From Idea To Empire: The Art Of IP Development

After much procrastination and deliberation, I’ve finally gone and set up this blog. Now I officially have a place to post all those IP related works of mine that could never quite find their way into my personal journal or inspire musing from non-existent philosophers.

Throughout all of my mischief in the realms of art, science, and technology, I have constantly found myself drawn to something I call IP development.

What exactly is IP development you say? IP means intellectual property. It’s defined as any product of the human intellect; quite a broad reaching definition isn’t it? That’s exactly why I like it.

In the professional world, it often seems that you need a label— something that describes who you are and what you do fairly quickly so that others can see how you fit into their picture. I’ve been called an artist, a musician, a writer, a philosopher, and a designer all in error. I have been all these things and much more at some point and time, but only when I find them useful as a form of expression for a particular idea.

It is the idea that is at the heart of IP development. A video game is limited, a work of art is limited, a musical performance is limited, but the ideas behind those works are not.

In his book “On Intelligence”, Jeff Hawkins proposes a model for the development of intelligent machines based off of a new framework that considers how the brain actually functions. His theory of how the brain works is known as “The Memory-Prediction Model”. Its basic premise is that our neo-cortex functions entirely off of one cortical algorithm that simply plays out in many different forms. That is to say that the way you see, hear, touch, taste, and your sense of smell are all one “idea” in the brain being used in very different ways by the body.

This is exactly how I view IP. There is no limit to the kinds of media that I am willing to venture into and the more barriers I cross, the more I find the same underlying principles—the ideas— exist in each. They are simply expressed in different ways.

By calling myself an IP developer, I inevitably provoke curiosity from those who I meet. It is my chance to augment their world model by providing them with a definition of something that is open ended and broad. In truth, beyond all the jargon and elaborate explanations, all I am really saying is that I am me—I am the collection of ideas that I have about the world— and that I have a purpose— I search for means to express those ideas through the various arts, sciences, and technologies. That’s all.

This is my IP ideology. I am hopeful that it will explain the motivations behind my reasoning on many issues that I will cover concerning IP development. However, the true purpose of this blog is to explore and transcribe the high-level principles I have found in the many art, science, and technology disciplines and to tie them together to create more interesting IP (i.e. to figure out how to make cool stuff!) I have my own views, but I’m hoping to gather input from many of you and examine your perspectives as well.

My next post will explain the process that I go through and propose a high-level framework for the development of IP that has worked for me in many different fields.

Until then, take care.

-Sage