But did this grind humanity to a halt?

Yes - specific faculties atrophied - I wouldn't dispute it. But the (most) relevant faculties for human flourishing change as a function of our tools and institutions.

Someone brought up Socrates upthread:

> People would have said the same about graphing calculators or calculators before that. Socrates said the same thing about the written word.

If the conclusion now becomes “actually, Socrates was correct but it wasn’t that bad”, then why bring up Socrates in the first place?