Many people guard their ideas, as if simply sharing them would give others the desire, will and motivation to begin working on them and outpace the conceiver, who is probably not the only person with that idea. In Waking Life, there is a scene with Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke lying in bed, and Hawke suggests that there is some telepathy, some type of Carl Jung collective unconscious:

It's like there's this whole telepathic thing going on that we're all a part of, whether we're conscious of it or not. That would explain why there are all these, you know, seemingly spontaneous, worldwide, innovative leaps in science, in the arts. You know, like the same results poppin' up everywhere independent of each other. Some guy on a computer, he figures something out, and then almost simultaneously a bunch of other people all over the world figure out the same thing. They did this study. They isolated a group of people over time, and they monitored their abilities at crossword puzzles, right, in relation to the general population. And they secretly gave them a day-old crossword, one that had already been answered by thousands of other people, right. And their scores went up dramatically, like 20 percent. So it's like once the answers are out there, people can pick up on 'em. It's like we're all telepathically sharing our experiences.

Personally, I have experienced this phenomenon many times. I am sure many of you have as well. I would come up with an idea, and within weeks or months I would see it implemented elsewhere. I have basically relegated myself to the fact that whatever idea I have, a thousand other people have already come up with it as well, and a few of them are about to launch it.

About the author

Dev/Code/Hack is a technology and business blog by me, Par Trivedi. I'm a software engineer and I've been writing code and managing teams for over a decade. This blog serves as a way to share thoughts and ideas about the tech/startup community, and also to educate newcomers to software development.

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