The Pocket Crystal

No other event in the brief history of the exponential world was as perfectly timed as Apple’s iPhone release in 2007. This moment was so important that we argue that technology will be defined as pre-iPhone and post-iPhone. The iPhone was a major catalyst for mass digitization and mobilization of technology. This was not just another product launch; rather, Apple launched disruption that would forever change the world.

It was a similar moment to when Gates released Windows. The world went digital. Suddenly, people wanted a computer even if they did not think they needed one before. When the iPhone launched, people already had smartphones or flip phones with many of the features. Yet the iPhone made them desire smartphones. Consequently, the world went mobile. In 2007, when Steve Jobs and Apple released the iPhone, they nailed the timing. The guy who created the first iPhone, Marc Porat, did not. He had single handedly laid the vision for the iPhone seventeen years earlier. He was the exponential leader that never was.

In 1976, Marc Porat was a student at Stanford and had just finished writing his PhD thesis, arguing that the “Information Economy” would be the future of the United States. Information technology, Porat claimed, “. . . would become the dominant driver of the U.S. workforce.” (1) Simply put, information technology is “The study or use of systems (especially computers and…