Musings on law, tech, chess & other topics by a geek

Ezra Klein has a great piece up at the Washington Post on innovation Facebook: Where genius was 1% inspiration, 99% timeliness

Here is my favorite part:

Human beings are more comfortable thinking in terms of people than in terms of technology. And a movie about a socially inept genius is certainly more interesting than a film about conferences where programmers present advances in social network software. But the focus on people leads us to overinvest in the rewards for individual innovation and underinvest in the intellectual commons that make those innovations possible.

‎/
agree with Ezra Klein, we need more investment in the intellectual commons not in the rewards for innovation. Especially when the rewards, ie patents, prevent others from innovating.