One place this is seen is building regulations. It's not uncommon for an exact door or frame thickness to be legislated, and the required thickness is based on fire risks. This was a very good thing in the short term, but in the longer term, it removed any economic incentive for innovating new materials that require less thickness to provide the same level of protection.
Since it's been many decades since regulations were created in most places, there's often quite a bit of low hanging fruit, from a materials technology standpoint. There would be even more if the rules had targeted objectives (e.g. fire resistance), as opposed to methods (e.g., a set material thickness).
In the big scheme of things, technological progress has been strongly correlated with social good. We live longer, healthier lives and have more amenities than any time in history. It's much nicer to be living in the 2020s than I would be in the 1970s, 1920s or the 1820s. People living in each of those earlier eras saw the benefits they had from electricity, antibiotics, rail transportation, etc that those before them lacked and it's not hard to imagine people in the 2070s will be happy not to be saddled with our current level of technology.
It's easy to devalue what we don't yet have, but it's a fallacy.