====== Winners Rule ======

In the world we now live in, there are always winners. We seem to have a strange attitude about winners - they must be the smartest, the best, and they always make the correct choices. For myself, I can say that those who win often have none of these attributes and their successes only endure because other people stop considering alternatives. Let me provide an example.

Many years ago, there were all sorts of automobiles. Some ran on gasoline, but some also ran on other things, including electric batteries. You may find that odd, what with all the hoopla about electric cars now, but there have always been electric cars, they were just pushed out of the market a century ago and most folks forgot they even existed. The internal combustion engine was initially one of several ways to move automobiles, but you probably never hear about the other ways - as far as the modern person is concerned, there is no other way to move a wheeled vehicle except to use a internal combustion engine or some variation on it.

We have become so accustomed to how things are done that we can see no other way except for slight changes to the common design. No one even thinks about the hundreds of other ways, of which a handful were likely better. I guess a look at old patents could be revealing, but nobody is doing that (except for legal reasons). Our reality is shaped by these rather spontaneous and often spurious decisions. The car concept that we have now won, but we haven't a clue if it was the best choice because we cannot brook any other choices. Rather pompous of us.

Through the miracle of the World-Wide-Web (itself something that has taken over all other avenues of information that once existed, like hypertelnet or gopher), I have learned of a man named Nathan Stubblefield, who is a very interesting character who may have invented what we now call "radio", though he was never credited for it in the past. His "induction wireless telephone" seems to work along lines that we don't understand now, our minds now attuned to the concept of electricity and electromagnetic waves, as if these are the only two possibilities, but there could be more. Stubblefield seems to have tapped one of these other possibilities, but he could never make it economically viable for himself. He was found dead in his house with mirrored metal plates that were keeping the place warm, but nobody knows how he did that. This seems to be the trick: whoever is able to market and profit an idea gets to decide reality as if they were a God. Well, Nathan could never get his stuff marketed and his research and ideas died with him. Thus, the way things are remain the way things are.

If you want my advice, I will offer this: Don't make the mistake of thinking that we and the things we surround ourselves with are the best things so far. We likely have missed the best stuff and we are putting up with whatever has been monetized the fastest and keeps the powerful people in power. It has nothing to do with having the best product or the best idea.