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A man who invented VR goggles 50 years too soon (2016)

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Re: A man who invented VR goggles 50 years too soon (2016)

#101

Post by iancmceachern »

onion2k wrote: post #33
iancmceachern wrote: post #8

I have a story like this. My first job out of engineering school was working for Dr. Robert Jarvik, of artificial heart fame. He has a patent where there is a drawing of a person, on a treadmill, with cables tied to each joint. The idea is it's a virtual reality exercise setup. A Nintendo wii or kinect before sensors were any good. https://patents.google.com/patent/US5577981A/en?q=(exercise)...

This is the problem with the public understanding of patents - something superficially similar like "measuring someone doing exercise" is only a patent violation if the method used is the same as the patented invention. The Wii and Kinect use remote sensors based on video. Clearly that isn't the same idea as your former boss's patent.

Huh?

Re: A man who invented VR goggles 50 years too soon (2016)

#102

Post by DrBazza »

Anecdote - I remember as child in the UK, in the 1980s, there was a full sized lorry that toured, carrying a Harrier jump-jet VR set up. The graphics were wireframe, possibly 8 colour, I'm not sure, but I do remember the VR helmet. It was two small CRT TVs suspended from the roof by cables, and you sat in a chair that had to be adjusted so your head was in the helmet, not the other way around, because of the weight.

All that aside, the thing actually worked - you could turn your head and the display updated and you could fly around. Remarkable for the time.

Re: A man who invented VR goggles 50 years too soon (2016)

#103

Post by lupire »

jacobsimon wrote: post #99
moffkalast wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideas are a dime a dozen, anything that can be thought of eventually will be. It's no coincidence that new discoveries tend to get made by multiple people on different sides of the planet at roughly the same time once they have access to the same technological starting point to work from. Leibniz and Newton, Wright Brothers and Dumont, Bell Labs and Westinghouse, etc. This is why patents are harmful imo (without even…

I think patents are better overall for society as it encourages rapid disclosure of new ideas and applications, instead of people withholding information because they are worried of being copied after they go to market. As an aside, there are plenty of inventions that were developed or rediscovered long after they were technologically feasible. The whole Middle Ages occurred because we forgot how to do things they kn…

Record players aren't as useful without record carvers. Without electricity, recording and playing records is not easy or sounding good.

A player piano is a better example.

Antiquity probably had many inventions thta died out when the local village did. Life was expensive, and capital hard to come by. If a patron wasn't interested and aware, development stalls.

Re: A man who invented VR goggles 50 years too soon (2016)

#104

Post by moffkalast »

criley2 wrote: post #96
moffkalast wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideas are a dime a dozen, anything that can be thought of eventually will be. It's no coincidence that new discoveries tend to get made by multiple people on different sides of the planet at roughly the same time once they have access to the same technological starting point to work from. Leibniz and Newton, Wright Brothers and Dumont, Bell Labs and Westinghouse, etc. This is why patents are harmful imo (without even…

How do you reconcile a patentless world with things that require massive R&D budgets? Like it or not many industries require very complicated ideas that are extremely expensive and labor intensive to generate the idea. For example, new pharmaceuticals (of which there are very few being discovered) take over 10 years of R&D and cost multiple billions of dollars to whittle down ~10,000 candidates into a single governme…

Frankly, I don't think such projects should be left up to the private sector to develop. If we did space travel that way we'd make the first moon landing in 2038.

This sort of live saving research is the best contender for R&D by government grants, if it's a worthy cause it can be supported for a long time (like fusion is being), and when the solution is found it can be immediately shared and sold at cost for the benefit of everyone, not hoarded by one company and sold at a ridiculous price to people that are forced to buy it or die.

Re: A man who invented VR goggles 50 years too soon (2016)

#105

Post by tialaramex »

urbandw311er wrote: post #65
janoc wrote: post #62

The problem is that the guy didn't "invent" anything, more like had a farfetched idea and left all "the practical details" to others to work out. That's like saying that Meliès invented space travel - he too had the idea of flying to the Moon in a gun projectile ... It was only non-functioning mockup, at best, because the vacuum tube electronics of the era was simply incapable of producing a wireless device with thos…

That seems a little unfair to me. In many cases an original idea, regardless of ability to execute, is priceless. I agree that execution is everything in terms of winning, though.

No, ideas are worthless, anybody can come up an unlimited number of these ideas, if they were valuable you've got infinite value and that's ludicrous.

Several other things really are valuable, one thing that surprises people is that Advertising is actually valuable, if nobody knows you made this thing/ service/ whatever then they can't benefit from it. Now obviously there's a big gap between "Have you heard about bicycles? I was dubious at first but it was surprisingly easy to learn how to use it" and the pop-up insisting that maybe you've got Restless Leg Syndrome and should ask your doctor - but fundamentally advertising delivers some value for our society.

