At the risk of being downvoted I'm going to say that "faster horses" proponents could have been right, looking at the current state of the world.

Yes, you're probably right.

https://horses.extension.org/what-is-the-carbon-footprint-of...

People also want teleportation, immortality, and unicorns. I’d say the general public do imagine wild things all the time.

Never liked that quote. It never made any sense to me.