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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/5577
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

This exact problem is what makes "pure" science fiction so hard to write properly -- but also so satisfying to read when done well. I don't have a perfect answer, just some thoughts about some story models you can apply:

**Notes on conflict**  
Note that stories are about conflict, but conflict is not necessarily person vs. person. There's also person vs environment (climbing that mountain; surviving that drought), person vs. machine (building that impossible car; surviving against grinding political oppression), and person vs. self (beating addiction; resisting that irresistible temptation)

**Models:**  
**Process for conflict**  
Much scientific research and technology invention is done to solve some sort of problem. In this model, that problem is your conflict. The characters have a problem, invent a tech to solve it, then set about solving it with that tech with lots of surprises along the way.

**Process causes conflict**  
Here the tech is innocently developed, but directly causes a host of problems. Those problems are the conflict, and the characters spend the story trying to put the genie back in the bottle, and/or develop past the problems.

**Process causes change in milieu**  
Here the tech doesn't necessarily cause problems itself, but it changes the rules of life/social order so dramatically that it throws society into turmoil. Think of the switch from agrarian to industrial society for example. The conflict is whatever you think those changes will spark and you can show snapshots in time with different characters the way you're describing.

**Process as a character**  
This model is probably the one you want. In fact, this one can be used along with any of the other models. Here you treat that tech/process as a character itself. Not necessarily as a living, breathing, sleeping around kind of character (though that's possible), but rather that the process follows a development arc the way a person character would -- it undergoes some kind of transformation over the course of the story.

Two ways to effect this transformation: If the process is mutable, you can have the process change, that is develop, over time in response to the various character's attempts to deal with it. If it's immutable, you'll need to hide the entirety of the process at the beginning and reveal it to the reader in stages over time, via what the various characters discover or experience.

One key thing to make this work is that just like an interesting character, an interesting process needs its own unique "voice", or flavor, that remains consistently distinct throughout the story. What you want is the reader to be "watching" the process, riveted by what'll happen or be revealed next, rather than watching the characters.

Hope this helps.

Original score: 6