Many people think that today’s technology is a recent development. While advancements are accelerating, the technology we see today has traveled a long historical journey.

Take Virtual Reality, for example. The earliest versions appeared as far back as the 1960s. By the 1980s, VR had taken on a form resembling what we know today. In the 1990s, Nintendo introduced it to the consumer market, but it wasn’t until 2011 that VR truly began to “take off.” Even now, more than a decade later, it’s still not a universal standard.

The same applies to Augmented Reality, which arguably emerged even earlier. As far back as 1862, John Henry Pepper created the Pepper’s Ghost effect, based on an idea by Henry Dircks. This effect was later used in the Fairytale Forest of the Efteling theme park, for example, in the scene of The Little Match Girl.

Personally, in the second half of the 1990s, I worked for Philips Novatronics on the Blu-ray player—well before the DVD had even hit the market. I also worked on plasma and LCD televisions, which didn’t appear in stores until about five years later and came with hefty price tags.

Of course, both the DVD and Blu-ray built on the technology of the CD, which has its roots in the late 1970s. Similarly, plasma and LCD screens were already being used in other devices, albeit in monochrome and much smaller formats. The underlying technology, however, already existed.

Many of these innovations had their technological foundations laid far in the past but often remained dormant due to financial constraints, or struggled with acceptance or adaptation.

Think of it as a tangled web of roads—or perhaps more aptly, a spaghetti-like network of railway tracks.

The tracks begin somewhere and lead somewhere. Each track has its own length. If you were to view a track as a timeline, you’d notice that some trains have been traveling for a long time, some have just departed, and others still have a long journey ahead.

Some trains break down or derail along the way.

This is how technological evolution works as well.

We can monitor progress by observing which trains are currently running (insight). Some people can anticipate which trains will run tomorrow (foresight), while others lay the tracks and build the trains.

Hop on, jump aboard, or help build! Innovation Express!

Maarten Meijer — an Imaginologist. A conceptual thinker who moves between creativity, systems and strategy. I design visions, frameworks and futures that challenge the expected and open new possibilities.

My mission is simple: To initiate creation.
By disrupting fixed patterns, I help people think differently — to imagine what could be, and make it real.