The author has a romantic notion of technical progress. That's fine, but I'd argue that today's innovations have as much relevance as yesterday's, even though t

The author has a romantic notion of technical progress. That's fine, but I'd argue that today's innovations have as much relevance as yesterday's, even though they lack the sex appeal. And as others have pointed out, in a lot of the well-known examples, we've reached certain limits that make technological progress very expensive. For example, probably the primary reason we don't have better airplane engines is because exceeding the speed of sound is a very noisy proposition. I have an excellent book on the B-70 bomber, which in my opinion is the most beautiful airplane ever designed. And among the reasons it was not adopted is that sonic booms over populated areas piss people off. And flying higher makes the problem (counter-intuitively) worse. But the main reason the B-70 was shelved was the ICBM. And that forms my next point. The internet itself has (or should have) made some reasons for travelling pointless. And it works at a much higher velocity -- a nearly the speed of light. So in a way the author seems to pine for a "faster horse" instead of a car.