It's also amazing to me how quantitative, evolutionary advances to some technologies that might seem futile or superficial enable some qualitative technology le

It's also amazing to me how quantitative, evolutionary advances to some technologies that might seem futile or superficial enable some qualitative technology leaps. For example, miniaturization of computers seemed pretty futile to me in the 90s. Indeed, why would I care if that big box becomes slightly smaller? That miniaturization is basically what enabled the whole smartphone industry. The large-scale availability of small and powerful chips in turn enabled the drone / quadcopter to become feasible (a quadcopter is too unstable to fly on its own, and there's no real way to stabilize it mechanically like we do on RC helicopters; it has to be stabilized electronically). I think the best inventions come from recognizing the kind of qualitative leaps you can do from evolutionary advances to existing technologies.