You may be overly pessimistic about what today feels like in comparison to some imagined golden age. Back then felt a lot like today, actually. I think relevan

You may be overly pessimistic about what today feels like in comparison to some imagined golden age. Back then felt a lot like today, actually. I think relevant fields are healthcare, energy and food. All of those are hard to attack by startups or individuals. Being of the age now where I can spend money on stuff I'd like to see (and build myself): - more personalized health care, cheap high resolution MRIs, cheap signal processing for any vital sign that can be measured with cheapl sensors, large anonymous databases that can map my data into what might be wrong with me - swarms of drones for fun and profit, especially if we can build the equivalent of a wireless sensor network funded by many individually owned drones. Not sure how this could pay off, though.