What role, if any, do you think air conditioning, or climate control in general, have helped technological advancement?
What I mean is, do you think certain achievements were only made because of the comfort in an environment? One less factor to worry about and focus on the task at hand.
If you are talking about any air conditioning, I think most people forget refrigeration is a form of air conditioning.
If you are talking about room air conditioning only, I think it has been vital for science to be able to control the temperature of a room.
If you are talking about technological advancements that were not dependent on room temperature and only about the comfort and happiness of the people who worked there, I have two thoughts about the matter:
or
Kind of obvious, but: modern skyscraper construction, particularly “glass box” buildings, would be impossible without air conditioning. Look at pre-war NY skyscrapers, like the Empire State building: very narrow, with lots of folds and inlets, so that all the building’s inhabitants receive direct access to windows. Something like thiscouldn’t exist without AC - people inside would be cooked alive.
This is mostly what I was refering to
There would be no sunbelt boom in the US. Nobody would move to Arizona or Florida without AC.
Until after WWII, the South and Southwest in the U.S. had a proportionally tiny share of population, manufacturing, and retail. People did not want to move there because of the heat and humidity.
The emptying out of the Rust Belt states happened for a number of reasons, but the availability of air conditioning in every home and building was certainly a factor and probably a major one. A large percentage of people turn out to hate northern winters and desire sun and the ability to do things outdoors all year round. Being able to escape the heat whenever they choose made this feasible.
The population of the Sun Belt states boomed, the number of factories that moved down south increased rapidly, and whole cultures of technology around places like Austin and Raleigh-Durham came into existence. Sure, other historical effect played large roles (they didn’t have union cultures, they were forced to open up their societies to blacks) but if nobody wanted to move there in the first place the rest would have had less import.
ETA: Beaten, but mine was longer. 
Relative humidity playas a critical role in the manufacturing of paper and paper products. Control of RH in paper plants (using air conditioning) is very important to the reliability of the processes and quality of the product.
There’d be no internet without it. You can’t set up any significant network if you can’t keep a server room cold, and if you can’t set up a small local network, you certainly can’t create a global one.
