BECs are about where lasers were in maybe 1970. They are one of the many scientific breakthroughs that will have a tortuous path to practical application, but it will happen eventually.
And when they get to that point, the results will be as incredible to people at that time as the CD-ROM, fiber optics, terabyte communication channels, 3D printing, and all the rest have been to our generation.
It took about 50 years between the first indication of the interesting things that govern the flow of electric charge through large crystal structures and the development of the first integrated circuits. The strange phenomena that caught the imagination of those who explored the behavior of galena crystals as AM RF demodulators back in the 1920s led to the transistor, the IC chip, the semiconductor laser, the microprocessor, the internet, and a changed world.
BECs and some of the other way-out things that are developing in physics and chemistry are going to push society in unimaginable directions.
Link that with breakthroughs in genetics and computer science, and the world of Kirk, Spock and Bones is not far off.
The future should be better than the past.
For a layman, what are the practical applications of this in the future?