[kaistinchcombe]

People say that a lot about the internet – that nobody knew what it would be useful for at the time it was invented. It had MORE uses than originally foreseen (same as computers) but one of the internet pioneers chimed in on the comments thread to the first article saying that actually they did know exactly why they built the internet at the time they built it: they wanted a better way to send messages and share files, so they built one, and the day it was built it was the best way in the world to do that. Same with IBM - scope wasn't foreseen, but those machines were the best in the world for the purposes they were designed for.

But the myth that people create amazing technology that has no use (TCP/IP, the computer), and then a decade later people discover what it's useful for, is just that: a myth.