Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Unintentionally Stolen Ideas

I know I can’t be the only one that’s experienced unintentionally stolen ideas. It’s when you come up with an amazing, nigh-revolutionary idea and start basking in your own sense of self-satisfaction, maybe even bragging to your friends and family. You relish and possibly even broadcast this idea for some time… before realizing that this idea has already been implemented, in one form or another, by someone else who beat you to the punch. God. Damn it. You didn’t mean this. You didn’t intentionally plagiarize anything. Now you have to suffer the embarrassment, the burst bubbles of hope, and possibly the ridicule of your colleagues because of your unintentional intellectual theft.

There are two ways this could have happened. Case one is the “great minds think alike way,” in which you and the original proponent both independently and sincerely came up with the same idea. They simply put the idea into production before you had a chance to, possibly thousands of miles away, possibly decades ago. Case two is the subliminal inspiration. You see the idea, or maybe just a shade of the idea at some point in your life and consciously forget about it—but your subconscious holds onto it, and maybe even develops it. Days, months, years later… the idea spontaneously resurfaces, free from its association with the original discoverer. You think it’s yours, but in fact, it was spurred on by the image or demonstration you saw so long ago.

Neither is pleasant, and neither is worthy of blame. But it’s an embarrassing and frustrating experience for everybody who’s gone through it. My many times with this unpleasantness has taught me a paranoid sense of humility. If I have an idea I think is brilliant, I keep it to myself until I’m absolutely, positively sure that nobody else had put the idea into use.

What’s funny about it is no matter how far in advance somebody preceded you, when this happens, you can’t help but feel a sense of scorn for the original inventor. No matter how logically you look at it, you still can’t help the feeling that you were wronged, and it was your idea that was stolen.

12 comments:

  1. I've had that happen before.
    Damn my plagiaristic sub-conscious.

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  2. It's not so bad, seeing as how you managed to come up with somethig revolutionary yourself. Makes you a great mind, right?

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  3. as long as its not 100% The same idea as before, I think its possible.

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  4. As long as its not 100% The original idea, its probably okay to still use the idea as your own.

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  5. Actually, sometimes I feel like I'm stupid to just have come up with it if someone so long ago came up with it. And then I start philosophising (if that's a word) about how groundbreaking the idea must've been then, compared to now.

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  6. THIS HAPPENS TO ME ALL THE TIME!

    in fact, i think it just happened to me when i read your article.

    followed/morning coffee-d :)

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  7. That has happened to me before. Lol

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  8. Well, our own personality is defined by our experiences, so in a way we are not original, we are mixing ideas we have already seen, so no wonder all that we think it's partially copied.

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  9. Happesn to me all the time. Like yesterday when I was making myself a coffee and invented hot water, then found somebody has found hot water before me. Go figure.

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  10. there is always a way to make your idea happen and make it better than others. Exception being digg/reddit clones.
    Keep hustln! Best of luck!

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