Most of the gains to society in pursuit of alcohol have probably already been gained, and have paid dividends long ago. What’s left is the alcohol industry, which is huge and fairly consolidated, but I think home brewing is legal in many places for your own consumption. There are a huge number of microbreweries with restaurants and bars attached where I live, which is a startup to a certain reading. Folks are finding new yeasts and making new recipes. The wine industry is older than many hills.

The losses to society in pursuit of alcohol are very high, and technology might only enable more people to make poor choices after drinking, which is not a good thing at all, but safer options are also enabled by tech, like ride share services.

Technology is a tool to be used, and using alcohol poorly reflects on the user as much as the society which normalizes and enables poor use. Alcohol is just so old and established it just doesn’t even register as being a technological invention or byproduct itself, but it is only fair to situate it as such in this context alongside technologies and social issues that we can understand and mitigate the negative effects and externalities of.