“The idea of the lone genius who has the eureka moment where they suddenly get a great idea that changes the world is not just the exception,” says Steven Johnson, author of Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, “but almost nonexistent.”

When advances in social networks happen, they happen to many people simultaneously, so many people tend to see the next step forward at the same time. In 2003, we were all social network geniuses, at least compared with everyone in 1993.

Technology — and the conversation about what can be done with it — advances to the point that the next step is obvious to multiple people at once, and so they all push forward. In the end, one squeezes the others out by landing the patent, or the market share, and becomes synonymous with the invention.