You forget a more broad stanza: false revolutions happen, like you say, real ones are feared and avoided by most. On one side actual élite (in business, politic

You forget a more broad stanza: false revolutions happen, like you say, real ones are feared and avoided by most. On one side actual élite (in business, politics etc, a generic tag to say "most well position somewhere in something") fear the substantial change because it might both succeed pushing them aside since they became useless or fail crushing the along if they have tried it; on the other side most people adverse changes. Anyone might be pushed to buy a phone/something alike, considering it just a small addition to their daily routine, anyone might be pushed to buy a desktop/something else in general like the classic joke from the early web "hi! I want to buy a website" "hum, ok... To do what?" "Oh, I do not want to use it, all start buying one so I need one to remain in the market, is for customers not for me". But a substantial revolution is another story. Just see in daily life how many time you hear people say "I've always do this like that" and so on even if it's clearly an absurd thing or something that can&should be done but in a very different manner. Even small things. At PARC time was the filing cabinet/suspended folder era, where people deeply think in paper+mechanic terms, the idea of files and folders (mimicking aforementioned filing cabinet and suspended folders) might pass easily, the idea of dynamic documents is simply unthinkable and fearful "I might loose something", "people might cheat", ... similarly the idea to send emails might pass easily, a better fax system, but the idea of computing inside again can't pass. For most a GUI can only pass, even today, as a single sheet of paper, something we can draw, compose, but not something else. Spreadsheets succeed even if they are absurd in IT terms for countless reasons while DB+simple languages for equivalent needs does not for the very same reason. PARC vision, for the little I know propose a substantial revolution, not an evolution of its present state of thing. That's their real "fail"... To succeed they need to find a way to demonstrate and spread their tech until it became well known enough. Like in the past in France where no peasant have accepted the new vegetable imported from America: potatoes. Rumors spread it's dangerous etc. Things change only when the army drop them around the country in manure piles and soldiers came back after enough time to collect and eat potatoes. Sunflowers in Russia have experienced a similar fate.