Isaac Newton, a man of a million epiphanies, once said, “If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of giants.” That was brilliant speak for “no one invents anything.” At the highest levels, it’s all a continuum of genius.

So Bill Gates comes out of nowhere in the 60’s and anoints himself the king of the yet to come Information Age. The Digital Age. He will give birth to it. And in a way, a powerful way, he does by creating software that gets easier to use every year. William III (and let us not forget Jobs I) stands on the shoulders of the obscure but ingenious nerds who created the graphical user interface before any normal person thought they could have a personal computer.

Anyway, tonight I watch a 1982 film, An Officer and A Gentleman and I decide to see where the stars Richard Gere and Debra Winger come from. So I go to Sergey’s place, Google, and discover in a nanno second that:

a. Gere is the descendant of Pilgrims, which may explain why he lives in my town, founded by Puritans.
b. Winger almost died serving in the Israeli Defense Forces before she ever made a movie.
c. Sergey was born in Russia.

And I discover it all on Wikipedia, in about 40 seconds. So who invented the Information Age? Isaac, William or Sergey? It matters of course, but more importantly is that all stood on the shoulders of those who came before them. And we, as PR people, have many take-aways from this. Few more powerful than Wikipedia, with which we can tell our clients’ stories to the world.

Even if they start the night watching old films. Yes, we can make news. But we can also make history.

Mark Stevens
CEO

Share This