[McMad]

Innovation has taken a different direction to the past fifty or so years.

I agree totally with this. It's not so much that there is no innovation, it's just that people aren't as aware of it. To use your example of energy, there's a nuclear fusion plant being built in the E.U. called ITER. On their website they say: "Fusion is the energy source of the sun and the stars. On earth, fusion research is aimed at demonstrating that this energy source can be used to produce electricity in a safe and environmentally benign way, with abundant fuel resources, to meet the needs of a growing world population." Sounds pretty important stuff to me, but how many people have actually heard of it?

[castor]

Humans are intelligent enough that we will eventually figure out how to expand the capabilities of our own brains, and therefore break the only limitation that we could possibly encounter.

I like that idea.
Yet the universe appears to me like its building "blocks" would be somehow infinitely complex/recursive.
Also, it bothers me a bit that the brains need to be part of the universe Like, to understand the ultimate complexity of the universe, do you need to be even more complex than the universe? (luckily, there are plenty of woman physicists out there  )