Not shilling for any "revolutionary" ideas. Just look at the history of the transistor, sometimes these developments and implementations take longer than what's convenient from a users perspective. And one could argue the difference now too is work done in the first half of the 20th century was relatively low hanging fruit compared to the limits we're trying to push now. It was a good twenty years between the first patent for the transistor and a demonstrable transistor, and then another seven years on top of that before a commercial implementation.

Ten years is an arbitrary length of time. And these things might lead to nothing, sure. But...

1. There's a long road between discovery and implementation and no reliable length of time that can always be pointed to say "that's how long it takes".

2. Road blocks and expense in implementation. Some things are just hard and depend on yet to be discovered or perfected technology to make them viable.

3. Existing technologies and processes are still sufficient, mature and cost effective. So we'll use those until the new technology can do it better and cheaper. We probably won't be using x86 and current technologies forever.

I like to think of an example I probably got from a Carl Sagan book that deals more with why throwing money at a problem doesn't guarantee results, but it was an argument for funding all science and discovery because we can't predict what discoveries will yield. It went something like: The British empire in 1850 could have spent every penny it had to develop television and it would have failed because it depended on science discoveries yet to be made. It doesn't mean television wasn't viable or that it was impossible. And no one could have predicted that some of the things discovered, which probably seemed inconsequential to the general public and a waste of time and money would help lead to television decades later.