[hawkw]

It seems to me that the questions we're asking in the 2010s seem to be less about "how can we make a new technology" and more about "how can we use the technology we already have". We already have pretty much all the computing power we need for most tasks* at our fingertips, and the question is now what do we do with it? It's the same for other technologies. How do we use, say, social networking, or databases, or what have you in a way that people want to use and that we can profit from?

* I don't want to fall into the trap of Bill Gates saying "640K is more memory than anyone will ever need."

[andr3w321]

This is definitely not true. More money is spent on building and renting supercomputers every year even through the recession. There is tremendous demand out there for solving problems that would just not be possible without them. I believe Google's self driving cars collect 1 GB/sec of data.

It's just that we have a hard time imagining why we would ever need such a powerful CPU which is why you are saying this. Why would someone in 2005 ever imagine we need such a powerful computer in our pocket in 2013? What possible uses could we have for it?

[dualogy]

Easy: Angry Birds!