"Technology changes everything"

Title of this post comes from a recent TV advertisement for some school that wants your money desperately enough to advertise.

I suppose you can't deny it: technology does change things. Couple of my personal favorites: the fax machine and the microwave oven.

New phones, no, I don't care. They're everywhere. Doesn't matter. I couldn't be bothered even to answer a land-line phone. Why would I want a one I can carry around?

But that's just me. Let's go with Toynbee instead. Arnold Toynbee. In my old notes, under Why Technologies Are Abandoned (Toynbee), there is this excerpt:

When a civilization is in decline it sometimes happens that a particular technique, that has been both feasible and profitable during the growth-stage, now begins to encounter social obstacles and to yield diminishing economic returns; if it becomes patently unremunerative it may be deliberately abandoned.

...An obvious case in point is the abandonment of the Roman roads in
Western Europe....

from: Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History. Abridgement by D.C. Somervell, pp.255-256.

If it becomes patently unremunerative it may be deliberately abandoned.

Technology changes everything. But technology does not survive if it becomes patently unremunerative.

Economics trumps technology.