Some would say about certain issues that the means do not justify the ends. Well more often the ends do not justify the means. For instance if you are trying to accomplish something and know that if you do use the most approved PC methods then you cannot get to the desired results, but use those methods anyway as to not appear to offend anyone, then in the end you offend everyone by wasting their time and by failure of the project. What we must do is to protect original thoughts and not suppress them and allow them to enter the public domain for the common good without denying the producer of the thought their benefits. The first problem we encounter in this regard is the PTO Patent and Trademark office; a giant monstrosity of biblical bureaucratic proportions. If someone has an idea or many ideas and cannot easily register them without undue hardship and cost, then that individual is likely to never bother to continue to have original thoughts and we all lose as a country because of it. Concept patents are outrageously expensive, take years to get approved and you for the most part need to hire an attorney to do them. All this costs money and causes a lessoning of thinking or flow of thought to the common good of mankind. One discovery in one industry will surely lead to several more in others. We need to allow for the flow of thought and not stifle the speed of that flow through a bureaucratic process. The PTO is expanding in Washington and will move into a new 600 million dollar campus, but really it needs to be a huge computer system. If you create artificial barriers to thought then thought stops flowing. |
