Keith Watanabe * NET 2.0

I've started on my research project at work and it's led me to find so many duplicate entries of ideas in the online business.  A lot of times, it gets really irritating to see a lot of duplicated work (okay, I've admitted to doing this myself, but only because I hated everything that currently exist).  If you can do something better, I don't mind.  But I dislike copying and not improving on the original or worse yet, putting out worse garbage (e.g. Vista).

So let me give all my billions of readers out there my little insight on how my wonderful ideas sprout from my tiny neuron in my skull:

I just look at things that annoy me and figure out how to not make them annoy me as much.

That's it!!!!!!!

That's all I ever do when it comes to creating ideas.

Okay, maybe there's a little more to this.

Often I apply a technological bent to my ideas.  Like my microwave idea or my online housing information idea.  But again, you have to figure out practical uses for situations that annoy you.  An idea often starts from me in figuring out how to make my life suck less because my life sucks BIG TIME.  I ask myself, how can I save 30 more seconds of my life by doing something more efficient?  Or perhaps, what can I apply differently to improve the efficiency of my life?  Am I repeating myself senselessly and can I automate that in some way?  Is my life completely disorganized and I need a better, more central way to force me to move into better habits?  How can I shortcut my route from having to go from A-B-C-D-E-F....Z to simply A directly to Z?

A lot of my ideas are partially derived via common sense.  The microwave idea, for instance, was partly based on common sense.  Well, the functionality of a microwave is universal, so why do the buttons need to be in different languages and why are instructions for heating in different languages?  There's no easy localization function on these devices, the way software, websites or even your iPod has a nice Japanese-to-English feature.

Common sense to me means more than wisdom (from a Dungeons and Dragons point of view).  It means patterns; commonly occurring behavioral patterns.  Repetition is often where I look the first.  Especially meaningless, meandering repetition.  My premise for this line of thinking is simple: we're on this world for a limited time.  So if we do this meaningless, meandering repetition, we're simply wasting our lives in Buddhist circles.  To break out of these cycles, we need for something (or someone at times) to handle the repetition for us or eliminate it completely.

Also, time wasting activities that annoy me for no good reason are other great candidates for places to invent.  Take airports for example.  Flying never has been fun but with America's wonderful Homeland Shitcurity and TSA (Totally Shit Administration), it's made the experience something akin to violent, prolonged flogging with a spoon.  Let's look at the inherent problems with this experience.  Long lines, inability to transport all necessary items, invasion of privacy, inability to trust workers, long flights, potential delays in flights, uncomfortable passivity for long periods (especially if you travel international between say LA and Japan), rude workers, etc.  If a person could suddenly just leap through all this like through a portal and seamlessly appear at the next stop without hassle that would be ideal.  How can we avoid all these factors that make flying an inexcusably excruciating event?

Well, firing everyone in those administrations and closing them down would help somewhat, but it doesn't solve all the existing problems.  We simply want to get to another place with all our stuff faster.  That's the problem and that's where you have to come up with a solution to resolve that.  Forget existing logistics, go for the ideal.  Look at the iPod and iPhone for instance.  If people saw this thing a decade ago, they'd laugh because it looks like a dream.  But that's part of invention is how to turn a dream or idea into a reality.

To me, also the fine of invention also means not doing trivial stuff.  Obviously, geeks love to have fun.  That's why we're geeks.  But good inventions are not trivial in my view.  They serve a clear purpose with the intent on improving the quality of life.  I often see trivial inventions that look more for amusement than holding any practical value.  Things that are not elegant and probably only exist to amuse the geeks.  Games are okay because they're strictly for entertainment purposes.  But you gotta differentiate when you invent.  I recall Pirates of Silicon Valley where Steve Jobs yells at his employees for clowning around. Sometimes, I see people doing this and I'd love to yell at these people in a similar manner.

The other thing is that you gotta kinda see how the average person can make use of something.  This is the practical application of an invention.  I sometimes think that people have trouble putting themselves in other people's shoes.  Inventors are often highly intelligent people with extreme egos.  That implies quite often that they are a mind of singularity and don't really recognize that other beings in this universe are not as intellectually qualified as themselves.  Unfortunately, by taking this viewpoint, they end up alienating themselves from normal people and might miss out on potentially creating useful applications.

I guess the good thing about myself is that I recognize that I'm not a genius or anything and see myself as just a normal person (okay at least in terms of what I want, not in how I do things).  So I can easily put myself in someone's shoes and appreciate what others might think.  That allows me to leverage my creative strengths and technical knowledge in providing practical application for people.  In other words, I think of the bottom line.

Anyway, hopefully some people who are typically uninspired but excel in technical ability can learn something from this blog and will create something to benefit people.