If you have a four-year-old boy, you may have seen this already, but my son tagged me and convinced me of the importance of getting answers from everyone to these important questions. So, here are my responses to just a subset of the questionnaire I take verbally pretty much every day:
What’s your favorite kind of dinosaur? Therezinosaurus (a.k.a. “The Giant Claw”)
Over on the Make blog (disclosure: Make is a division of O’Reilly Media, the company that pays me, though not for this blog), Phillip Torrone’s causing quite a stir in the maker and publishing communities by questioning the originality of Klutz/Scholastic’s forthcoming book/kit Invasion of the Bristlebots, a project that features, without attribution, an invention previously described by Evil Mad Scientists Laboratories (using the same name) and posted to YouTube (inspiring numerous video responses) in late 2007:
I’ve been giving this issue a lot of thought since reading this revelation and I’ve even supplied two of the 89 (at the time of this writing) comments generated on the Make blog post:
On the Amazon product page, Klutz even acknowledges the “dedicated tinkerers [who] show off [on YouTube] motorized toothbrush heads that are pretty darned impressive.” Because they add “Researchers at Klutz Laboratories … have sacrificed countless toothbrushes to develop high-performance Bristlebots with more zip, wilder action, and a control that lets you adjust a Bot’s behavior,” it looks like they think the Bristlebot is such a well-known invention (a dubious, transparently disingenuous assumption) that they don’t need permission to improve upon it. Perhaps they even think it was an invention (meme?) that just sprang to life, without a real inventor to attribute (Windell and Lenore just being the ones who happened to make the best YouTube video)?
[My second comment addresses another reader's response to my previous comment]
Perhaps I was unclear, but I actually wasn’t suggesting it was an honest mistake. Based on Klutz’s YouTube video response and their own marketing description, they seem to know they owe the idea to a particular external source. Given that they only had the single inventors’ video to respond to (as far as I can tell, every other “bristlebot” video I’ve seen on YouTube points back to the original EMS clip) suggests that they knew this wasn’t some meme without a known creator to credit.
Even if the idea isn’t new, it seems pretty clear where Klutz picked up on it, so attribution (at the very least) seems appropriate.
Since I posted those comments, it became clear that I gave Klutz too much credit by even suggesting that their claim was based on not needing permission for a common invention. As it turns out, an official statement reveals that they’re actually “genuinely surprised by this reaction,” claiming that “the development of ‘Invasion of the Bristlebots’ by the Klutz creative team dates back to at least early 2007 and was developed internally like other Klutz products.” If I thought their previous claim was disingenuous, this one smells even worse. How can they draw attention to the number of YouTube videos featuring bristlebots, while at the same time trying to make us believe that they were developing this project independently, in secret, before the Evil Mad Scientists uploaded their first video and throughout the time the invention was becoming a video craze?
This whole question of owning an idea and when/how it’s appropriate for another party to profit from it brings to mind my own experience with an idea for a book I started noodling in late 2007. While working on Napkin Origami (a concept which itself owes a debt of inspiration to the success of Alison Jenkins’ The Lost Art of Towel Origami), I started to think about other publishing opportunities in the niche of origami using everyday, nontraditional materials.* This path led me to a fun web site that served as a book proposal for Toilegami: The Practical Bathroom Book. Whether the authors were serious about the proposal or just having a laugh, I was intrigued and wanted to sign the project immediately.
The trouble was, the site’s Contact Us page was dead (it still is) and the creators were impossible to track down. Google returned a few possible email addresses, though most were for the wrong people and rest were too old to be useful (I sent messages to all the addresses I could find). Eventually, I needed to admit defeat and move on. I wouldn’t be able to use these authors or their work for a book, but the germ of the idea remained. Though Toilegami and the specific text and designs associated with it were off limits, there was no reason I couldn’t do a book titled Toilet Paper Origami, with different authors and different creations (in which case, I’d likely still credit my inspiration).
