Yeah, internet, sliced bread and all that are great. But flying cars and a cure for AIDS would have been nice too.

My point is that in the '80s there was a lot of optimism about humankind's capabilities, people were saying "it's not a question of what CAN we do anymore, it is what SHOULD we do", implying we COULD do anything. I believed that at the time, but have grown increasingly skeptical (and I blame the brain drain away from science and into zero-sum games like finance for not fulfilling our potential).

Also, you are wrong about AIDS - apparently in USA alone there are around 18,000 AIDS caused fatalities each year (http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/resources/factsheets/us.htm).

You are wrong about AI too, it has already been implemented - in meat, of all things!