What Are We Missing?

The Romans had steam power.
   It's true.  Not during Julius Caesar's time, but later in the Empire.  They didn't have a true steam engine, not like the one developed in the 18th Century, but they did have a furnace that used the pressure produced from boiling water into steam to open temple doors, to make music like a calliope, to make statues move, that kind of thing.  Disney-style animatronics.  And that's as far as it went.  Steam power was, for them, a novelty and an oddity, not a scientific or technological achievement.  I'm not even certain they knew science or technology as we do now; they were human beings as much as you and I are, but their culture was very, very different. 
   There could be any number of reasons steam power never caught on in Rome - lack of effective long-distance communications, cheap slave labor, lack of efficient materials science, lack of scientific method at all, general apathy by people with the power and money to make things happen.  Maybe all of those.  But the fact remains the Romans knew about steam power and did nothing useful with it.  Not a damn thing.  They just missed it.
    The Romans couldn't see what they couldn't see* if you catch my drift.  They were blind to the application of steam power.  It took 1400 years from the decline of the Empire, to the Dark Ages, to the Renaissance, and through Enlightenment for the idea of using steam to do work to catch on.  The Romans were nothing but funny writing on marble monuments by the time some smart cookies used steam to run a locomotive about 200 years ago.  That's a big gap.
   Which makes me wonder what we're missing.  What's right in front of us at this very moment that we can't see the value of?  What amazing invention is some lonely researcher creating that we're going to ignore, that will prove to be a giant leap forward 1400 years from now?  Nikola Tesla - who turned out to be right about everything he ever put his mind to - imagined some pretty wacky stuff in addition to things like radio, AC power, and wireless energy transfer.  What if that wacky stuff is the next steam engine?  What cultural or societal blinders do we have on that hide what could be a breakthrough that will change the world again?**
   But, more to the point, how do we avoid being caught unprepared, like the Romans with steam power?  We now have a worldwide scientific community, a competitive business environment, and plenty of monetary incentive for good people to bring their inventions forward.  But isn't that just another kind of cultural prison?  Aren't there ideas that don't conform to corporate expectations?  Ideas that aren't destined to increase profits and grow the bottom line?  And aren't those ideas almost certain to be the best?
   I don't know... trying to see what you're culturally programmed to ignore sounds to me like trying to tickle yourself, just can't be done.  But there is that one in a million person who can tickle themselves, so maybe there's a chance.  I'm going to keep my eye open, and hope I recognize innovation when it smacks me in the face.




* I apologize for the Rumsfelidan circular reference

** I don't mean something like Soylent Green, I'm not advocating cannibalism.  Not just yet.