When Bill Gates launched Windows 95, the interactive GUI
(graphical user interface) was praised as one of its top innovations. However, Triumph
of the Nerds (Part three) shows not only how Bill Gates got the GUI idea
from Steve Jobs but also how Steve Jobs was introduced to the GUI by a team of
Xerox researchers in Menlo Park, CA. So, who really deserves the credit for the
development of the GUI? I think that neither Bill Gates, nor Steve Jobs or even the Xerox researchers can fully claim credit for inventing the GUI. The
truth is that someone somewhere introduced that group of Xerox researchers to
computing ideas that helped them think of the GUI, and if we follow this chain
of ideas back in history far enough we’ll find that neither Archimedes nor
Plato deserve full credit for their inventions and philosophies. It seems to me
that a true inventor is not someone who makes creative ideas materialize out of
thin air, but rather someone who can “connect the dots,” combining existing
ideas in a useful way that has not yet been considered.
I'm not sure if my previous comment was posted or not. Here it goes again:
ReplyDeleteAgreed. It's easy to get caught up in the chain of ideas and try to figure out who thought of something first. But does it even matter? And how would we know who first thought of an idea anyway? For the most part, I believe the credit should belong to the person who proves an idea, who brings it to fruition. Often that involves tying together many separate, existing ideas into a new form. In my mind, it's hard to see that as stealing or even copying. Sure, there are cases when an idea or product is exploited by someone else, but in the general case, I agree that it's less about who originated a thought and more about who was able to do something with it.
I think they can claim "credit", with a patent. With patents, it doesn't prove that they got the idea first, just that they filed for the patent for that idea first. Steve Jobs sued Microsoft, but lost, so Microsoft got to use his idea. As far as I know, he didn't have a patent.
ReplyDeleteGood point, Lexi!
ReplyDeleteI like to think ideas are cheap, and the thing that actually counts is the implementation. For example, Facebook didn't own the idea of an online social network, MySpace was already running at full steam. But look at Facebook now. Though the XEROX parc guys came up with a lot of a great things, their implementation (and in this case I mean execution) failed. So the origin of the idea doesn't matter, it's how you use it that does.
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