I think I could agree with your point if I agreed that we're slowing down. But I don't think that's going to happen. A lot of the stupefyingly awesome and expensive tech is going to miniaturize and cheapen faster than people will rise up.

Your example of a CT scan got me to think that way. I don't think it's practical to assume that such a device would be widely distributed; heck, I'm not even sure it's possible to fuel them all with liquid He if we tried to proliferate it. But I would bet anything the tech matures and branches such that the cost incrementally drops and the quality incrementally goes up. Or it leads to a breakthrough tech that supplants it (prolly more likely).

So I'm optimistic that the incremental improvements will compound faster than unrest; I think that's what's historically different now than times past - the compound improvements are taking less than a generation. We've made the jumps in tech, now to refine it to be available to all. (Cell phones are a pretty good example of this happening, I think.)

But I suppose there's no telling other than time passing. I prefer optimism, as the alternative is heartbreaking, as you note.