My son (15) has expressed interest in studying materials science. While he's still years away from a firm decision, it doesn't seem like a bad path to me.
Seems like most true technology breakthroughs come from materials science. It is much harder to get the benefits of those advances though, since the path from materials science to product can be long and complicated.
I'll leave "true" up to someone else, but in my opinion "not true" is all the stuff that's just a gimmick. Someone might think of the nail puller on the side of a Craftsman hammer to be "an innovation", but to me it's just a gimmick. It's useless compared to anything actually designed to pull nails, and it was added for the sole purpose of making people go "I don't have one of those, I need to buy one".
I think a good 50% of "innovations" under capitalism fall into this category. They're only thought of as "innovations" because the parasites who make a profit from it are the ones in charge of headlines.
