The story:
A young designer was troubled and sad, so he went to see his Master.
“Nobody recognises my work” the designer said with woeful voice.
The Master took him to a temple with a beautiful stone statue in the centre and said, “If you want your work to be recognised you must be like the person who made this statue”.
They kept walking for a couple of minutes until the designer asked “Who made it?”.
“I don’t know” replied the Master.
Suddenly, the designer was enlightened.
This is adapted (stolen) from The programmer and the stone statue which I read on the blog of Jano González (linked from Hacker News) this morning.
It’s seemed especially relevant seeing as a video that Evan made of a Lindt ball melting in 3 minutes on a 42º Melbourne day has gone viral.
It’s been picked up by news sources and web-sites in Australia and around the world. While in most cases (especially to begin with) the video posted came directly from Evan’s vimeo page, many of the articles gave absolutely no attribution.
Some just didn’t bother (Gizmodo.com.au was the first of these, but there were many more) while others (like Bloomberg) worded their copy to make it sound as if one of their own staff made the video.
So, perhaps that’s the trick. Anonymity brings recognition.