It's been said that the truly visionary people in any given technology field are the ones who are involved at the very beginning. Everything that comes after is really just ants standing on the shoulders of giants. I think that's largely true. Consider that I've been writing software for almost 30 years. "The Art of Computer Programming" first written by Donald Knuth in 1968 is STILL considered the definitive reference for computer algorithms by people who actually have a clue what they are doing. Apple created the Lisa after a trip to PARC, which was itself influenced by the work of Englebart in the late 60s. Several people in different nations worked on the development of packet switched networks during the late 60s and early 70s, which work formed the foundation of what later became the Internet. These people figured out how to solve problems that the rest of us hadn't even realized existed (and indeed, didn't exist until computer technology finally began to catch up a decade or so later).
