I have an engineer friend who has recently put forward the idea that computing technology is approaching becoming a 'mature' technology, like the automobile in the 1950s. It gets a job done and does it well, every change made after that point is a matter of small incremental tweaks. Yeah you get twice the gas mileage now as you did then after a load of small changes with diminishing returns, but is it really all that different? Other friends of mine working as programmers have reacted favorably when I relayed this idea.

Also, why should slower development of new applications for the computer industry kill the economy?