Another cause could be increased capital investment in existing systems due to larger populations. The author brings up a good point that a lot of common produc

Another cause could be increased capital investment in existing systems due to larger populations. The author brings up a good point that a lot of common products and experiences haven't changed much in the last 50 years. But think about what would be involved in changing the fundamental nature of something like air conditioning or plane travel. Billions upon billions of dollars are invested in building and maintaining the current systems. Financial and physical infrastructure that didn't exist after war world 2, and didn't have to be replaced with something new. This doesn't explain why we haven't sent a person to mars or had meaningful civil rights reforms. But technological progress is often limited by the switching costs from one paradigm to another. And those costs tend to compound over time