I agree, except for: There are many, many examples of recent innovations that were absolutely necessary. The advent of mobile applications for newspapers truly

I agree, except for: There are many, many examples of recent innovations that were absolutely necessary. The advent of mobile applications for newspapers truly changed the game. ...Twitter... — these are innovations that truly changed the media world. Nope. Mobile applications for newspapers aren't innovative. It's a generic type of application that happens to run on a widely available platform - which, in of itself, is not innovative either. Twitter is not innovative either, because its impact is not related to the product itself, but its widespread adoption. The actual application is relatively basic, the infrastructure backing it aside. Now, one could retort that it's a "media innovation", not a technical one. But then the term becomes diluted, as just about anything widely used becomes an "innovation" in that it almost logically changes how something is done to that end. It becomes a truism. Basically, if it can be boiled down to "Something... but on a computer", then it's most likely not innovative. For actual examples of technical innovations, see this David A. Wheeler essay: http://www.dwheeler.com/innovation/innovation.html http://www.dwheeler.com/innovation/innovation.html.