I appreciate all the examples and the case the author is making! Don't buy the conclusion, as I think he or she is missing the subtle complexity of technology. If you had to rebuild modern civilization after a calamity, or just a gradual loss, I think it would take a very long time. I think, for example, if China experiences a disaster in the next few decades, our ability to manufacture physical goods at the quality and price they do will be set back decades or longer.

We have already experienced local loss of the details of technology. I think this is what the article is missing. He's looking at big things that are easy to state, while missing the tools-that-build-tools-that-build-tools foundation. I think the also "That's not tech, that's high skill" distinction is a technicality.

It is also viewing history through a filtered lens. A bit like labeling an age as a "stone" or "bronze" age, because that's the durable material that survived. Or anything involving the fossil record.

> I think, for example, if China experiences a disaster in the next few decades, our ability to manufacture physical goods at the quality and price they do will be set back decades or longer.

Decade perhaps, but probably not longer. We already build a lot of stuff around the world. The US makes things that we did in the 1950s when the US was the world manufacturing powerhouse - but we do so on about 1/10th as many people in manufacturing while population as doubled. We could switch many people to manufacturing - which to a large part would be automation of things China does by hand and in the end be better off - but that decade of switch we are all worse off because those jobs people are doing mostly have value.