Prior to Bill Gates' little garage project, computers were (even more) cumbersome, slow, and so complicated you needed a staff to operate the voodoo. (And at one point, as large as a house and driven by hardwired relays, for gosh sakes. Total world consumption for those computers was figured at about five...mostly for weapons tracking and math-heavy items like that.) But one day, we turned the corner and everything changed.
It is an an absurd assumption of the most Luddite sort to speak of "when we run out of gas" because too many people stand to make a fortune on the next wave, and we have no idea if out there in somebody's garage right now is the bare bones of the Mr. Fusion retrofit.