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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

Well then, why didn't you come up with it first?

I'm serious. The world is rife with things the "don't seem like a big deal" only in retrospect, when people downplay innovations as "no big deal/anyone can do that" when something comes on the scene that a lot of people connect with.

Heck, I feel like your response is the art equivalent of this top comment on the original Dropbox Show HN submission by Drew Houston:

> For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

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Because I think it's boring work. You seem to think I'm speaking from a place of jealousy, I'm not.

> Well then, why didn't you come up with it first?

This is never a good question. It doesn't take much imagination to substitute X in "Why didn't you come up with X first?" with something of no value. Obviously, if someone finds something to be of no value, then they would not have come up with it, would they. Or at least they would not have pursued it.

Rather, one must give reasons for believing something has value. (And I seriously doubt this is "new", though novelty is itself irrelevant. Valueless things can be "novel", too.)

IMO, this glass technique is maybe interesting, but it is also sort of gimmicky, at least as presented.

He's replying to a post that says it's "new, unexpected, and incredible" and he specifically only addresses whether it's incredible. I think, especially in the spirit of "assume the strongest interpretation", you can probably assume that an artist is well aware of the value of novelty and is quite specifically not disputing it.

Obligatory reminder that the Dropbox thread ends with "I only hope that I was able to give you a sneak preview of some of the potential criticisms you may receive. Best of luck to you!" The comment didn't dunk on Dropbox as an idea, but pointed out that they would need to highlight their moat wrt copycat competitors in order to convince sceptical investors.

The artist in question is presumably not raising VC money, so concerns about long-term viability of the niche if other artists start imitating the style probably don't apply. (Maybe it's even the reverse situation, where increased production of cracked-glass art raises the profile of the trailblazer and increases the demand for "originals.")

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