Very interesting article, Derb. Philip Longman touches on this issue in his book, The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity (And What To Do About It). Longman has a chapter on “The Slowing Pace of Progress.” In it, he imagines we could zoom Ozzie and Harriet from the fifties to a home in 2000. They’d pretty much recognize the technology–TV’s, telephones, etc., even if they’d have trouble dealing with VCR’s. But imagine a time machine taking Ozzie and Harriet back to a 1900 home. In fact, PBS had a special where they put people in a 1900 house, and it was extraordinarily arduous. Longman’s point is that, given the slowing pace of progress, technological change in unlikely to break us out of our economic-demographic dilemma.