The tipping point comes when early adopters start to reap measurable, verifiable results, say academics who actually think about these kinds of things. The early chaos of a new industry tangles conversation as early players sort out the very first industry standard: the language they will use to discuss the technical underpinnings, applications, success metrics and corresponding financial results. Confusion reigns, say academics, when early participants try to discuss new concepts with new, made-up terminology.

“One of the challenges for crypto is that people don’t have a basis for comparing it to other things. The fact that companies are putting ‘blockchain’ in their names doesn’t mean that the public understands what ‘blockchain’ is,” says Schwantes.

Common understanding crystallizes when current language is used to describe new concepts. That is when early adopters understand what is going on sufficiently to become early adopters, and only then can they start using new terms to describe processes that are becoming familiar.

This is why email is called email and not something else, explains author and business historian Benjamin Schwantes. Back in the 1970s, when MCI Communications was developing practical uses for its far-flung data networks, it hit on the idea of sending messages that would appear on subscribers’ computer screens.

What to call this new service, which MCI believed would be invaluable to businesses and, perhaps, to consumers? “They modeled it after the post office and the telegram,” says Schwantes, explaining that the service was introduced as a way to get a printed document on the same day, once it was transmitted, printed and hand-delivered to recipients.

Though MCI’s business model of subscriptions within a walled system was not adopted as widely as it had hoped, its legacy is the term “email.” “To develop a new product and concept, you have to ground it in ideas from the past” as a bridge, says Schwantes. He adds: