#grownostr
What makes an invention happen? As a child I was enchanted by stories of inventors. Those great heroes who came up with stuff and built it and often marketed it. Practically magic. Their genius was so successful, it felt like everything that needed to be invented had already been invented.
As I've grown older, I haven't stopped thinking about it, but I have realized the historical fiction is a dramatic glorification. Frankly most of these things when they were invented were iterative. I mean, we learn how to forge steel, and so somebody makes an ax. Then we need to plow the prairies so somebody makes a plow from that steel. We learn how to make steam engines and somebody puts it on wheels. While not completely obvious, many of these kinds of inventions have been 'invented" by groups working independently at the same time each without the knowledge of the other. It was simply time.
But there are some discoveries or inventions that seem to come about ahead of their time. In my mind the most famous is Einstein's theory of relativity. While we are still expanding upon it, it is essentially the same as he understood it quite a long time ago now. Bitcoin is the recent example that comes to mind. It was incredibly mature for its time.
And then there are discoveries or inventions that seem to happen way later than they should have. Like nostr. As far as I can see, we more or less had the technology to do something like this back in the 90s possibly even in the '80s. Aquaponics is another example that comes to mind. While it has been around since about the late 1980s, theoretically it could have existed millennia ago, and would have easily been possible with the technology of the 1800s. Even today, it has yet to develop into a highly viable form of agriculture.
It seems like there is some combination of resources and ability, interest and need, and discovery and opportunity that bring about new, useful, and unique things. This is a process that continues today. In the case of nostr, we will still be using it a decade from now but it will be so much more. Much of it is predictable but significant progress will happen through it that hasn't even been thought of yet.
#grownostr
