Comment by Smaug123

It's not useless as such, although certainly its use is exceedingly niche. My headcanon is that Cecil Rhodes saw something back in the 1880s, something which drove him to create a corporate engine which would continue to bend the culture centuries after his own death. Now, a hundred and fifty years later, an appreciable fraction of the population carries with them at all times an object capable of scratching everything. What he saw, I cannot say, but one day in our hour of need the population will be equipped.