The Wonders of The Future
Thomas Edison did not invent the first light bulb. He just greatly improved upon what others had already built. Actually 1802 – three quarters of a century before Edison’s lightbulb – a British inventor named Humphry Davy created an electric light called an arc lamp, using charcoal rods as a filament. It worked like a lightbulb, but it was impractically bright. One would nearly go blind looking at it and could stay lit only for a few moments before burning out, so it was rarely used. Edison’s contribution was moderating the bulb’s brightness and longevity. That was an enormous breakthrough. But it was built on the back of dozens of previous breakthroughs.
Faraday did experiments with copper disks. It looked like a scientific play with laboratory equipment. Well, it eventually gave us the modern-day dynamos and trolley car.
Same thing today. Maps, Instagram and all of internet wouldn’t be possible without ARPANET. It was a 1960s Department of Defense project linking computers to manage Cold War secrets, which became the foundation for the internet.
And that’s why all innovation is hard to predict and easy to underestimate. The path from A to Z can be so complex that it’s nearly impossible to look at today’s tools. That’s always how it works.
One takeaway here is that it’s easy to always feel like we’re falling behind. Progress is made step-by-step, slowly over time, you realize that tiny little innovations that no one thinks much of are the seeds for what has the potential to compound into something great.
Coming exactly to same point of investment where journey is more important than the start of it. The journey is in the process and not in the identifying the best funds today.
Investment journey is a process not a number. Checking start point of investment is important but periodic review has far more important than everything else.