National Blog Posting Month – March 2013 – Risk
Prompt – Talk about a tangible item you wish you had invented.
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Let’s see. I’m not really feeling this prompt today. I know over the weekend I was using something that I wish I could take credit for, but what that was… who knows. So let’s expound on this a different way.
Why would I wish I had invented something? Is it so I can get credit for helping millions of people? So I can collect royalties and make a million dollars? Or is it because, darn it all, if I had had this thing twenty years ago, my life would have been completely different?
My motivation would be more in terms of helping myself and others. Though royalties would be nice, I would want to invent something that made the world a better place. What things that have been invented in my lifetime fall into such a category?
Cell phones? Laptop computers? These things have such positive and negative aspects, it’s probably just as well that I didn’t invent them. E-readers for books? Actually, that’s brilliant, because then books can go everywhere, and reading and learning can go on and on. Alas, these are limited. Batteries, you know.
What do I wish I had invented? I don’t know. What about you?
Penny Higgins - Storyteller • Artist • Scientist 
There are a couple of things I -almost- invented, like Iridium satellites. When the FCC started allowing cellular phones in the U.S in the early 1980s I got the idea to put the base station equipment in low-flying satellites so users on the ground with small, low-powered phones could have satellite communication anywhere. (At that time it took a big dish antenna to communicate with the commsats in high geosynchronous orbits.) I even had a name for the service: Cellulites – cellular satellites. But Motorola had better funding than I did, and got there first. They also had a better name.
I wish I had been the one to invent the printing press. I think printing has probably done more to spread knowledge through humanity than any other invention. Without writing we wouldn’t be able to keep the knowledge gained by our ancestors, but printing made it available to almost everyone. And knowledge is power!
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