careful here - for incremental advances this is true. There are still major developments and path dependencies that wouldn't have happened without key individu

careful here - for incremental advances this is true. There are still major developments and path dependencies that wouldn't have happened without key individuals (Turing, Einstein, etc). Who does something when matters. If the leaders of large tech companies were personally committed to free, open, and interoperable communications, we might have avoided the walled-gardens that we're currently stuck in. Similarly, if the NSA won the clipper chip debate back in the 90's, precedent for cryptography would likely be very different that what we have today.