Limps and Bounds
In the early nineteenth century, a British inventor by the name of Charles Babbage designed a massive fifteen-ton device which he called a Difference Engine. Comprised of 25,000 mechanical parts, it was designed to solve calculus equations.
He didn't end up finishing it, but what Babbage envisioned was basically a very large version of the modern computer. And he did it almost a century before computers started being produced. I think this is crazy: in the middle of the Industrial Revolution, he tried to build a computer, in much the same way that you might have gone about constructing a steam engine, by assembling a lot of large mechanical parts.
He didn't succeed not because he had a bad idea, but because the world wasn't quite ready for it. He aimed to jump too far ahead of the rest of the world, and the limits weren't with what he was able to conceive of, but what the technology in the world at the time would permit him to do. If he had been around 50 years later, he might have been able to make a dent. (Makes you wonder what some people are creating today that are good ideas, but we're not ready for them.)
One friend told me yesterday about a tablet touch-screen device that Apple created back in the early 1990s. It completely flopped in the marketplace, probably because people were still getting acquainted with personal computers and the Internet.
For many years, people were slow to adopt the use of MP3 players. Digital music made a ton of sense, but there just wasn't a singular compelling reason to get rid of your Discman until Apple succeeded in marketing the iPod. This made people comfortable with the notion of carrying around a squarish device containing digital music, which likely made the world more ready to accept the iPhone when it emerged years later. And the iPad likely owes much of its success to the presence of the iPhone.
It's a common myth that innovation happens in leaps and bounds, in large wild steps that nobody sees coming until they actually happen. There are probably exceptions, but most innovations aren't a giant leap from the present. They happen because they've built slowly, bit by bit, on the things that came before.
He didn't end up finishing it, but what Babbage envisioned was basically a very large version of the modern computer. And he did it almost a century before computers started being produced. I think this is crazy: in the middle of the Industrial Revolution, he tried to build a computer, in much the same way that you might have gone about constructing a steam engine, by assembling a lot of large mechanical parts.
He didn't succeed not because he had a bad idea, but because the world wasn't quite ready for it. He aimed to jump too far ahead of the rest of the world, and the limits weren't with what he was able to conceive of, but what the technology in the world at the time would permit him to do. If he had been around 50 years later, he might have been able to make a dent. (Makes you wonder what some people are creating today that are good ideas, but we're not ready for them.)
One friend told me yesterday about a tablet touch-screen device that Apple created back in the early 1990s. It completely flopped in the marketplace, probably because people were still getting acquainted with personal computers and the Internet.
For many years, people were slow to adopt the use of MP3 players. Digital music made a ton of sense, but there just wasn't a singular compelling reason to get rid of your Discman until Apple succeeded in marketing the iPod. This made people comfortable with the notion of carrying around a squarish device containing digital music, which likely made the world more ready to accept the iPhone when it emerged years later. And the iPad likely owes much of its success to the presence of the iPhone.
It's a common myth that innovation happens in leaps and bounds, in large wild steps that nobody sees coming until they actually happen. There are probably exceptions, but most innovations aren't a giant leap from the present. They happen because they've built slowly, bit by bit, on the things that came before.