This is my favorite comment in this whole thread. Looking back on big failures in history, it's too easy to point out the obvious mistakes or logical reasons wh

This is my favorite comment in this whole thread. Looking back on big failures in history, it's too easy to point out the obvious mistakes or logical reasons why it failed, how unrealistic their dreams were. That narrative doesn't take into account that notable successes in history, major innovations, were born from basically the same ingredients in a shared cultural context. The difference was (at least seemingly) often just a slight chance variation in conditions, being in the right place at the right time, working on an idea that happened to be ready to blossom. I love the parallels you draw with exotic fungi, how sensitive these ambitious ideas are to its environment. There are so many ways it can fail, and the reason for success is often elusive and serendipitous. > Science and engineering are perhaps more like the arts than we tend to think This seems related to how great art and music are often born of a "cultural milieu", like the jazz scene, or Paris cafe culture in the 1920's that fostered poets, painters, musicians. I imagine Xerox PARC was like that, a vibrant intellectual subculture of creative people who worked in the medium of technology. Speaking of the muse, I like the popular expression, "The elves have left Middle Earth." There's a kind of indescribable "magic" that can inhabit a place and time, pulling everyone around under its spell. Then, as mysteriously as it appeared, it's gone - leaving behind relics of wonders, art works or artifacts, that reason alone cannot explain.