In short, if there is no apparent use for the product or no social movement to take it up, then the product may remain a prototype. While inventions might well be taken up, it is equally important to consider the manner in which societies 'suppress' the radical potential of new technologies. As Winston points out, telegraphy has its roots in experiments undertaken during the seventeenth century, but it was only with the development of a rail infrastructure in the early nineteenth century that telegraphy took off. Even then, as other devices were developed to ensure safety, it was largely relegated to operational messaging. Only after the telegraph became less important for railway safety was it taken up by speculators and newpapers.
Technologies are objects with often complex histories.
Winston cites the CD as an example - originally computer memory, it became a device for storing and reproducing audio by way of a failure as a medium for video reproduction. It is a feature of the present work that it refuses seduction and in doing so recovers history from the erasing grasp of progress. Obviously there is a degree of overlap but the schema appears to work well. In disavowing technological determinism the author falls prey to a kind of piecemeal social determinism - although this is somewhat offset by the sheer scale of the diachronic explications. After this, they should know better.