IN THE 1770s, Benjamin Franklin went to Paris to witness the flight of an early hot-air balloon. ‘What good is it?’ someone asked him. To which Franklin replied: ‘What good is a newborn baby?’
Any new technology in its early stages may appear pointless. New inventions have to be given time to grow in order to prove their worth.
Very often it’s the technologists themselves who fail to see the commercial value of their work. When the president of IBM, Thomas J Watson, was asked to make a prediction in the 1940s, he stated ‘I think there’s a world market for about five computers.’
