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Comment by jmmv | Hacker News Reader

This reminds me of how I was described self-driving cars at some point: yes, they are a great invention, but actually… they would not have been possible without many more other inventions happening earlier: GPS, digital maps, route mapping algorithms, computer vision, neural networks, etc.

We easily see the flashy invention that combines everything that came before but often fail to recognize those dependent inventions.

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I was just explaining how the invention of the automobile really wasn’t much of a leap at all. Carl Benz is credited with inventing an automobile, but who wouldn’t have thought of taking the steam engine off the rails? And if you look they’d been trying to do this for a long time. In fact, the idea predated steam locomotives even. It just took a while for tires and internal combustion engines to come to be.

And even with all those inventions, self-driving cars are not available at a mass scale yet. I hope the tech won’t suffer the same fate as fission: Always just around the corner!

s/fission/fusion/g (fission is how we currently do nuclear power, fusion is "just round the corner...")

Yeah! Too late to edit :)

I have some good news for you about fission :P

I think the iPhone is a great example. Apple was very good at recognizing the time when all the pieces needed for a great phone were available or possible within a reasonable time frame.

True, iPhone was an avant garde invention when it was launched. Having said that, it's sad the glory days of iPhone seem to be fading away. Every innovation has its time and place, and it's about time new technologies are given their due, such as blockchain and crypto. We have to come out of our shadows thinking these are harmful for the mankind.

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