Omar Metwally, MD University of California, San Francisco
“No,” said the priest, “you don’t need to accept everything as true, you only have to accept it as necessary.” “Depressing view,” said K. “The lie made into the rule of the world.” – The Trial (Franz Kafka)
Goal
Plot
The Cast:
Roy Bender: Australian-American physician who invented Roy’s Retractable Needle in 1990. His patents in Australia, America, and Germany brought him great success and have since expired.
Ernesto Bernal: Ernesto is an altruistic Mexican inventor whose outrage at the cost of American “Epi Pens” (life-saving medical devices used to treat potentially fatal allergic reactions by delivering epinephrine into the thigh muscles) inspired him to invent Ernie’s Excellent Pen. Ernie’s Excellent Pen uses the technology behind Roy’s Rectractable Needle to make this life-saving medication more affordable for patients.
Dr. Xu: Chinese scientist looking for a way out of a dead-end postdoc. He spends a lot of time trolling websites like reddit in between experiments.
Dr. Chang: Chinese scientist who invented China Pen in 2005, her own version of the epi pen. Dr. Chang, a brilliant scientist without business aspirations, quickly forgot about her invention and moved on to other research projects. She and Dr. Xu were postdocs together and longtime friends.
Part I
Looking for inspiration for his next big invention to save him from a stagnant postdoc, Dr. Xu browses the blackswan network, a database of inventions and ideas, on a quiet afternoon in his lab. He likes the website because it’s like a nerdy version of reddit, a website that has occupied a lot of his time recently. While browsing blackswan he stumbles upon Ernie’s Excellent Pen (a medical device built using Roy’s Retractable Needle), which immediately reminds him of his old friend’s China Pen. He creates an “attribution” on the blockchain, an association between two devices/components, that looks like:
To a human, this attribution looks something like: [Appraiser's (Dr. Xu's) Ethereum address, Resource1* (Roy's Retractable Needle), Resource2* (Dr. Chang's China Pen), Timestamp, Transaction Handle] To a machine, this same attribution might look like: [0x6060604052341561000f576, Qmt3z9320ba, Qz429ccr082, 1508029285, 0xc6a493eb108266c548906c8b]
This attribution allows others to see that Roy’s Retractable Needle and the China Pen are related to one another. Others can “upvote” this association as a useful one and create their own associations (so that Dr. Xu can learn about related inventions which he wouldn’t have otherwise encounter). For someone on the hunt for the next big idea, this is a great way to find inspiration and learn about what others are building. All community members can vote on how useful an attribution is and can create their own attributions.
*As a side note, resources are named something like Qmt3z9320ba , and these names also function as locations (addresses) of files with detailed information about each invention, including schematic drawings and textual descriptions. If any of the files to which these addresses point are modified, the entire address changes — one way to make sure each timestamp accurately reflects the information with which it’s associated.
Part II
Larry owns a hip cafe in Tel Aviv and has invented many gadgets on his quest to brew the perfect cup of coffee. As he sips on a cup of coffee and browses the blackswan network, inspiration strikes, and he has a new idea for a modified French press that could be built using the spring-loaded mechanism underlying Roy’s Retractable Needle. Larry draws up some sketches and a description of how his Better Coffee Press would work and confidently uploads the information to the blackswan network. He doesn’t need to worry about someone else claiming ownership of his ideas because there’s a timestamped record of this information on the blackswan network.
Part III
The owner of Oakland Standard, a manufacturer in Oakland, California, discovers Larry’s sketches a week later and calls him in his cafe. He loves the idea, he tells Larry, and wants to bring his product (Better Coffee Press) to the U.S. market. One of Oakland Standard’s designers suggests using a slightly modified component from Ernie’s Excellent Pen (Larry’s never heard of Ernie or his epi pen, but he likes Oakland Standard’s suggestion). Larry seals the deal with Oakland Standard.