Unfortunately, my pursuit of this particular title ended almost exactly one year ago, along with my employment at the publisher I was working for at the time (which coincided with the de facto end of that company). Imagine my surprise and frustration when I saw Toilet Paper Origami released in September by a different publisher. Of course, I was frustrated because someone else got to the book I wanted to do, not because I’d felt I’d been robbed (how could I have been, since I’d never announced any plans for a book like this?), This is simply an example of a good idea whose time was right, and another publisher seized on it while I was unable to.
Getting back to the issue that kicked off this post, the example of Toilet Paper Origami is different from Invasion of the Bristlebots because it capitalizes on a general idea, with a different implementation and a different name. If the publisher had used the name Toilegami, however, I’d be doing a little more than just raising my eyebrows and would likely express as much concern on behalf of the creators of that term as Phil has been for the Evil Mad Scientists (who coined the name “bristlebots”).
When I worked as a trade/craft editor, I participated in many pitch meetings that revolved around questions like, “How can we do something like [successful book]“? That’s just the way publishing (like most industries, I’d imagine) works. I’m reminded of the chapter title in Blake Snyder’s excellent guide to screen writing, Save the Cat!: “Give me the same thing… only different!” But the second half of that equation, only different!, is as important to remember as the first.
Sharing a common inspiration is not the same thing as capitalizing on the particularity of an idea that another creator has taken the time and thought to cultivate. Appropriating someone else’s developed market for an idea (as Klutz appears to have done by linking to Evil Mad Scientists’ “How to Make a BristleBot” video, which has had over two million views so far and spawned many inspired hobbyists to follow) is unfair to the original makers whose great idea is worth spreading in a way that acknowledges their work.
UPDATE: Pat Murphy, editor at Klutz, weighs in with a thoughtful response, which I’m still trying to digest. Everything in that post sounds right and true, but it doesn’t really mesh with the message that preceded it. I really want to believe it, but could editorial at Klutz really be so insulated (obviously, their marketing department is not) to keep them from seeing the community surrounding the invention on which they’re publishing? I know I’m jaded, and perhaps I’ve been too close to seeing how these sorts of decisions are made in trade/craft publishing, but I’m still left with a bad taste in my mouth.
I know I’m a little late to the game, but I finally got around to watching The Wire. Like most people who start watching it, I’ve become completely absorbed and managed to watch the entirety of Season 2 over a five-day business trip last month. I just started Season 3 recently and, unfortunately, I’m just not feeling it as much. Yesterday, I revealed this heresy in a quick update via Twitter and expected it to be the ultimate in flame bait, drawing out the faithful with a flurry of arguments as strong as the adoration exhibited when my friends and contacts pounced on my mention that I’d started watching not too long ago.
But the responses were much more tame and basically ranged from “Seasons 3 and 5 are the weakest of the lot” and “at the end of the season, you will be raving about it,” all the way to “give it a chance … out of all five, I think it’s a toss-up between Season 3 and Season 1 for best season.”
I posted a note to my Facebook profile to respond (who knew there was a character limit to comment boxes?) and after it elicited a number of comments I realized it was more content than I’d posted to my blog for awhile and that it also stimulated much more discussion than anything seen here recently. So, I figured it made sense to promote it and run it here. I hope you’ll forgive both the duplication and lack of polish.
[Warning to anyone who hasn't seen the series up through Season 3, Episode 3: the rest of the post contains mild, big-picture spoilers.]
My complaints aside, I have no intention of giving up The Wire three episodes into Season 3. As one friend suggested, even a “bad” episode of The Wire is better than almost anything else on television. But from Episode 1, I felt like I’d missed something. Both Season 1 and Season 2 began by assembling the team and establishing the target. And both ended by disbanding the team and pulling down everything from the bulletin board (leaving only The Greek up there at the end of Season 2). Season 3 begins with the team appearing to be back together and working on regular detective work, business as usual. How did they get to that point?
But more than the ramp up (which can be forgiven mainly because we probably don’t really need to see those details this time, as long as we understand the point of what they’re doing together), I’m disappointed in what seems like a lack of purpose driving Season 3. While Season 1 was all about Barksdale, and Season 2 was, ultimately, about The Greek, I don’t see a similar focus yet for this season.
