by Colin Hyde
Can anyone tell me if it is true that Mr. S. Barrow is batting for an “I told you so” award for outing GoB’s love for Portico, and that L. Ashcroft has put his name up for the “Manatee hero” award? What the hell is happening here? That’s L. Ashcroft’s award that S. Barrow is after, and L. Ashcroft, Braa, all the while, as speeding boats were making chum out of manatees, your crowd didn’t much notice. Why? I bet because you were too busy beating down stevedores.
Belize needs Andre Gray
Few, if any, Belizeans have spoken about the digital world the way Andre Gray has. If it was all about talk, knowledge of the subject, the man passed with flying colors, A-plus all the way. The answer to whether or not the man was THE inventor of certain inventions he claimed isn’t set in stone.
When I came off the sea and out of the bush and started writing, I reengaged with books that didn’t pertain to my line of work. I had read Thomas Hardy as a boy (I was forced to in school), but in my new world I read him just for joy. They can say what they want about Hardy. I like his books. The most famous English writer is Mr. William Shakespeare. I read a couple of his plays in high school; I was forced to. Okay, I couldn’t fake membership in the literati.
In my new world I read about the culture of that celebrated set, in a discussion about the life of G. K. Chesterton. I read somewhere that five writers collaborated on the massive works of Mr. Shakespeare, and I didn’t see anything sacrilegious or surprising there. My, almost the entire Shakespeare congregation, his worshippers, get bex if you tell them fu get the sense.
We were taught a number of things that aren’t 100% true. They taught us that Columbus discovered the Americas, and we continued believing that, ehm, until Burning Spear exposed the lie.
Legal expert and mechanical engineer, Jeff Williams lists the light bulb, the theory of relativity, the telephone, penicillin, and the telescope as 5 ideas that were stolen. Williams said that a number of people were working on the light bulb, and historians say one Heinrich Goebel was the first to produce artificial light, in 1854. The gentleman tried to sell the idea to Thomas Edison, who refused “but later bought Goebel’s patent for the light bulb after his death.”
We’ve heard the story that Einstein’s first wife was as accomplished a physicist as he was, but when it comes to the theory of relativity, Williams said a Mr. Henri Poincare was the expert in that field, that that gentleman had actually published “30 books and more than 500 essays on the theory of relativity before Einstein ever came along.” Aha, his idea wasn’t protected, and Einstein swooped in and put his stamp on it.
Williams said an Italian, Antonio Meucci, invented the teletrofono in 1860, but he failed to renew his patent, and Johnny on the spot, Alexander Graham Bell, snatched it; penicillin, which was “discovered” by Alexander Fleming in 1928, was actually used by tribes in North Africa for thousands of years, and in 1897 it was used by Ernest Duchesne to cure typhoid in guinea pigs; and Dutchman Hans Lippershey invented the telescope in 1608, but his application for a patent was denied—”for no clear reason.” Later, Galileo and his crowd stepped up and wala, he’s da spy for all time.
Okay, Williams has his shingle for all this sleuthing. You need a lawyer to get your patent done properly. I can’t go on without taking out some frustration on these philistines. We know if we live long enough that people in the medical field will take everything we have. But how the heck did these sometimes-lowlife lawyers get so much of the people’s riches?!
Stephen Key, in a piece he contributed to Forbes magazine titled, “Why Patents Don’t Stop People From Stealing Your Invention”, said he had multiple utility patents on an invention and he had licensed the technology, but “none of that mattered when one of the largest toy companies in the world decided to work around me. I had signed a non-disclosure agreement with this company and supplied handmade samples. But my product was priced too high, prompting them to reverse-engineer it—which, truth be told, is fair game.” Key said fighting for your rights in court is too expensive for average people.
Love Money at lovemoney.com says we wouldn’t “believe how many of the world’s most important and money-making inventions are based on ripped-off ideas … from the popular board game Monopoly to the simple light bulb.” Love Money says it was revealed in 2016 that a “slave” called Nathan “Nearest” Green is the man who is the master distiller of the world famous Jack Daniel’s whiskey. Love Money says that for 150 years the formula and process were attributed to the Reverend Daniel Call, a “white Lutheran minister from Lynchburg.”
G.W. Schulz at the website wired.com says government secrecy (US government) has stifled more than 5,000 inventions. He said if the US government thinks your idea a security risk it would get shelved. I bet the inventors who take the brunt of the lick are the small ones. You can envision the maze one would have to go through to get compensation for their work. You can bet there’s skullduggery—inventors getting their idea shared with others who rework them and come up with something “new.”
The Europeans could have labeled Edison and Graham Bell as imposters, and Einstein a fraud. They chose to make Shakespeare the greatest, while submerging all the other talents that contributed, collaborated on the volumes. I will close this paragraph with this point. Capitalism is a star system. They make stars. We tear them down. True, we must sift the wheat from the chaff. But we shouldn’t be so eager to bare our fangs.
Is Gray an inventor, or was he about ripping off people’s inventions? What we’ve got is the man’s word, and the words he spoke that show that he knows what he is about. When Gray was harassed, he threatened to sue. That he hasn’t doesn’t mean he isn’t on firm ground. It’s a grey world out there.
Whoa there, before getting on I just remembered that I too am an, ehm, inventor. Once I camped on a cay alone, and when night came I wanted to read, but I didn’t want to run a gas lamp or fire up a generator for an electric light. I told my US sister-in-law that if I was mechanical I’d make a battery light that illuminated my page so I could read until I fell asleep. The next holiday she came she brought one for me, almost exactly what I told her I would have designed.
I’m thinking about this bold new world and the value Mr. Gray has for Belize. You see the news where the Europeans are stepping up their game in a big way to deal with artificial intelligence. A Yahoo news story, “Europe sounds the alarm on ChatGPT”, by Melissa Rossi, says regulators and law enforcement agencies in Europe, alarmed by “the growing risks posed by generative artificial intelligence (AI) platforms like ChatGPT, are looking for ways to slow humanity’s headlong rush into the digital future.” Rossi said “the potential hazards of chatbots, and AI in general, prompted the Future of Life Institute, a think tank focused on technology, to publish an open letter last month calling for a temporary halt to AI development.”
Whoa there, you know someone better to talk about chatbots and this AI business than Andre Gray? His story is about exposure and investment. He not only had the creative talent, he landed in a world that was fertile for his exploration. So, there are those out there who say he is not THE inventor. Sure, he might have his share of mischief. As I’ve noted before, you have to be a little not too sober to play around seriously in a world like that.
GoB can’t afford to be ignorant here. If we will survive, and thrive, we need to utilize every resource we have. It’s a serious world we inhabit, and if Gray isn’t exactly the one with all the inventions, he for sure knows the business. I tell you, listening to him talk, nobody in our world talks about that subject like that. Many of our young people are dabbling in that exciting new world. A brilliant lady told me she so wanted her creative grandson to meet him. Gray should visit all the schools. Belize needs that guy.