My favourite example of this is Arthur C Clarke seemingly failing to pick up on robots. He was the first to realise that geo-stationary satellites would be great for broadcasting media (I think that's the exact distinction?) but, for example, he has a short story where whole space stations of crews of men are working away, just to relay and broadcast TV to the planet below. Robots, dude. It's all robots.

Tho I disagree that it ruins the story. You have to take any story on it's own terms, and accept it to a certain degree. There is plenty of other stuff in his short stories to enjoy.