Google Founder Larry Page spoke to the American Scientists Friday and encouraged them to market science projects better and also to look for solutions to pressing problems. Good advice indeed. I’m frustrated to see so much of the innovation and brainpower of American science go to the study of obscure or abstract things when it would be put to better use solving the pressing problems of out time like global health, infrastructure improvements, etc, etc.
Come on PhDz, let’s move those intellects into practical problem solving gear!
Joe Duck 
Often there is an economic incentive to explore the obscure: in Medicine an obscure molecule that is some benefit that is demonstrable only after much statistical manipulation is still going to have a potential for being profitable. Yet from a POEM point of view (Patient Oriented Evidence that Matters) a non-patentable vitamin that has a profound effect on the patient is not a worthwhile investment at all.
Infrastructure? Laser detection of tiny cracks in our roadways and laser repair of those tiny cracks would prevent potholes from ever forming. I was once contacted by someone in Canada who had a question regarding road repairs there and all I did was suggest a trip to their nearest small airport where snow and ice was not really all that different from their roads. Its a matter of focusing on the problems. A runway gets attention right away; a roadway does not.
Page suggested that almost all human progress has come from technological advancements. I’m very comfortable with that notion but I wonder if this would be challenged by many others. Certainly some fanatical religious groups would say that all human problems and human REgress has come from technology.
Fools Gold re: Focusing. Yes, but I’d suggest we generally focus on problems in sub-optimal, political or emotional ways. TSA screens grandma for banned liquids but we still have inadequate container procedures. Groups of astrophysicists call for a massive global anti-asteroid collision plan while something like 10,000 die daily from diarrhea and malaria.