Have you ever heard of the electronic cheeseburger? How about the computerized toilet paper dispenser? I haven’t. I also haven’t heard of the automatic hairspray dispenser or self-powered trip guard. There are loads and loads of random technologies that will never ever go ANYWHERE (no offence to countless, inventors.)
I actually just made up those wonderful technology ideas…off the top of my head…Can you believe it? I am SUCH a genius. Okay, okay, please keep your comments to yourselves. I don’t actually think that these technologies will ever be sold by the hundreds in stores around the world or even sold for that matter. However, I have recently started writing down my ideas in a Moleskine. My thinking behind this is that perhaps I will one day become a successful inventor with amazing inventions that will revolutionize the world; my inspiration coming from the likes of Leonardo Da Vinci and his amazing epic notebooks. Unfortunately, every single idea I write down is probably poop and will never be sold or even thought of again.
On the website, Engadget.com they have a weeklyish section called crapgadget. It is both funny and depressing as one looks at some of the things that people think they can get away with selling in the consumer world. I almost feel bad for them. Do they not realize what they are trying to sell? Do they not realize what fools they are making of themselves? Yet, are they making fools of themselves? Who’s to say if they really are? Personally, I think they are sort-of-kind-of fools. Ok, yes, I think they are fools. I guess people do say that ignorance is bliss.
As lame as some of the inventions seem to be, I think that they are important. They serve a higher purpose in the ever-changing world of technology. You cannot achieve better technology ideas without the bad ones. Unsuccessful technology helps create the successful technology. It teaches you what to change, what to make better and what to change. Complaints about how terrible a product is can help recreate it into a product that doesn’t stink. They also stand as a foil for greater technologies. If there were no bad ideas, the good ones would be normal, blending in with the rest. We need the bad products to distinguish which ideas are truly great. Would you really appreciate Salvador Dali’s art if every artist were as good? No…in all honesty, I don’t think you would.
An electronic brain! An upright walking phone! The next best wonder-ideas? No, they are not, but I continue to write down my ludicrous ideas. Whether they are amazing or not is not really up to me. Maybe, in a while, I will look back and instantly want to register a patent on one of these ideas. Heck! Maybe I will have been too late and the likes of the Ipod will have been written down in my notebook. When I am an old man saying that I was the FIRST to invent the… (insert next big thing here), my grandchildren probably won’t believe me, but I will know that I had a good idea.
