If Ross Douthat thinks we've slowed technologically and modern technological gimmicks are trivial, well hahahaha, I agree, and he's just betrayed every conservative tenant.
- Space race was classic post-war consensus big goverment spending, and planning.
- Modern technologies, whether it's startups focusing on trains not plains, small powerplants not big ones, phones satellites and not wires in the ground, is entirely tech hacking around coordination failure. We've lost the ability to collaborate on the big stuff, and a lot of that is due precisely to conservationism weaponizing exiting structural failures in our governance model.
Art stagnation: well actually the popular art has been getting a lot better. Look at old music videos vs new ones, for example. Also R&B triumphing over rock as the foundation of pop means we get better rhythm and harmony, the twin pillars of syncretic music. But if high art is stagnent, well, that's clearly got to do with a the stagnation of the people on the top of the economic period with the leisure time. Nothing promotes changing tastes like changing audiences. Or blame underfunded schools and increasing in working hours for the non-rich.
Economic stagnation. Obviously wage growth decline is a proximate cause, not just a symptom (i.e. other factors might cause it or make it hard to fix, but if we could fix it it would help with the rest).
I could go on, but basically Douthat is just talking about symptoms to get along with the more literary coastal elites. It's shambolic. I'll take it more serious if he learns macroeconomics and becomes some sort of libertarian UBI-er.