I love the analogy, but I think it flawed: the limits are practical and excess just adds risk.

On the flip side, nothing seems more exemplified by humanity than a zeal for doing a thing as big and grandiose as possible: for curiosity, for business, for art, or just for sheer vanity.

I don't think we've seen how far those will take us yet, even w/o improvements to the bottlenecks you suggest. I do agree that those "meta" fields matter and will make a huge difference.