> It makes one wonder what currently isn't being invented simply because it doesn't fit into our conceptual framework.
It's fun to think up thought exercises to try and help break out of our conceptual framework. On a smaller scale, an approach I've played around with is taking attributes of existing technologies that have certain things in common, then diagramming them in different ways and looking for holes.
As a concrete example, let's go back to 2005. You might reason that e-mails and blog posts are both kinds of written messages, however blogs have an open audience, while e-mails are sent to specific recipients, so a closed audience. Separately, you might compare e-mails to text messages, and realize that they are very similar, but one is long form while the other is short form. You can draw this as a table:
| short form | long form |
-+------------+-----------+
open | ??? | blogs |
-+------------+-----------|
closed | SMS texts | e-mail |
-+------------+-----------+