Herbert Kroemer 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics "for developing semiconductor heterostuctures used in high‑speed- and opto-electronics", University of California Santa Barbara, CA, USA

"Lemma of New Technology":
The principal applications of any sufficiently new and innovative technology always have been -- and will be – applications created by that new technology

This means that we should not judge this kind of new technology by what it may do for already existing applications, that is, whether it can do something a little bit better than we can already do pretty well.  To do so will ultimately slow down progress rather than enhance it. This was a problem already in 1963; it is much worse today.
It is what our funding agencies insist on through their obsession with so‑called "relevance," which can be safely translated into exhortations not to work on anything that does not have visible near-term applications.  The answer to this insistence is not in making unrealistic promises, which will only undermine our own credibility, but in educating these agencies to restore a more reasonable balance between short-term and long-term work.