quote:

---

That tech could be used in so many better ways.

---

I think a lot of progress and innovation comes from that direction - someone from one discipline discovers something, but they don't have the right frame of reference to see how to most effectively use it, so they make a fly-swatter with the new technology. Someone looking at it from a different direction applies the discovery differently and takes us to the stars. Paradigm shift?

In another vein (pun unintended), I never thought about the impact that rapidly evolving technologies have had on writing science fiction. Sort of like computers - you buy the top of the line model, but it's obsolete next week. As a writer, you try to imagine how things will be in some future. By the time you are done writing, your idea has either:
1) Been proven to be totally impossible and it looks stupid.
2) Been invented and exists in the real world, but your imagined version seems strange instead of revolutionary because it isn't the same as the real one.
3) Been invented, and you were SO VISIONARY that yours works just like the real thing, which means your story isn't science FICTION anymore.