"Although hardly anyone noticed the change at the time, it is difficult to imagine a more dramatic contrast than the decades just before 1970, and the decades since then. Those were the years in which science underwent an irreversible transformation into an entirely new regime."

This is consistent with what the economist Tyler Cowen argued in his book "The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All The Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better."

http://www.amazon.com/The-Great-Stagnation-Low-Hanging-Event...