Any benefits to development of mining hardware?

[Galahad]

I was just wondering whether the development of mining hardware could be useful to humanity or science in any other way besides mining coins? Could old hardware be used for other purposes, or are we just burning up extra gas / coal purely due to the disadvantages of the Bitcoin design? Could these developments help computer science and create better servers for instance?

I was thinking about why Satoshi would go for this mining design other than its main purpose (creation of coins), did he see a greater purpose hidden in mining?