Strange occurrence

[image "A customers work" by the dublinbarista on Flickr]

A few years back while watching late night tv, Nancy and I caught the indie movie "The last big thing". Its full of quotes that will leave you questioning the world for at least a few days and I still chuckle every time I see a Maxima or a Sentra and realize how auto makers are still making the same thing - The Car.

For the past year, another idea from this film has been stubbornly gnawing at my subconscious - basically any idea a person can have has already been thought up and will materialize in some form within a 4 to 6 week time frame. This movie came out in 1998 and while I pretty much believe this generalization to be true I think the time frame is getting drastically shorter. If one watches Etsy close enough one can see this phenomenon happen in a period of 4 to 6 days (it can make for some interesting forum discussions).

Since we started the cup a day project, Nancy and I have been brainstorming ideas and late last night we spotted an advertisement for the dvd release of "3:10 to Yuma". After the commercial was over we realized they didn't use the cool little image of the gunfighter that seemed so prominent during the theatrical release. At that point, the image of a coffee cup having a Western Style shootout stretched across its body was created. Within 5 minutes we gave it a goofy name (ten paces) and had nothing left but the grunt work.

Well, about 6 hours later, I found the above photo in the dublinbarista's Flickr pool - too weird.

Now, whatever this phenomenon is called, it seems to be accelerating at a Moore's Law pace and in about a year Apple will be coming out with a device (the I-dea?) that will be able to read your thoughts and within 4 to 6 minutes retrieve from somewhere online some example of the original thought you thought you had.
They had to have covered this on Star Trek...

andy