Four types of people are going to talk to you, if you are in a position where you could apply technology in a practical manner to help people: User, Idiot, Gatekeeper, and Innovator.

Ordinary User - knows nothing and has no capacity to judge the appropriateness, security risk issues, brokeness or workability of new technology at solving problems they experience. May be useful because he is typical of the people who experience the problem that could be solved.

Idiot - an insane, often annoying person who tries to convince you that he knows something and/or has a solution (which will never work, for reasons you worked out in the toddler-hood of your understanding of this areas of technology.) See FUSSP.

Gatekeeper - knows everything - I mean really does know everything up to speed, state-of-the-art about this area and believes there is nothing more (at least not yet.) May be very resistant / selective about capacity to add info. For the sake of this discussion, Gatekeeper includes the roles of Critic, Devil's Advocate, Peer Reviewer, Implementor, Analyst. Gatekeepers have resources either in themselves or through their control/influence of other resources - to take ideas and put them to work helping people.

Innovator - has a valid concept that extends beyond present state-of-the-art or even present speculation / theorizing, which you could adapt to apply to helping people.

Because you are of type Gatekeeper and constantly torturously for years have spent endless amounts of time with type Idiot - you assume Innovators are Idiots.

This slows down the process of getting appropriate technology applied to the people who need the help.

I'm wondering how we can discern an Innovator from an Idiot.

There's a PBS program possibly from the early 1990's in which a Gatekeeper professor would not allow his Innovator students to experiment with green materials in trying to find new superconductors. "Superconductors cannot be green" he said - and he was a very highly respected expert. To him, these students appeared naive. When he was gone on vacation, they did the experiments and got green superconductors.

I put forth anecdotally that this kind of crushing of innovation occurs pretty consistently and for very understandable reasons.

The patent system helped create the idea in inventor's minds that they could "own" an idea. That if they were the first - or even just "first to file" - that they had more right to apply it to helping people than other inventors or non-inventors.

A fearful hoarding syndrome known as "Inventor's Fever" afflicted most inventors at one time or another. Inventors Fever involves what I will label as delusions that others will "steal" the ideas that he "owns" - that others would want exactly what he has and apply it the same way, and that riches nearly beyond imagination are tied to his idea.

Richard Bach (descendant of the composer Bach) puts forth an alternative view in the book "One." (He is best known perhaps for writing Jonathan Livingston Seagull.)

I'll paraphrase my memory of what "One" says about idea conception: There's a place like a steel mill where ideas are forged. Workers put together the connections for an idea and then find the right person or people to deliver the inspiration to. His elaborate description and telling of this is much more entertaining so by all means get it from Amazon or wherever. (They had some for 3 cents used, no kidding.)

If you go along with anything remotely like this, ideas thus do not originate in the physical body which is "owned" by me. Some relate that inspiration comes from their God, or collective conciousness, or "the universe", or their soul pool or whatever their belief system is about what exists other than our physical lives here on Earth.

A friend of mine suggests that ideas go out to everyone all at once - only some are tuned into the channel for that kind of idea. Some who get it just go "hey, an IDEA" - some actually take steps toward implementation. Some tell others. My observation - if this is the case - is that the idea gets filtered through each person's motives and experience.

Some say "wow I could get a patent and keep everyone else from profiting from this and make money with it myself." Some say "I could tie it to XYZ." Some say "I could make it open source." Some think of using it for e vil, some think of using it for good, some think of implementing it with 1000 cumbersome complications some think of implementing it insecurely, some conceive elegant implementations.

Some have the time, money and human resources to get it into use helping people and some are missing one or more of the necessary elements to "take the best care of" the idea.

Often the idea is enhanced by peer review - something the open source community is pretty good at. So I see it as necessary for those who are Innovators AND a conduit for ideas.... to communicate with the Gatekeepers who are probably a necessary part of getting the technology applied to helping people.

At this point all I think I can do is list some of the barriers to Innovators getting heard by Gatekeepers:

1. Gatekeepers have no category for the new info - its new, new terms, new concepts. Their first step is to categorize it to something they know, thus a known set of assumptions that don't apply.

2. Innovators often don't have a presentation format which gives the Gatekeeper only what he needs, and exactly what he needs, in the right order and with the right timing. IE, do not waste a Gatekeeper time. His time is extremely valuable because he is probably the one who can directly make the link between new technologies and implementations that can actually help people.

3. The Gatekeeper won't tell the Innovator  his specific objections / assumptions. The Innovator believes everyone can see what he sees and thus assumes the Gatekeeper is fully understanding the concept.

4. The Gatekeeper assumes that the Innovator is an insane idiot who is wasting his time (again) because the majority of  people he talks to are indeed Idiots (insane, naive idiots.)

5. Gatekeepers make statements rather than asking the Innovators questions. IE, "what would happen when brute force cracking is applied to your input form?" or "What am I missing? It seems like your input form would be vulnerable to brute force attacks." vs "Your system fails because it is crackable by brute force." (Assumption of insane naive idiocy on the part of the Innovator.)

So the question is open - how can the ability of the Innovators to communicate properly to the Gatekeeper - and for the Gatekeepers to recognize Innovators vs Idiots - be improved?