I do wonder about inventions that actually changed the world or the way people do things, and if there is a noticeable pattern that distinguishes them from inventions that came and went and got lost to history,

Cool thought experiment.

Comparing the first iPhone with the release of BlockChain is a pretty solid way to consider the differences.

We all knew that modern phones were going to be huge. We didn't need tech bros to tell us to trust them about it. The usefulness was obvious.

After I got my first iPhone, I learned a new thing I could do with it - by word-of-mouth - pretty much every week for the first year.

Even so, Google supposedly under-estimated the demand for the first Android phones by almost a factor of 10x.

BlockChain works fine, but it's not changing my daily routine every week.

AI is somewhere in between. I do frequently learn something new and cool that AI can do for me, from a peer. It's not as impactful as my first pocket computer phone, but it's still useful.

Even with the iPhone release, I was told "learn iPhone programming or I won't have a job." I actually did not learn iPhone programming, and I do still have a job. But I did need to learn some things about making code run on phones.