There are business reasons why HTM hasn’t caught on. I think I Jeff discussed one of them at the end of the March 2015 hackathon at Cornell Tech. Jeff talked about trying to sell this technology to others for search ad prediction and energy consumption for a power station. First of all, business have an established way to doing things, and upsetting that is quite a challenge.
I have talked to several people, and the reply I get goes more along the line of “not vetted technology,” meaning that business people are reluctant to put money up on ideas of which they are unsure. In many of their minds, this is spooky technology, and AI has had too many failures in the past, in which people have lost money.
The reason that IBM gave away the PC market to Microsoft was that IBM did not take PCs seriously. They were considered a toy. So, as long as MS was willing to play with toys, IBM did not really care. By the time that IBM came to realize that PCs were a serious business, IBM tried to push MS out of the game, only to find that they were too late.
Even later on, IBM did not take color monitors seriously, preferring to stick with monochrome, because IBM thought that businesses were unwilling to spend money for color monitors, which was largely thought to be aimed for games.
Similarly with the space race. The US did not invest heavily in space exploration thinking that letting the USSR spend money on a folly was a good thing. Once the USSR showed the feasibility of its design. the US came in strong and with lots of money to win the game.
The Wright Brothers were also considered foolish in playing with their toys. Curtis ignored the development of the Wrights, and managed to get the government to subsidize his research with heavy boondoggles. The Wrights were successful in flying their plane and managed to get patents on that technology, Once it was seen that aircraft worked and had uses in preparation for WWI, Curtis got the government to invalidate the Wright’s patents. The Wright Brothers were forced to sell out the Curtis Aircraft.
A similar story happened with GE & J.P. Morgen taking over Tesla’s AC and Westinghouse’s technology. (Great “History Channel” story).
Business is less about ideas and more about money and controlling others who have technology.
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