Technology and the Genius in you

I do not think that Licklider, Tomlinson, or Tim Berners-Lee knew how their work would have been used and adopted by others. If they had known, they could have made a lot more money in the initial stages of development by marketing the Internet to everybody -- from professionals to housewives to children to social networkers to doctors to newspaper readers to bookworms to bookstores to magazine editors to politicians to health enthusiasts to governments to researchers to students -- I mean everybody. Individuals and groups/organizations have learned how to use the Internet to their advantage.

Today's reality is very far from the developers' original vision. I am certain that they never envisioned that the Internet would be used by people in order to buy items that they could not readily access in their own state or country. They never imagined that the Internet would be used as a means of meeting new people in far-away places and even to convene meetings as if all the delegates were in one room. The developers of the Internet did not know that people would use it in order to take classes because they could not afford to attend university full time. I don't believe that they thought that employers would use the Internet as a source of background information about their prospective employees. Who knew that numerous missing and adopted children would be reunited with their biological parents because somebody, somewhere recognized a picture that he saw on the Internet? Who knew that Americans would be able to eat home-cooked Caribbean meals because one housewife shared her recipes on the internet? Who would have thought that someone would use the Internet to watch a television program that he had missed?

There is a host of other tools that we use in ways that are different from the developers' ideas. Winter is approaching and soon we will all be seen bundled up in our winter gear. I remember reading that winter bubble jackets are a variation of the space gear that astronauts use when they travel to outer space. In addition, oxygen tanks that astronauts use in order to breathe in outer space have been modified and used as a part of a life-support system for critically injured patients.Who knew? Cell phones were made to help us stay in touch when we are away from landlines. Who would have thought that we would be using them to surf the Internet and to do other innovative things? Radars that were originally developed to help meteorologists track weather systems are now being used by the police to track the cell phones of suspected and convicted criminals. Compact discs that we once thought were a great way to record and store music can now be used to store not only computer software but also movies. A fairly new and sophisticated version of the x-ray, the ultrasound, is used so that expecting mothers can get a picture of their unborn babies and monitor their development. The list goes on.

Technology has put knowledge and skills at the fingertips of the ordinary person. The result is that we have new and innovative medical, social as well as other advancements. Manufacturers have bigger markets for their products. Inventors and manufacturers have to be thinking constantly about new and different ways that their products can be used. The major implication, however, is that technology brings out the genius in all of us. We always manage to turn what we have into exactly what we want.