“There are people who believe in the doctrine of social or
historical inevitability: that, when the time is right and no
earlier, several people will independently invent what turns out to
be a crucial new technology.“My own theory on this is more cynical; I believe that several
people probably invented calculus before either Sir Isaac Newton or
Gottfried Wilhelm Liebnitz but couldn’t popularize it. In other
words, that it’s not a question of the time being right for the
invention, but one of society being ready to accept the sales pitch
popularizing the invention…”