Seriously though, the chap who figures out controlled nuclear fusion will quite likely work out of a physics lab in a University both of which are funded by the ad dollars I you & the rest of humanity spend on facebook.
But n th Facebook app/game, photosharing, UX/Design nonsensical blogging platform is surely isnt innovation.
The issue is that while Wealth might be a non zero sum game, talent is a zero sum game. More people making crap apps mean lesser people working on meaningful innovation in Healthcare, Energy and Computing.
And this sad trend is started by YC/TC and the likes. Actually all traditional VC firms such as KPCB do fund real innovative companies, e.g. BloomBox
Offer any 25 year old this choice:
a) You can be paid $100k/year and work on space travel.
b) You can go found a photosharing startup and I'll fund it.
The far majority will choose (a).
But guess what? No one is funding space travel, and when they do fund space travel, the 25-year-olds they hire are generally just sexy female secretaries who fetch them coffee.
Offer a 25 year old a challenging job in the space travel field and he will take it. The jobs aren't there. No one with money gives a fuck about space travel aside from Richard Branson who won't hire me because I don't have 30 years of experience being a rocket scientist.
Why is it so hard to become an apprentice to a rocket scientist? Why are there so few jobs in this field, and so many in sharing photos and affiliate marketing?
Something along the lines of "Much of America's so-called innovation is meaningless" might be more accurate. But any environment that is sufficiently conducive to innovation will produce a lot of meaningless innovation along with the meaningful stuff. Innovation consists of a huge number of failed experiments and a few successful ones.