Your first is really fascinating. I've seldom heard anyone talk about potential negatives from Moore's Law. It seems like you're suggesting that the rapid improvement of computer tech over the time since 1970 sucked all the air out of the room. All the brains, capital, and hype went there.
I'm not convinced it's enough but it is pretty interesting.
As a general rule, innovation in software always follow hardware. E.g. deep learning.
With Moore law, it was always the case that general purpose CPU will always catch up to special purpose one (e.g. This killed sun and SGI), so it was hurting innovation.
I'm not convinced it's enough but it is pretty interesting.