No, that's the thing.mqduck wrote:EDIT: I just reread the quote I responded to and realized I missed something. "Concept of the ownership OF IDEAS"? I think not. Chris the Cynic needs to check his "generally believed facts" list.
The string of invention that was the revolution was unprecedented, as was the way inventions spread. Without the pace of invention there would be no revolution. Even the steam engine, one of the things most associated with the revolution, predated it's modern invention by 1400 years* but it went nowhere the first go round.
What changed was ideas. Once you could own an idea rather than a thing that meant that you could release your invention to the world and still benefit from it. Once you owned the idea of the invention rather than the physical objects you created you could let everyone in on how to make it and you had an incentive to do so. Their implementation of your idea would benefit you. If they improved on it, it would benefit you. That changed everything.
Say what you will about capitalism and patent law, but that is generally considered to be what made the industrial revolution a revolution. Without the change in the rate and distribution of invention that the ownership of ideas caused there would have been nothing but the normal background rate of change. Or at least that is what is generally accepted. If you'd like to rewrite the accepted history of the industrial revolution so that patent law played no role and everything would have been the same if people didn't own the ideas of inventions but instead only owned those devices they themselves had constructed ... well I might be interested in reading the first book you publish on the matter, but I should tell you now that I'd be more likely to get it out of the library than I would to buy it myself.
* The Alexandrians created some truly amazing things, all the more impressive considering the technology they had available.