Week 1 Blog 2: IEOR 190G

I like inventions. I respect creativity in a person over almost anything else. We all struggle with finding originality in our daily lives and even more so for a writer, a painter, or an engineering student with deadlines to meet for his design project. This is why the following quote is one of my favorite made by the U.S. patent commissioner in the year 1899,

"Everything that can be invented has been invented." - Charles Duell

I love this quote not because I have a similar thought everyday, but because of how history has proven him so wrong since the moment he made this statement. Most of humanity's best inventions, from airplanes to microprocessors, were introduced during the past century, and Duell would never have imagined the world we live today. When today's world is individually equipped with the latest ground-breaking technology in their pockets, and with the possibility of an even newer and faster smartphone being released the next day, let's face it: people want to make the most money out of it while they can. With a big fat label called patents.

Today's technology has been evolving at a rate even I have a hard time following anymore, and frankly, I've been scoffing at every latest development of the current Smartphone Patent War. I found full grown adults bickering about who gets the credit for rectangles with rounded corners simply hard to watch. I thought I would see better arguments between two six-year-olds over a toy. However, this is no ordinary child-play. It just so happens to be a billion dollar child-play. For this reason I've been intrigued by the idea of patents. How could some small design detail be worth thousands of dollars?

IEOR 190G is a course that will discuss wireless and mobile device patents, but instead of the legal aspects, I assume we will be focusing more on what engineers or inventors should know about these stacks of papers. I hope to take this class as a taking new perspective from being cooped up in the dungeons of Etcheverry worrying about what to build to taking a step back and seeing the value of what we engineers do and the overall picture of its effect on the rest of the world. I have plans of pursuing a future beyond engineering as well, so I hope this course will be a great eye-opening experience.