There was no idea of the outcome of something like Newtonian mechanics, of how it would change the world, or Faraday's electricity, or Maxwell's invention of what amounts to communications, radio communication. All of these things were done as part of a scientific community, and were recognized as great breakthroughs in science. I mean Faraday knew that when he invented the electric motor some day it would have a big impact, but he was too busy trying to understand the nature of electricity and magnetism to bother with that. Today, because those lessons have worn in, and because we have a complex society and because there is another thing that happens, a kind of cycle. Science begets technology.
Technology is where science impacts on daily life.
The technology empowers science to do better science, because now science has machines that plug into a wall socket, you have electricity, giant computers which were in turn an invention of an earlier science and now are available to scientists to do more science. So that clearly impacts on how scientists think, how they learn, how they study, and how they behave. Well, communications of course is one of the facets of technology that impacts very greatly on science. The pace is enormous. The pace of communications of course not only impacts science, it impacts politics.