I get his point.
If you look at the leaps from horse and buggy to the Apollo missions, then from Apollo to today, we have slowed down.
Maintaining the technological pace we had for ~50 years is hard & painful. Society needs time to absorb the change.
Engineers have pretty completely exploited the big basic physics discoveries of the 19th and early 20th century.
Then next great wave of change will come from the life sciences and materials science. Engineered life forms and materials with near magical properties.
Physics, not so much. What can future technologists do with the “multiverse”?