Granted, I’m only three episodes into it now (I’m moving slower, now that I have to Netflix them, and there are only two episodes on many discs), but I seem to remember the other two seasons having a focus figured out by this point, or were at least showing signs of a plan.
Perhaps this will be Proposition Joe’s season, or maybe someone else’s turn, but without a real target (just one guy’s face up on that bulletin board right now, and we all know he’s not going to really be the target), I don’t see the raison d’etre yet.
If the writers have a plan, they’re keeping it very close to their chest so far, and I’d like at least a peak at a few of their cards, just to make sure there’s something there. Without an eventual One Thing to drive the show, these first few episodes have felt to me like, as Stringer might say, “too many 40-degree days” (warning: the following clip features explicit language to colorfully illustrate this metaphor):
It doesn’t help that they killed off the most sympathetic of the “bad guys” in Season 2 (though they seem to be grooming at least one new character to fill this role), but if the final season is really considered one of the weakest, that isn’t a good sign to me.
Still, I can’t get enough, so I’m off now to watch Season 3, Episode 4, and hoping for the return of spring weather …
I’ve been trying (without much success, obviously) to blog more, but I’m beginning to think I’m just much better at keeping my posts to 140 characters or fewer. That is, when I say “better,” I mean only “more reliable,” because I’m not inhibited by the perceived barrier of wit, creativity, or importance when posting to my Twitter account as I am when I stare a blank WordPress window. I use Twitter frequently to say very little (in terms of significance, not just character count), while I reserve my blog to say something a little more significant, the opportunity for which ends up presenting itself much less frequently.
Of course, if you ever check up on my status, the fact that I prioritize quantity over quality in short bites will not be news to you. Here’s a cloud of words you’re likely to see more often than not (as reported by Twitter Grader):
I’m really surprised that neither “snow” nor “driveway” make an appearance in that tedious list, but otherwise, it looks like a fairly accurate representation of what I say when I choose to update my status (via Twitter, but also routed to Facebook and fed to the sidebar of my blog). I rarely talk about work (though the word “work” did uncharacteristically manage to find its way into an update today), my personal life (beyond notifying the world that my child is sick, of course), or much else of real importance, which I guess is a shame when you consider that this seems to have become the primary source of information about my life for some people who are very close to me (I’ll admit I’m not great with the phone or correspondence in general either).
But then, though I ostensibly strive for significance here on my blog, do I ever really reach that audacious goal anyway? (That was a rhetorical question, so please don’t try to answer it.) I certainly don’t ever get too deep into my personal life (the ultimate in significance, by most of the standards I’ve used to evaluate things lately) over here. Is it because my family would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them? Probably not. Originally, I was a little worried about trolls, stalkers, and such getting a glimpse into the lives of the people who are important to me, but that really doesn’t worry me so much anymore. So what keeps me from opening up, especially when it would appear that I have very little to say about the Important Issues in the World?
Honestly, I have no idea. In fact, I’ve lost the thread of what this post was supposed to be about in the first place. It began as yet another excuse for why I don’t blog here more often and a redirect to my Twitter stream, but with so little going on over there, somehow it ended up in a meaningless rumination on the purpose and significance of my online presence, such that it is. Like public navel gazing and realizing I don’t even have a bellybutton of which to speak.
So, the question I never give thought to above the Twitter input box really should inform everything that goes on this blog. Beyond that, it’s worth actually stopping to consider every once in awhile, between keystrokes stolen between rushed moments during any given day. What am I doing?
Over on the Make blog (disclosure: Make is a division of O’Reilly Media, the company that pays me, though not for this blog), Phillip Torrone’s 
Unfortunately, my pursuit of this particular title ended almost exactly one year ago, along with my employment at the publisher I was working for at the time (which coincided with the de facto end of that company). Imagine my surprise and frustration when I saw 
belle 8:37 pm on February 20, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
this is probably the most intelligent response I have read so far to this tragedy. thanks for sharing your thoughts