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Technology's Missing Links

If you’re into tech I’m sure you’ve heard the joke about Apple’s iPad – not since Moses has the world been this excited about a tablet. Truth be told, the iPad’s iconic features didn’t drop from the sky into Steve Jobs’ hands – if anything, tech development is a lot more like evolutionary biology – and if you look beneath our latest and greatest gadgets, you’ll find evidence of that evolutionary process – products that were born of good ideas, but didn’t quite make the cut. Think of them as the tech world’s "missing links" – although that term missing links is itself sort of outmoded in biology circles… since I’m getting a little too meta here, let’s turn things over to Rob Fleischman. He’s a computer scientist, tech entrepreneur, and Word of Mouth’s explainer of all things wired. 

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