Failures of the Human Imagination: “It hasn’t worked yet. Ergo, it can’t work.”
Or think further back, before you bought your first smartphone. Until 2007, it likely hadn’t occurred to you that you’d carry your camera, your music, your phone, and your email all on one device, or that you’d use that same device to hail a taxi, listen to books, find out the name of some random song that’s playing at Starbucks, communicate with someone who speaks a different language, rent a bicycle, and figure out how to bypass a traffic jam on your way to the airport.
In 1806, Frederic Tudor began trying to ship ice from Massachusetts to Cuba. After years of failure and mockery, he succeeded, and by 1833, he was shipping ice to India. Dozens of companies followed, and by 1855, Tudor had created an entire industry. The idea went from inconceivable (ice in India during the summer—you must be kidding?!) to commonplace in under 30 years.
By the end of the century, nearly every American home, grocer, and bar had an ice box stocked with natural lake ice.
