I wonder if this is a bad as everyone thinks. When a new technology arrives which is not completely understood, isn't the right approach to try to find some applications for it? Sure, most will fail, but some valid use cases will likely emerge.
I'm pretty sure almost all technologies at some point were solutions looking for a problem to solve. Examples include the internet, the computer and math.
I think the opposite -- nearly all technologies came about as a result of people trying to solve existing real problems. Examples include the internet, the computer and math. (Although I don't think "math" counts as a technology.)
The internet came about from darpanet, which was solving the problem of network resiliency. Computers automated what used to be a human job ("computer") of doing very large amounts of computations. That automation was solving the problem of needing to do more computations than could be done with armies of people.
I think it is. If they actually do end up finding a problem to solve, that would be serendipitous but I imagine the vast majority of the time they find themselves in the business of trying to convince the rest of us to buy a thing that we don’t need. And while the latter may drive the economy to some degree as I get older I detest it more and more.
There have been no real advancements since the desktop model of the late 1990s. We might have more animations and applications running in virtual machines for security purposes, but literally nothing new has come out.
Even all the web apps are reimplementation of basic desktop capabilities from the decades before, but slower and with more RAM usage. They might be easier to write (I personally don't think so - RAD apps from the 90s were quicker to write and use) but the actual utility hasn't changed; if anything it's just shoving all of your data from your microcomputer to someone else's microcomputer, and being tracked and losing control of said data whilst you're at it!
And we have easier access to videos on the Internet, I guess??
It all seems to be missing the point of actually having a computational device locally. There is no computation going on. It's all digital paper pushing.
The problem with “stuff we don’t need” arguments is they are fundamentally nihilistic.
Everyone needs a flying car so let’s get on with it.
Also the Internet came out of DARPA which was a method of sharing data between geographically remote military facilities. It wasn't like they wired up devices and thought "what could we use this for?".
Only after DARPAnet solved that problem did it get adapted to some other problems (ex: how do I send cat pictures to people)?