I believe that the idea that the end of some avenue of human ingenuity has been reached, and your implicit statement of differing values between the past and pr

I believe that the idea that the end of some avenue of human ingenuity has been reached, and your implicit statement of differing values between the past and present, are both perennially recurrent throughout history. It's not necessarily a bad thing if today's academics are pursuing things that are not among your interests, and it's more likely than not that the speed of the dissemination of ideas, the recognition of their value, and their broad application has not appreciably changed in recent decades (assuming that it's more meaningful to talk about that in terms of a "March of Progress" than a "Random Walk of Progress"). I would think it most reasonable to assume that the academics are where they have always been, doing the same arcane and incomprehensible things that academics have always done, and that any appearance to the contrary was a fault of my own perspective.