All too often the human race becomes the victim of its own methods of measure. We become caged in ideas that, for better or worse, were largely created over a generation ago. And we protect those cages quite well.

New ideas are generally accepted based on who says them - not how worthy they are. Those of us who think through an idea presented find ourselves awash in people who are quite happy parroting the cerebral flatulence of someone else instead of risking their own cerebral flatulence being made public. And if the someone who said it was considered highly by other generations (not necessarily their own), then the idea becomes as much fact as the planet we are on... to us.

This is the resistance to change. It's not necessarily a bad thing - it filters out a lot of bad stuff too, like an idea to combine a razor with a toothbrush. Unfortunately, it makes us 'measure' everything within an imperfect rating system and build things with an accepted scaffolding that defines the shape of our ideas.

So many people are talking about innovation and creativity when our very systems of deciding what innovation and creativity are could use some...

The Alert Retrieval Cache concept constantly reminds me that technology is almost never the problem.

People are.

I've written today that emergency SMS is required beforehand, but I've written that before. And the idea has yet to take off - which at first frustrated me but now only puzzles me.

Today, I had an eureka moment while changing the oil in the pickup.

The problem is that the bureaucracy that was created to manage society - or better, bureaucracies - are resilient. They pointedly resist change. They were made not to change. And the main problem with the sort of technology use I've been advocating is that it seemingly requires so many changes to existing bureaucracies.

Anyone can implement it - but which budget will pay for it? Who will 'own' it such that they get the budget and manage it?

And that's why it's so hard to get some useful technologies to be used. A single person beating a drum loudly isn't enough to change anything. A prominent media lab might be better suited - but then, why is that?

Because the bureaucracy accepts those innovators, but it disdains the others who run around the world in their problem-solving mayhem. Their bureaucracy has an imprint on the greater bureaucracy.

But, remember, bureaucracy is slow to change.

I don't know if it's good or bad. I don't even know that it's true. But I'm wrapping the note around a rock and throwing it into cyberspace.

There will be no ripples.