I don't doubt the concern or the observation of the author. I'm not sure if the phenomena observed by the author is any different, statistically, from before. If I look back, it was always a small percentage of people, driven by their innate curiosity, who moonlighted their way to great discoveries. If anything is different, we have more people working in the tech industry, and naturally the concentration of curious and driven people gets diluted. Consequently, one may not observe the same intensity or prevalence of curiosity in her daily life.