We are taught to think that there was something special or even superhuman about newton, turing, etc. But the reality is that they were one of many highly intelligent people working on the same problems created by society's progress. Even if they didn't succeed or achieve, someone else would have. But humans have an innate myth making imperative and a desire to hero worship so we create heros. But reality and history is far more complicated than the idealized myths we create. Without newton, we'd still have calculus ( leibniz, et al ). Without turing, we'd still have computer science ( Church, et al ).

I'm willing to grant that this is true in one sense: having the right surrounding environment is necessary for the creation of some "great work". What I question is whether it's sufficient.

If some other filmmaker made the zeitgeist-equivalent to 2001, or some other entrepreneur made the zeitgeist-equivalent to Microsoft or Amazon, they would have done it differently, and differently enough that those differences, in and of themselves, would have had tremendous impact.