The two I likely know the most about regarding the evolution of inventions likely are the skateboard and the Weed Eater. And likely because of my background since the 1960s with computers I also understand how computers evolved too but in hardware and software. I'm not sure how far I will get today.
For example, weed eaters for trimming weeds started with someone with an electric drill who clipped a piece of metal wire into a drill bit chuck and ran it at high speed over weeds and found it worked. However, this was pretty dangerous as pieces of metal likely were flying out in all directions. The next evolution was likely gray taping the drill to a wooden or metal pole so one could get further away from the spinning drill. The next evolution was someone getting the bright idea of using fishing line of high test to put in the chuck of the drill. The next evolution was someone built a dedicated electrical device with the fishing line for use trimming weeds and lawn edging. The next evolution was to help gardeners in their profession by building gasoline powered weed eaters of various types. So, most of the best weed eaters are now gas powered. But, there are still many electric powered weed eaters available more though for home gardeners.
I witnessed the evolution of the skate board because I'm the right age. Though I separated a roller skate and made skateboards they were of the scooter variety where you had wooden handles. The next evolution began when I was about 12 when I saw the first 2X4 about 1 foot long with a separated roller skate nailed to it. It had the little metal wheels so if you turned you would skid the wheels and some people like this but if you hit a rock or pebble often you would have a bad spill. Then since I was in 7th grade I started to notice boys taking a piece of strong wood and making what looked like little wooden surfboards and putting a separated roller skate on the bottom. The metal skates were too dangerous for anything fancy so people started using plastic or nylon skate wheels from fancier skates used in indoor roller rinks rather than the metal ones. Since these wheels were being used on cement and asphalt they developed more specific wheels for use outdoors. The surfboard tops evolved too and everyone started making plastic ones sold at drug store chains and sporting goods stores. But always the best skateboards were custom made by the owners along the way.
Computers began sort of with World War II and the need to break German codes during World War II. Turing started this in Great Britain and Americans also in the U.S. were trying to break German codes too. This eventually led to the Eniac and other computers. However, until microchips were invented where transisters could be miniaturized really fast and compact computers couldn't be built.
Bill Gates bought a computer code in pacific Grove from a company there and developed it and sold some of the rights to IBM but kept the main rights for himself. This evolved into MS-Dos which was one of the first operating systems for micro-computers. MS-Dos evolved into Windows which evolved into windows 95 on up to the present day systems.
However, the flaw in both IBM Clones and Apple software was that the Internet was never considered to be coming. So, as a result the software wasn't designed for this eventuality at the beginning which is why problems are still arising with bugs and viruses and worms even today. Because the KRNL(s) haven't really been altered. So, what needs to happen is to restart from scratch which has not been done because software makers consider that too expensive for everyone at this point.
At this point it isn't just the cost to companies it is also at the cost of completely retraining the whole world to deal with this change and many changes.
If the internet hardware and software had all been designed at once there might not be the bugs and viruses and worms that you have now all over the world. There is no real way to fix this problem until people start from scratch. (Which might happen if only computers needed to be taught about the changes) which might be possible within 10 to 25 years.
In the end both necessity is the mother of invention and also cost both monetary and the human cost of retraining everyone. But, if you only have to retrain all computers this might be possible because of the world wide Internet and downloading stuff to retrain all computers and not all humans.
NOte: As I thought more about this I realized that a "True Fix" would necessitate the redesign from scratch not only of all software but also all hardware too. So, older computers might be given a "Transition code" but would still be vulnerable to viruses because the new code would be a "Translator" and not a completely genuine new code from scratch. So, to become invulnerable to hacking the design would need all new computers and all new software in the future at some point.
But, hacking is sort of like safecracking in that no matter how well something is designed someone is going to eventually figure out a way around it.
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