When I was a kid my grandfather told me that one of our ancestors, a Castell related to the famous Faber-Castells, developed a system of measurement, but his idea was stolen and he was never credited. I remember in high school I was involved in a school contest called ‘Invent America’ where I invented a backpack on wheels. Not long after, backpacks on wheels started popping up in stores. I’m not saying that someone stole my idea, but I do wonder how much ideas get stolen from the most unexpected places.
When technology got to a point where people were able to pay with phones, my husband was asked to program for a man write code to create one of systems. We had to hire an attorney to go over the contract, and my husband worked under the agreement that if the company went big my husband would get stock. The guy ended up breaking the contract which at that time was under his company called Zapme. To get out of that contract he created a new company, AirPay, stealing my husband’s code! He was then featured on Wired magazine for the technology that my husband never got paid for. What’s even more sad and hypocritical is that he claims to be a Christian. Did he steal my husband’s code or did he use new tech that resembled the code my husband worked on, but never got credit for? He wasn’t a coder so…
I guess most of anything in science or technology that we know of today are ideas that may have been stolen from someone else. I believe it even happened to me when I was working as a lowly photographer for a seasonal job at Sharpshooters. In college I came up with a prototype using QR codes to catalog libraries. I didn’t invent QR codes, but I came up with a system on how it could be used. I noticed the inefficiency in Sharpshooter’s cataloging system and brought idea of using QR codes to my boss and the CEO. Not long afterwards, they came up with a vision sensor to read the QR codes and started scanning QR codes to catalog the photos coming in. Nobody approached me to thank me for the idea, but I saw it spread like wildfire and QR codes were being used everywhere after that. I would like to think that my involvement had something to do with it, and that it was more than synchronicity.
At the end of the month I am attending my cousin’s wedding in New York, and I will also be checking out the New York Botanical Gardens to see a show, “Kusama: Cosmic Nature” by Yayoi Kusama, a Japanese artist. She started her career in a time where white men dominated the art scene. White men like Warhol, Oldenberg, and Samaras, who rose to fame by stealing her ideas.
While we are on the subject of stealing ideas, I would like to recommend the Netflix miniseries, ‘The Billion Dollar Code’, based on true events of how Joachim Sauter went to court against google over the development of Google Earth. Google is a thief! Seems like thieves are everywhere. Maybe that’s why they are described as thick.
Update: Just adding another story here. At the beginning of the pandemic I helped out a church by getting them online when everything went dark. I designed the AV system and wrote up an equipment list. One staff member actually took my name off the documents and replaced it with her name, basically stealing my work. She is not aware that I know about this and when I found out I was very sad. I decided not to bring it up because I have moved on, but it still hurts just the same.
