Our primitive rudimentary materialism is greatly hampering our own perspective about possibilities.
Or, our exploding understanding of the material is inevitably leading us to more and more understanding of possibilities.
I think you are right of course about the ever better ability to see the smallest of particles within material things. And the ability to crack/split physical atoms. But the real investigation that will advance us much more is in the non material energies that control all those particles. The energies that group particles into material things is more important than the particles themselves. The true properties of these energies is where we lack proficient knowledge. We just do not understand them very well yet.
Let me put it this way. We are literally made of mineral rich dirt. Yet we still do not know what kind of energy properties happened to arrange all that dirt into the living being that we are... We are way behind on what we should already know by now. :)