhone, just because he has been on the cover page over a dozen times. I mean, Jobs was a true visionary and when he looked at a smart phone, he saw a better smart phone. To be a visionary, you have to be different and think out of the box. A creative thinker is someone who would use electricity to put out fires rather than start them, who would look at an ordinary light bulb and see a wireless data transmitter that could replace Wi-Fi? These aren’t ordinary thoughts; they’re not even different, rather they’re downright weird. Jobs had the talent to seek out and see through things what they were actually supposed to do. Take for instance, the digital music player – In 1979, a British engineer named Kane Krammer demonstrated the IXI, a digital audio player. He wasn’t able to turn it into a commercial product, but Apple has acknowledged the importance of Kramer’s work and came up with iPod.
The world we live in today is such that it has given a downright cheap outlook to the inventors. They have become a necessary evil, but let’s not even for a second forget how crucial they are to the world and how much we need them. A lot of things we see around us aren’t pretty and a rough draft of the future is waiting for someone, like Jobs to handpick them and refine them into something that will change the world.

The writer is Texas A&M University graduate who is currently employed with Telenor in the Products – Commercial Division. He can be reached at [email protected]