Oakland Standard eventually takes the product to market, and it’s a hit among hipsters and coffee connoisseurs across the U.S.. After Oakland Standard (and Larry) make their millions, the design for Better Coffee Press appears on the blackswan network around the same time that the patent is published and viewable on Google Patents and the US Patent and Trademark Office website:
Type: device Name: Better Coffee Press Function: hand-operated coffee brewing device Content-addressed hash: Qbb4a27e6783 Author1: Larry Bucks Timestamp: 1601036650 Classifier1: Food and Beverage Classifier2: Brewing System
Part IV
Dr. Xu is having another rough day in his lab. He heard about the Better Coffee Press on reddit and bought one so he can brew coffee in between experiments. As soon as his coffee press arrives in the mail, Dr. Xu brews his first cup of coffee, sets his laptop on his lab bench, and pulls up a stool. Sipping an extraordinarily delicious cup of coffee, he admires the technical genius of this new coffee press and begins dismantling the gadget. As he takes apart the coffee press, he records the following attributions (logical associations between the coffee press and its underlying components) on his quest for inspiration for his own inventions:
Human version: [Appraiser's (Dr. Xu's) Ethereum address, Resource1 (Roy's Retractable Needle), Resource2 (Larry's Better Coffee Press), Timestamp, Transaction Handle] Machine version: [0x6060604052341561000f576, Qmt3z9320ba, Qbb4a27e6783, 1508029285, 0xa8e493eb108266c548906331]
[Appraiser's (Dr. Xu's) Ethereum address, Resource1 (Ernie’s Excellent Pen), Resource2 (Larry's Better Coffee Press), Timestamp, Transaction Handle]
[0x6060604052341561000f576, Qz429ccr082, Qbb4a27e6783, 1508029285, 0xd8a493eb106206a448906257]
Part V
Oakland Standard sells tens of millions of dollars worth of the Better Coffee Press, and Larry makes a fortune in licensing fees. Meanwhile, Roy, Ernie, and Dr. Chang have also made millions — in tokens.
Whenever blackswan community members like Dr. Xu appraise information by creating and voting on the quality of attributions, inventors like Roy, Ernie, and Dr. Chang receive tokens on the blackswan network.
But why would anyone care about earning tokens when they could earn real money like Larry and Oakland Standard? Aren’t these tokens just monopoly money? Larry and Oakland Standard earned their wealth by operating within the intellectual property systems of each respective country where they manufactured and sold the Better Coffee Press. They had the financial resources to pay intellectual property attorneys tens of millions of dollars in fees to draft and review contracts, and even more to enforce their patents by taking infringers to court.
But what about all the smart people out there who don’t have the same access to intellectual property attorneys and millions of dollars in investment capital?
Larry may be a clever capitalist, but he also sees the value of the novel economy emerging around the blackswan network. As he sips on a cup of coffee, Larry is already planning his next big venture. He announces on his cafe’s website that he’s on a quest to build an even better coffee brewing system and drafts an Ethereum contract that will award $5 million to all the tinkerers out there who make the most meaningful intellectual contributions to his future invention. Larry types up his Ethereum contract, buys $5 million worth of Ether, and sends these funds to be held in digital escrow. He then creates this entry for his future invention on the blackswan network, which he calls Best Coffee Press:
Type: device Name: Best Coffee Press Function: hand-operated coffee brewing device that keeps coffee warm and serves up to 6 people Content-addressed hash: Qzt7w201e55j Author1: Larry Bucks Timestamp: 1720015640 Classifier1: Food and Beverage Classifier2: Brewing System
Part VI
One year and many blockchain transactions later, new records of device components and devices have been created on the blackswan network, new attributions have been made, and millions of makers have earned tokens for their contributions. Larry has also amassed a personal fortune as a result of his second contract with Oakland Standard to manufacture and sell his latest invention, Best Coffee Press.
Larry’s smart contract then distributes the $5 million that have been held in escrow for the past year to 280 inventors on the blackswan network whose work has contributed to the creation and success of Best Coffee Press. Rather than dividing $5 million equally among 280 people (each receiving $17,857.14), Larry wrote his contract to reward inventors proportionally to their contributions; the more frequently a device or component appears in the blockchain in the form of attributions (as they relate to Best Coffee Press), the greater those inventors’ piece of the $5 million pie.
While making his own personal fortune (and bringing wealth to Oakland Standard, teams of attorneys, factory workers, and international governments), Larry also brought wealth to 280 inventors who would not have otherwise contributed to or benefitted from Larry’s success he had operated solely under existing systems of information disclosure, such as the US Patent and Trademark Office. Through his foresight in adopting the blackswan network, Larry was able to create his Best Coffee Press in half the time it took to create his less innovative (and less successful) Better Coffee Press.
One of Larry’s childhood friends, now a famous Professor of Medicine, read a newspaper article about Larry and came to visit his old friend in his cafe.
Larry greeted his old friend with a warm hug and insisted on brewing the best cup of coffee for him using his latest invention. As they enjoyed what Prof. Grossman admitted was truly the best cup of coffee he had ever tasted and watched people hurrying beyond the cafe’s windows, Prof. Grossman began, “I’ve heard of billionaires who’ve made fortunes building monopolies…but a billionaire who’s made fortunes by dismantling monopolies?”
Larry’s face wrinkled with laughter. “Most people think that wealth can be made only at others’ expense,” he answered. “The secret is, the more you give, the more you get. And here I’ve found a way to do just that.”
Minimally invasive software 