Are they really dull? I don't know that to be true. I think the general public is no longer well equipped to appreciate their work so they tend to be clogs in the machine just doing their job like everyone else. You have no chance to escape a stereotype of being dull if you have no audience that understands and appreciates you work.
> [sabotage] derives from the Netherlands in the 15th
> century when workers would throw their sabots [clogs]
> into the wooden gears of the textile looms to break
> the cogs, feeling the automated machines would render
> the human workers obsolete.
So being "clogs in the machine" is rather apposite for people who are feeling ground down and unappreciated.
Just an educated guess but I think now solving problems which will be revolutionary in nature is just beyond the means of one single person simply because they are way too hard for just one Genius to solve it- so we don't have a famous Newton or an Einstein of present age and instead have lot of people working on lot of small chinks of the bigger problem
