Sediment

This is a field where one does not write a principia, which holds up for two hundred years.  This is not a field where one paints a painting that will be looked at for centuries, or builds a church that will be admired and looked at in astonishment for centuries.  No.  This is a field where one does one's work and in ten years it's obsolete, and really will not be usable within ten or twenty years. ...

It's sort of like sediment of rocks.  You're building up a mountain and you get to contribute your little layer of sedimentary rock to make the mountain that much higher.  But no one on the surface, unless they have X-ray vision, will see your sediment.  They'll stand on it.  It'll be appreciated by that rare geologist.

-- Apple Founder Steve Jobs (1955-2011), discussing his legacy in an interview at NeXT (1994)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zut2NLMVL_k