Thanks. The "only 3 innovations have lasted over 100 years" premise isn't original. I first heard it at a graduation ceremony and it made a lasting impact on me. Ofcourse the speaker was very charismatic & way more dramatic than I am :)

But the phrase keeps popping up in several places. For instance, in Hedgehogging, Barton Biggs goes to a pre-2000 tech conference where they famously declare that technology innovations will propel the Dow to 20,000 in 1 year! Biggs calls bullshit & points out that genuine innovation like Air Conditioning & steam engines are once-in-a-lifetime event. He is asked if the internet is a "fundamental" innovation & he disagrees. He becomes a laughing stock. The next year the Dow drops 2000 points.

It pops up in Nicholas Nassem Taleb's works, too: "the technologies that run the world today (like the Internet, the computer and the laser) are not used in the way intended by those who invented them", and: "the three most significant inventions of the past 100 years (...)"

1. changed 2. read his argument again, he implies that someone from 100 years ago, would hardly find anything different