Peter isn't the only one saying this. Even the eminent Alan Kay raises the point:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-in...
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-in...
Alan Kay asks about big ideas, not about innovation. I'm pretty sure that if you look at research papers you'll find amazing ideas that within a 5/10/30 years time will be important(but we can't tell, not until we worked hard to make them work).
Just of the top of my head, there are many potential amazing ideas: look at literature based discovery, alan kay's project that tries to build full os + apps in less than 20KLOC, "naked objects" and meredith patterson's work on parsing and security[1].
I like your enthusiasm and your list is fantastic. I haven't seen Meredith Patterson's stuff. It looks interesting. But we were also "on the cusp" of curing cancer in the 70's.
This is personal, I guess. I've spent an inordinate time on deep research and I've done it on my own. It's frustrating to watch while things like the Kickstarter for T-shirts get drowned in financing while I count pennies.
I'll try to be more optimistic but there's nothing wrong with saying, "Let's stop chasing money and start chasing something more. Something bigger. Something better."