If you're really interested in a better answer to this question, there are two books I would refer to:

A Pulitzer winning book: https://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Societies/dp/0393317552

And Bill Gates' recent favourite:
https://www.amazon.com/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah-Harari/dp/0062316117/

The former details that societies that do not invest in scientific and tech usually ceases to exist, though those that do not plan ahead to co-exist well with the environment would also perish (the author has another book, called Collapse, that covers specifically on those that perished).

The latter book meanwhile looks at things that emerged that helped impact society for the better (amongst other things), so it's kind of hard to want to direct science and technology.

As a bonus, I recently read another book, which detailed the struggle of bringing out new science and technology - https://www.amazon.com/Leonardo-Vinci-Walter-Isaacson/dp/1501139150/

A wonderful book that looks at how long it takes society to "catch-up" to great insights, some which have taken 4 centuries to confirm.