Read the Graeber article I linked earlier in case you haven't and are interested. Bio-tech is one of the industries he specifically mentions as being somewhat a degenerate case with regard to this argument.

In his essay, the the particulars of technological achievement (e.g. flying cars) are rhetorical. If it isn't our current economic system with for-profit corporations driving the direction of technological evolution, what is? The question that interests me, however, is how should we, as a society, make those kinds of decisions?