I watched something on the Wright Brothers last night, and it was really fascinating. Those guys were pretty darn clever. It really got me wondering, though, if there is room for the common man to make any broad-stroke, humanity-changing discoveries.

My first inclination is "yes". Home computers are only a couple decades old. Hell, even cars and flight are 100 years old. There seems to be a lot of room for discovery in fields like medicine (new drugs, genetics, etc), and computers (new software and gadgets).

But the frontiers of discovery are getting pushed further and further away from the garage, it seems. One can hardly set up a lab in their spare time and study different proteins and so forth (can they?). Advancement using computers seems a little more likely, but again, things are now at such a high level (are they?) that it would be beyond one person. Maybe it's all relative, though. Maybe the Wright brothers said the same thing, back in the day.

What broad expanses of unknownness are left? Deep sea. Space. Medicine. New applications for faster/s