Sometimes I think of the HFT and quant trading industries are like the Formula 1 of tech. A way for extremely talented people to apply their skills and compete

Sometimes I think of the HFT and quant trading industries are like the Formula 1 of tech. A way for extremely talented people to apply their skills and compete with each other, with lots of money involved, but ultimately the technologies developed for the 'race track' make their way onto 'main street' in some shape or form. I'm sure all this research into ultra low latency infrastructure and live data mining is bound to come in useful somewhere else. Maybe this is off base but why be cynical.