Once it is out of the inventor's laboratory and in the hands of thousands of people with their own problems to solve, necessity, as they say, is the mother in this script. Most of these inventive engineers and programmers also succeed and fail. With expert systems, they succeeded in building applications that did, indeed, solve real business problems. Ultimately, however, most failed to make the case for expert systems as an essential software technology in their companies. Most fail, but it only takes one lucky application that fits, one simple, elegant solution to a universal problem, to move a technology forward.
All programs contain knowledge.
The technology consists of software tools and associated methodologies for acquiring and coding the knowledge, for automatically using the right knowledge in the right way at the right time, and for keeping the knowledge up to date. The nascent technology for conveniently embedding the knowledge into the programs was just a means to an end. Of course, building intelligent problem-solving programs is not the only thing that these new software tools and methodologies could be used for. The world has, so far, shown limited interest in purchasing or building intelligent programs. We don't need more intelligent programs.