One Man's Science is Another Man's Magic
SF fans often have a jaded view of technology. We see it all over movies, read about it in literature and view it in art (turns out a lot of technological progress in our old futures was to make space suits for the femmes skin tight and appear open to vacuum around the torso). In many SFRPs including the original 2d6 progenitor, technology seems to mostly involve tweaking and refining a few gosh! golly! true breakthroughs. The venerable Atomic Rockets site views a new tech level as being 85% refinement and 15% shit you never saw coming. The laser is one example. It was invented (or rediscovered depending on your world) at TL 7. At that point you could burn stuff with it, maybe melt stuff with a really good model. Now at TL 8 we use lasers for all manner of things, analysis, measuring, medicine, communications and they are smaller and burn a lot of stuff even better. TL 8 is the great mother of all leaps forward. We get anti-gravity, fusion power, and portable laser weapons. Makes you