When TV, cars, computers, etc. were invented they were breaking new ground because they were areas where the low-hanging fruit were within easy reach. The hard

When TV, cars, computers, etc. were invented they were breaking new ground because they were areas where the low-hanging fruit were within easy reach. The hard part, the one that took decades for each invention, was turning them from a neat curiosity into an indispensable part of daily life. I hate to break it to you, but "the Internet" may have been quite innovative for the first two or three decades of its existence, but it didn't mean jack shit to humanity. Back when midnight cabling runs through campus steam tunnels to deploy a SLIP line was "cutting edge" it may have seemed like the coolest thing in the world and an obvious game-changer to us at the time but it had absolutely zero impact on 99.9999999% of humanity. The past ten to fifteen years of so-called "incremental" improvement have turned a glorified research toy into useful and productive part of daily life for a large portion of the planet.