Makes my hair stand up thinking about working on a project such as the Boston Camera. People like Feynman walked around alive and computers were being invented.
Hey Silicon Valley, why are we working on ads? (myself included). I wanna do something else.
Still mountains of stuff being invented now. Almost the entire history of smartphones comes from the last 10 years.
If you think this camera in the OP is cool, you should also be impressed that we are putting periscopes and mirrors inside phones to create adjustable zoom that fits in your pocket and costs hardly anything.
Another commenter made a valid point that there is a lot else going on, if you're not blinded by high comp. I guess that's true for both investors and employees.
There's a lot out there that doesn't work with the current VC model. Some of it is that there are great potential businesses that aren't going to be billion dollar exits. I think a lot of these are more interesting or worthwhile things to work on. There are VCs that will invest in those, but I think the amount of equity they take is too high.
Then there are a bunch of great things to work on that require lots of capex. These are also worthwhile and interesting. Other countries are making those investments, and we're going to be in a bad place by not doing the same.
On the other hand, this could mostly be selection bias on which stories get passed down. I haven't looked into it rigorously, it's just a feeling I sometimes get when I see the cookie cutter study design/grant writing process going on.
Post-WWII would have been a great time to be working in tech. "To photograph people's faces from high altitude, we'll need a lens with a 240 inch focal length." "But our airplanes are only 140 inches diameter". "We'll use mirrors."