Things can go from "huh?" to "duh!" in an instant.

This happens when there's an insight: a thing that, once pointed out, is self-evident and cannot be unseen.

This can happen for individuals… or for whole swarms of people all at once.

For example, imagine if there's a slow, plodding, inevitable secular change happening.

At each time step, nothing obvious is happening, so no one really notices that anything has changed.

But then some prominent event happens.

Maybe there's some miracle that draws people's attention.

Maybe an entity that is prominent and widely respected makes a big stink about it.

In that instant, a whole swarm of people go from "huh?" to "duh!" and the landscape of things that everyone thinks is possible changes.

Before, if you wanted to make use of that secular trend, you'd have to convince everyone that it was happening to get them to invest.

You'd have an uphill battle.

But after, you can take it for granted that most people already get it.

There's more "weathered" components you can take for granted.

Apple is apparently going to talk about their use of confidential computing for AI, which could raise the prominence of confidential computing significantly.