I think we are looking at this the wrong way and drawing the wrong conclusions. If I get this right, the cycle goes:
Idea -> first implementation -> minority adoption -> critical mass -> commodity product
From the very first idea to the commodity, you often have centuries, assuming the idea ever makes it to that stage. Da Vinci may have drawn some kind of helicopter in 1493 but it took about 400 years to get an actual machine capable of lifting itself off the ground.
From William Bourne's first description of a submarine in 1580 to the first implementation in 1800, you have 220 years and current submarines are still at an infancy stage: we almost know nothing of underwater traveling (with 2/3rdof the planet under sea, think of the potential real estate ;).
And there is no telling that there wasn't earlier, much earlier ideas that we just never heard of. Based on some legends, it looks like Alexander the Great used some kind of diving bell in 332 BC (which is the basic idea of a submarine: a device to carry people and air supply below the sea). Counting that, we are looking at 2000 years from idea (even with a basic prototype) to product.
What I am saying is that looking today for implementations, let alone products, that were not even ideas prior to 1980 is ... I betcha the "quick sort" algorithm was used by some no name file clerk in ancient China. So what?
There were networked computers 40 years ago, sure, but that didn't compare with today's Internet. The basic idea/technology was there, but regardless you couldn't play a game of Warcraft online.
I claim that we need really new ideas in most areas of computing, and I would like to know of any important and powerful ones that have been done recently. If we can't really find them, then we should ask "Why?" and "What should we be doing?"
Historically, we have never been able to "find them" that close from the idea, that fast. I think the cycle is getting faster, but computing is still darn young.
Currently, I am trying to figure out how to make an hologram (the Star Wars kind, without any physical support). I think I know how to make it work. I haven't even gathered the tools, materials, funding and yet even if I was to succeed to any degree, the actual idea would already be several decades old, at the very least and related implementations/technologies have been used for just as long.
As soon as you start listing actual products, you can be pretty sure that concepts and first implementations existed a while ago. Doesn't matter.
You could argue with some reason that nothing is new, ever, or that everything is new, always. That's philosophy and both viewpoints can be defended.
From a practical viewpoint, truth lies somewhere in between. Truth is not a binary concept, boolean logic be damned.
The Chinese may have come up with the printing press a while back, but it's only been about 10 years that most people can print decent color photos at home for a reasonable price.
Invention is nowhere and everywhere, depending on your criteria and frame of reference.
