Could've been so beautiful
Could've been so right
You can't hold what could've been
On a cold and lonely night
Tiffany’s wistful words whispered straight to my soul in 1987. She was far from the best teen pop singer at the time (Debbie Gibson, anyone?), but top 40 music was the source for a great deal of my late middle-school inspiration.
What could have been—the road not taken—could be of little consequence, although that’s hard to say due to butterfly effects. Then there are the turning points in history, moments when a near-miss clearly alters the world's outcome.
Let’s look at a few of these honorable mentions today, those pivotal moments in history that had the potential to significantly change our world but, for various reasons, fell just short of doing so.
As a reward for reading this piece, here’s Tiffany:
A Crisis in Cuba
Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, many of us had probably forgotten most of the details of the Cuban Missile Crisis, or maybe we never really learned these details in the first place. At any rate, this event is much more on the minds of Americans, Russians, Ukrainians, and other onlookers and participants.
In October 1962, the world held its collective breath as the United States and the Soviet Union teetered dangerously on the edge of nuclear war.
President Kennedy had just received photographic evidence of Soviet missiles, capable of delivering nuclear payloads, in Cuba. Considering that this is about 90 miles away from Florida, Kennedy felt he had no choice but to respond. He ordered a naval blockade around Cuba, preventing any Soviet ships from reaching the island.
Meanwhile, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was facing a dilemma of his own: escalating the situation could result in a global catastrophe, while backing down would be a humiliating retreat. Many of us understand by now how important of a driver avoiding humiliation (or appearing weak) is for Russia.
Meanwhile, Americans were building fallout shelters, and schoolchildren practiced "duck and cover" drills, fully aware that these futile efforts would offer scant protection in the event of a nuclear attack.
The world was locked in a high-stakes game of chicken, with one American and one Russian finger hovering over the proverbial red button.
Luckily for the entire world, the back-channel communication network did all of the heavy lifting. Kennedy and Khrushchev quickly reached a mutual understanding of the stakes.
In the end, Khrushchev agreed to withdraw the missiles from Cuba in exchange for the U.S. secretly removing its own missiles from Turkey. Humanity came unimaginably close to witnessing the horrors of nuclear warfare, saved only by the last-minute choices of two individuals aware of the gravity of their decisions.
This near-miss serves as a stark reminder that the world as we know it could have been radically different. It earns its place as an honorable mention, a moment when we collectively dodged the bullet and gained a chance to shape a better future.
Zheng He
In the early 15th century, a different superpower had the chance to shape global history: China. Under the rule of the Ming Dynasty, the naval explorer Zheng He embarked on several voyages that took him all the way down the west coast of Africa, sailing with a fleet of ships far superior to anything Europe had at the time.
To put it in perspective, all three of Columbus's ships—the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria—could fit inside just one of Zheng He's enormous floating cities.
Zheng He's voyages were diplomatic and commercial missions meant to display China's wealth and power. They carried gardens and rare livestock to showcase this wealth, and the amazing variety of things displayed must have been astounding.
However, China did something inexplicable by today's standards—they stopped. After Zheng He's final voyage in 1433, the Chinese government ordered a halt to the seafaring expeditions, and even went as far as dismantling their grand fleet and burning their nautical charts.
Why? China seems to have always had a love-hate relationship with being extroverted. I get it! It’s tough to get out there into the world, but there are rewards for stepping outside of your comfort zone.
Whatever the reason, China's withdrawal from maritime exploration had a profound impact on global geopolitics. It left a vacuum that European powers, with their less advanced but far more aggressive exploration endeavors, were more than willing to fill.
The Age of Discovery soon began, setting the stage for centuries of European colonialism and imperialism.
Had China continued its naval explorations and embraced its technological lead, the world could be a different place today. How many more of us would be speaking Mandarin today?
Xerox PARC
I first found out about what Xerox had been up to through the lens of Steve Jobs. After being invited to tour the cutting-edge facility in 1979, Jobs was simply blown away.
He saw an inventor's utopia.
A hotbed of brilliant minds gathered there to shape the future of computing, giving life to MOAD technologies. The Alto, considered by many to be the first personal computer, had a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) screen with a GUI (Graphical User Interface). It used a mouse.
There were also touchscreen computers at Xerox PARC.
In 1979.
Despite having the blueprints for the modern computer in their grasp, Xerox failed to recognize the game-changing potential of what they had. In other words, Xerox had the keys to a treasure chest, forgot all about the pocket the keys were in, and then flushed them down the toilet after they fell in.
You know who did open that treasure chest? Steve Jobs and Apple.
Apple's Lisa and Macintosh computers emerged, carrying the DNA of PARC’s creations, just with a slick, consumer-friendly interface.
It's mind-boggling to consider how Xerox, with all its pioneering innovations, ended up as a footnote in the annals of tech history. Imagine a world where Xerox had commercialized these technologies first. Would the world be split between Microsoft and Apple users? What would smartphones look like?
The company's reluctance to seize the moment left the door wide open for others to swoop in and claim a revolution that could have been theirs. Instead of capturing the market, Xerox PARC gets another honorable mention.
Each of these stories serves as a reminder of the fleeting nature of inflection points—those critical junctions when a decision, or lack thereof, can radically alter the course of human events.
Today, things are changing really, really quickly. Just yesterday, I wrote about why it’s important for us to pay attention and follow along. The difference between a world-changing innovation and an honorable mention is often a matter of a small decision.
What choice is in front of you today? What could've beens do you think about from your own life? What honorable mentions from history come to mind for you?
Kodak made the same mistake. They invented the digital photo and then buried it out of fear that it would kill their film business. It did kill their film business, but they failed to profit from it. Now Kodak and Polaroid are just trademarks.
Whoa, the Zheng He story is fascinating. I genuinely have never heard of this before. Crazy to think about the ship's proportions, especially by the standards of the time.
I think the more personal "Honorable Mention" from the Cuban Missile crisis era goes to Vasily Arkhipov. The short story is that he was on a Soviet sub that didn't have contact with the outside world for days and the crew assumed that a war had broken out between the USSR and USA. So the captain wanted to launch a nuclear torpedo. Arkhipov was the only dissenting voice among the three main decision makers, and finally managed to persuade the other two to avoid launching and surface. Phew.