Re: A man who invented VR goggles 50 years too soon (2016)

#106

Post by moffkalast »

jacobsimon wrote: post #99
moffkalast wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideas are a dime a dozen, anything that can be thought of eventually will be. It's no coincidence that new discoveries tend to get made by multiple people on different sides of the planet at roughly the same time once they have access to the same technological starting point to work from. Leibniz and Newton, Wright Brothers and Dumont, Bell Labs and Westinghouse, etc. This is why patents are harmful imo (without even…

I think patents are better overall for society as it encourages rapid disclosure of new ideas and applications, instead of people withholding information because they are worried of being copied after they go to market. As an aside, there are plenty of inventions that were developed or rediscovered long after they were technologically feasible. The whole Middle Ages occurred because we forgot how to do things they kn…

I think the disclosure part used to be more important in the past when progress was slow, but today the twenty years given in return is an eternity to block other development for, as technology just keeps compounding on itself. FDM 3D printers which are arguably an indispensable tool for all kinds of research were blocked this way from 1988 to 2008. Maybe Stratasys would've hoarded the design and kept it secret until they could perfect it, maybe the processing power wasn't there yet... or maybe we could've had low cost 3D printers in the fucking 90s and actual flying cars or something by now with how much progress that would've enabled. But I digress...

Re: A man who invented VR goggles 50 years too soon (2016)

#107

Post by oh_sigh »

tialaramex wrote: post #105
urbandw311er wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems a little unfair to me. In many cases an original idea, regardless of ability to execute, is priceless. I agree that execution is everything in terms of winning, though.

No, ideas are worthless, anybody can come up an unlimited number of these ideas, if they were valuable you've got infinite value and that's ludicrous. Several other things really are valuable, one thing that surprises people is that Advertising is actually valuable, if nobody knows you made this thing/ service/ whatever then they can't benefit from it. Now obviously there's a big gap between "Have you heard about bic…

Just because you can come up with an unlimited number of ideas, does not imply that all ideas are of the same value. I can think of an unlimited number of numbers with > 10,000 digits, but almost certainly, none that I think of will be special(lets say, prime). But, those special numbers (or ideas) are out there, lurking.

I think your line of thinking discounts how absolutely novel and groundbreaking even the idea was. It's an example of someone seeing something about reality that basically the rest of the population of the world managed to miss. I think that's pretty special - even if there was no realistic plan to implement the idea.

Re: A man who invented VR goggles 50 years too soon (2016)

#108

Post by jmull »

tialaramex wrote: post #105
urbandw311er wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems a little unfair to me. In many cases an original idea, regardless of ability to execute, is priceless. I agree that execution is everything in terms of winning, though.

No, ideas are worthless, anybody can come up an unlimited number of these ideas, if they were valuable you've got infinite value and that's ludicrous. Several other things really are valuable, one thing that surprises people is that Advertising is actually valuable, if nobody knows you made this thing/ service/ whatever then they can't benefit from it. Now obviously there's a big gap between "Have you heard about bic…

> No, ideas are worthless, anybody can come up an unlimited number of these ideas

If you're trying to create a commercial device, the idea is such tiny part of what it takes to deliver a successful product that it is close to worthless on its own.

But the context here is science fiction, where good ideas are a major part of it. (The other major parts are good characters and storytelling, but it's the ideas that distinguish science fiction from other kinds of fiction.)

So give the guy his due.

He looked ahead and tried to envision where technology was going, and, in this case anyway, pretty much nailed it 50 years out.

Re: A man who invented VR goggles 50 years too soon (2016)

#109

Post by jacobsimon »

moffkalast wrote: post #104
criley2 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you reconcile a patentless world with things that require massive R&D budgets? Like it or not many industries require very complicated ideas that are extremely expensive and labor intensive to generate the idea. For example, new pharmaceuticals (of which there are very few being discovered) take over 10 years of R&D and cost multiple billions of dollars to whittle down ~10,000 candidates into a single governme…

Frankly, I don't think such projects should be left up to the private sector to develop. If we did space travel that way we'd make the first moon landing in 2038. This sort of live saving research is the best contender for R&D by government grants, if it's a worthy cause it can be supported for a long time (like fusion is being), and when the solution is found it can be immediately shared and sold at cost for the ben…

It’s a funny comment because I think you could also argue that the government misappropriated a huge amount of public money to put a man on the moon in the 1960s, when it should have invested that into medical research or better transportation infrastructure in America. The fact that the private sector hasn’t developed moon travel yet is a sign that it’s just not that important to most people, not a lack of productivity.

Re: A man who invented VR goggles 50 years too soon (2016)

#110

Post by jacobsimon »

lupire wrote: post #103
jacobsimon wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think patents are better overall for society as it encourages rapid disclosure of new ideas and applications, instead of people withholding information because they are worried of being copied after they go to market. As an aside, there are plenty of inventions that were developed or rediscovered long after they were technologically feasible. The whole Middle Ages occurred because we forgot how to do things they kn…

Record players aren't as useful without record carvers. Without electricity, recording and playing records is not easy or sounding good. A player piano is a better example. Antiquity probably had many inventions thta died out when the local village did. Life was expensive, and capital hard to come by. If a patron wasn't interested and aware, development stalls.

Yeah true, but a player piano requires inventing the piano ;)

It’s definitely possible to make a recording without electricity, it just requires steady source of rotation for engraving, so maybe a spring or motor was a necessary precursor to make it useful.

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