The Accidental Applicabilities

In watching the documentary on the History of the Web, I was struck by how many of the applications that are now global - and which we use on a daily basis - were developed to address some single organization's specific internal needs. They often seem to have had much more limited scope in their applications, and may not have been envisioned to have much more than the limited use for which they were originally designed. Innovation in general, it seems, tends to follow this pattern.



E-mail, for example, evolved from the specific way electronic notes were left between users at a single computer mainframe computer at MIT in the 1960s; in 1971, Ray Tomlinson sent the first true e-mail via the ARPANet; from there, e-mail applications began popping up in LANs, and eventually migrated to the World Wide Web as a means of efficient, effective, trackable communication. In specifically addressing the need for "time-sharing" within large, institutional mainframe computers, J.C.R. Licklider laid the theoretical groundwork (1960) for a type of Internet where information and applications would be shared between computers via user-friendly interfaces (lowering costs and increasing productivity while exponentially expanding the knowledge base).


Technological innovation, it seems, generally tends to work this way: Each innovation is designed to address a very specific issue, but - as it does so - others look at the innovation and find additional (sometimes unrelated) needs it can address, as well. The Edison Phonograph, for example, came to be most famous for its ability to provide musical entertainment. Billions of dollars - and, indeed, entire new entertainment industries - came into being as a result of this expanded application. The original intent of the phonograph when it was developed by Edison, however, was only to provide a means for recording dictation for business applications, and he allegedly initially resisted the phonograph being used for frivolous entertainment purposes. Likewise, the radio was designed to transmit news and information (particularly in military applications), but soon became more profitable as a medium of mass entertainment.


The specific, original intent of the technological innovation leading to motion pictures was not to entertain, but to settle a wager as two whether or not all of a galloping horse's legs left the ground at the same time. (The famous 1878 "moving picture" is now known as "Sallie Gardner at a Gallop.") Automobiles (that is, vehicles that move under their own power) were developed from an original, operational 1769 military vehicle designed by N.J. Cugnot, specifically intended to tow canons around the city of Paris.


Okay. Enough of the history lesson. Returning to the topic of discussion: What struck me most as I rewatched the History of the Web was that so many of the innovations that make up our daily e-nteractions (to coin a word) did not necessarily start out as what we know them as today, but were much more limited in their scope and application. Some even had different limited intended uses, but became adapted for broader applications that changed not only the organizations for which they were developed, but changed the world at large, too. (Note: Without Net Neutrality, this would not have been possible.)


So, maybe the knife was made specifically to get peanut butter out of the jar, but I'll bet you can also use it for jelly. When you add bread (from yet another source!), the result is a truly great sandwich.