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This is the best summary I could come up with:

Just look at how personal computers largely replaced the hulking mainframes and minicomputers that came before them, then proceeded to slowly accumulate the advanced features of those older systems, like multi-user support, redundancy, and security.

There are also technologies that seemed ahead of their time, or which industry veterans may look back on with fondness because they offered something missing from our current world of high tech.

One of these is Lotus Notes, the mere mention of which is likely to draw derisory comments from readers because it certainly wasn't without its faults; its resource-hungriness caused the program to be referred to as "Notice Loads" among some users, for example.

The program was a weird combination of email, databases, and workflow that allowed companies to stand up custom applications and deploy them to relevant groups of workers inside Notes.

Nowadays, it is common for most if not all of these functions to be delivered via separate web-based applications, each requiring a different login so you need to have dozens of different credentials, and each one sporting a different user interface.

Computer kit to be reviewed used to arrive at the publisher's offices and would be given a serial code and logged in to a storeroom by a member of staff.

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