[jacquesm]

One of the best inspirations you can get for what you could build to score a home-run is to read science fiction. The older the better in a way, because those ideas may be just viable today. In general reading is a great source of inspiration but SF has a special place in that it is forward looking by definition and has/had some pretty creative people doing all the groundwork.

[M2Ys4U]

Indeed. To aptly quote Asimov: "Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinded critics and philosophers of today, but the core of science fiction, its essence, has become crucial to our salvation, if we are to be saved at all."

[essayist]

Ruth Ellen Miller's dissertation, Enhancing impact assessment with extrapolative fiction[1], explored the use of science fiction for projecting technology scenarios. For instance, she found SF stories that described the kind of social/class disconnects that contributed to the Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown.

Disclaimer: she's a friend and former instructor of mine.

[1] http://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/816/