Seth Godin Offers Hubris In Innovation's Place

Writing in his blog, Godin remarks:

"In 2000, I invented a gadget called RadaR. Fred Wilson (Ed.'s note: of UnionSquareVentures.com we assume) told me that I was ahead of my time, and he was right."

Wow Seth, and no one else had had the same idea!

Well, actually, plenty of people did so you didn't actually invent anything, you had a cool idea. People who go on about their ideas that never came to fruition aren't inventors, they're dreamers. Even people who actually make things are still only dreamers if those things don't get picked up and manufactured. Like I dream of world peace and freedom from religion.

James Dyson (of the bagless vacuum) is an inventor, but he's one of a very rare breed indeed.

Seth is trying to sell his books and since I've not ready any of them, I can't comment on them but I expect they are fairly influential.

Seth has done some notable stuff to be sure, but RadaR isn't among that, a look at the blog here: RadaR blog entry and see if you can spot the hubris. Seth claims iPhones could be leveraged into delivering the traffic information it actually falls down before we even get that far.

The whole idea is fatally flawed. Oddly enough Fred Wilson didn't see that or if he did, Seth isn't saying.

The problem with inventing things (and I've invented a few over the years) is that you're usually so close to them that you become blind to its faults. I'm working on something now that has suffered from exactly the same problem and its developers are bleating the usual excuses like we have a patent (that's meaningless, patents are a great diversion though) and it's always worked so far (also meaningless).

On to RadaR.

Seth claims the problem with traffic reports (on the radio) is that they never tell you anything about where you NEED to go, only where not to. Hardly a shrewd observation but correct nonetheless.

Seth's idea is to put a GPS system into a car and have it report the state of a road by monitoring the car's position in real time and reporting its speed and direction back to a central mapping system.

Sounds great but there's an instant problem which is right under Seth's nose: what if I'm in the bloody car that's slowing down due to traffic? FAIL! A lot of good RadaR did me there.

OK, now everyone else who's similarly equipped gets this message so they get re-routed. But how does RadaR know which route aren't clogged?

It doesn't. Unless another poor RadaR user is already in the jam cursing the blasted thing for leading it up the garden path.

And that's assuming your subscribers (this is a pay service, of course, it has to be) actually turn their phones on and activate the app when in the car. Worse, what if a bunch of little sh*ts get hold of a couple of iPhones and then meander down an otherwise quiet road: kids do this sort of thing out of badness.

RadaR is wrong again and worse still if a couple of RadaR users come whisking by on the same road, since GPS isn't accurate enough to locate which LANE you're in, just that you're on it, the system would have to figure out who's fibbing.

Seth's original idea would have avoided naughty boys, but it still would not work and any town planner could tell him that.

Roads aren't designed to handle the rush hour.

Roads aren't designed to take roadworks at busy periods.

Gridlock is a natural feature of our modern world.

All is not lost (well, it is for RadaR) because if you live in the UK at least, there's already a much better system: TMC (Traffic Message Channel) and the better modern SatNavs have it.

Because TMC relies on camera monitoring to spot tailbacks, it can't be fooled by someone playing silly buggers with the server. It doesn't rely on a phone that's just as likely to drift out of 3g as it is to stay inside it and it doesn't cost much.

Sorry, Seth. Must try harder.

UPDATE: Seth and I exchanged a pleasant couple of emails which I can't reveal here to protect the guilty.

However, my original assertion is valid, the iPhone is not a platform for such a device and RadaR as Seth described in his blog doesn't work.

In fact, the simple fact is none of these gadgets can guarantee you'll miss rush hour traffic - or bypass either. I think I'll invent a teleporter instead, just like Seth did.