Re:The disappearing inventor
by marcosdumay on Tuesday April 22, 2014 @08:00PM
(#7631260)
The car was incrementally "invented" by a huge number of people, while Ford created alone an entirely new kind of industry.
To be fair, if the innovation we are crediting Occulus is successfully popularizing VR, I think we are being premature.
There have been VR headsets available for years, at comparable prices. They were less immersive, but we will see the Occulus as unimmersive in a few years.
Whether it actually popularizes VR, or is just a fad will depend on whether comparable products are common in 5 or 10 years.
For instance Nintendo did not popularize power gloves. They were cool, but it turned out people didn't want to play games like that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Glove
Who invented the car? Dunno, I had to google it. Who is famous for making massive amounts of money off of the car? Mr. Ford.
This goes deeper. We celebrate in others what we want to have or "be" ourselves (beauty, money, power, tall, strong). We hate/dislike in others the characteristics that we ourselves don't want to have (ugly, short, bald, dumb, gay). This is where a lot of phobias and disliking of groups of people come from.