"Unexpected direction" doesn't refer only to science or technology. There are market issues, and other issues as well.

Cell phones, to use one of my examples, are not a bizarre new technology. They're basically radios, and nothing in them would startle a physicist, or even a good technologist.

But when I was in college, not even the most brilliant engineers I knew would have predicted that by now even high school kids would be carrying wireless phones in their pockets for a reasonable price. Mine is still a flip-phone. I still get a kick out of answering "Kirk here," to some callers.

The cell phone breakthrough was part technology, part software, part other things. The name "cell phone" shows part of what the solutions were. But nobody saw the current penetration of cell phones into the market, much less that you would be able to take pictures with one or play games on it.

Thirty years ago the only civilians with personal radio phones were being driven around in limousines, and they were the size of a shoe box. Right now, the same is true of fuel cell power generators and solar-powered homes. Wait for it.

As for the Internet, a lot of people saw the benefits of computers talking to each other*. Not a lot of people predicted the penetration of the concept into the current world, though, or that millions of people would do most of their shopping that way. It's amazing how people adapt--to look around you'd think people had been surfing the Web for generations.

.

* Years ago, after being introduced to the Plato terminal and discovering "Empire," what may have been the first online multiplayer game, I wasted a lot of my time writing up proposals to arcade game companies trying to convince them that arcades where you could play war games over the phone with other franchised arcades over dedicated lines (for much better play) might be a moneymaker. I still have that proposal on file.