Platforms
The development of the GPS system was almost entirely a series of chance events, yet these chance events occurred in a situation and amongst individuals that were able to see them for what they were and combine them into the GPS system essentially as it is still used today. Knowledge of the Doppler Effect, the Russian launching of Sputnik, the ability for the folks at the Applied Physics Lab to pick up Sputnik's signal and from this to pinpoint the satellite's location and track its movements, and finally the APL director's idea to reverse this calculation and determine Earth-bound positions from orbiting satellites -- all of these events happened not by design, but because one mind saw something another mind had done and applied it in a new context. The importance here was the environment at the APL, which brought these different minds and perspectives together.
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One major example of this is the growth in the writing of "fan fiction" -- stories involving the characters and settings of popular (or cult-followed) novels, films, comic books, etc. There are many websites and communities dedicated to fan fiction of all genres and works, with people writing continuing episodes of everything from Dickens novels to the Twilight series and everything in between. These communities, like the GPS system, have been largely emergent, developing not because one person design the community, but because many people connected through similar shared ideas.
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The fact that old ideas tend…
