How do you tell if a new technology product is a brilliant breakthrough?
Listening to its creators doesn’t work: Tech companies have an annoying tendency to promote everything as a brilliant breakthrough. And tech journalists have a history of getting irrationally exuberant over stuff that doesn’t end up amounting to much.
Real breakthroughs aren’t always immediately identifiable as breakthroughs. Sometimes, they just go on to change the world without anyone knowing it’s going to happen or even talking about it much. Their influence becomes so pervasive that people think of it as unremarkable, not remarkable.
Take, for instance, Grid Systems’ Grid Compass 1101, a portable computer which was announced in April, 1982. It wasn’t the first computer designed to be toted. It was just the first one in a briefcase-shaped case with a screen on one half of the interior, a keyboard on the other and a hinge in the middle. It was, in other words, the first computer with a clamshell case–or, to use a more common term, the first laptop.
via technology review
July 16, 2012
