Time and again I have felt that some of the great ideas that we see materializing today have been thought of earlier as well. Unfortunately, they were just ahead of their time earlier. They didn't come into being just because of the fact that the technology at the time was just not advance enough to support them.
We should always look back at past and learn from what has happened. One would be amazed to find out how much of what we see today was envisioned way before even the technology to enable that came into being. Some of the things that would have been regarded as flight of fantasy in Star Trek are what we take for granted these days e.g. the flip phone. Arthur C. Clark envisioned geostationary satellites 20 years before the first one was launched. I wonder how the originators of these ideas would have felt when they saw their ideas materializing.
I think if we look closely enough, we will definitely find many gems of ideas that were discarded by the doubting Thomases and skeptics. There is sure to learn a lot from the rich history that we have.
