This paper explores issues associated with Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC) research and development - with an overall goal of initiating a discussion of how PIC technology should develop and eventually be deployed with high impact. Significant research and development programs have focused on PICs for routing and switching, and computer interconnects. Most recently, the application domain of PICs has diversified greatly, and now includes analog signal processing, remote sensing, biological and chemical sensing, neural interfacing, and solar cells. A key feature of PIC technology growth has been the exploitation of high-density fabrication and packaging technology originally developed for the Silicon IC industry. PIC foundry services are emerging - and there has been a natural attempt to ascribe a "Moore's Law" to PIC scaling. Analogies to Silicon electronic scaling, however, should be used with caution. PIC complexity scaling may be driven more by the ability to access the degrees-of-freedom offered by PIC-based optical domain signal processing, rather than increasing device count. Specific examples of PIC research in chip-scale computer interconnects and integrated micro-concentrators for solar cells are highlighted.