As computer performance improvements decelerate, we're starting to see more specialization into particular tech verticals. This specialization makes it harder for people to break into.
For example, it used to be that if you wanted to crunch more data in Excel, you'd just wait six months for the better intel chip. It was faster and easier to do that than write custom software. Now the new chips are only marginally better than the last, and we need to rely on distributed systems linking dozens or hundreds of computers.
A 10 year old kid in the 1990s could easily create and launch a website from scratch, which was the state of the art medium at the time. It will be far more difficult for a 10 year old in the 2010s to grab terabytes of data and process it easily.
What's changed is that it is today even _possible_ "for a 10 year old in the 2010s to grab terabytes of data and process it". Wait a little while for the "easy" part :)
Write HTML, copy to server, press f5/open URL. It doesn't get easier than the 90s in that regard. You didn't even need a framework for that, so ... I'm not so sure.
In many ways I find that easier than dealing with cable companies and their systems.
The comment was about the reduction of progress, which is like talking about derivative functions. The value of the function is the goalpost, and it moves.
I disagree, because i was that 10 year old kid in the 90s who fantasized about having his own website and domain - but had no idea how to go about the domain and the only way i knew for making a website was to keep my computer online all the time. So all i did was to make random "fake" sites in Netscape, pretending to be the real thing :-P.
Today it is so easy it is a no brainer. Of course at the same time, since it is so easy now, nobody is impressed by that anymore :-P.
One thing I never get tired of is taking stuff apart. I can rarely reassemble them, alas, but such is life. I see it as doing my part to ease recycling of electronics. In fact, I let my then 2-yo daughter help me take the family color laser printer apart last year. Great fun, great fun.
Now, a couple of things one can do as a curious adult is buying a simple embedded system such as Atmel-based arduino, TI MSP430 Launchpad, or STM8-based devboard, for just a couple of dollars. Set up a toolchain and a LED blinker project, programming in C (asm is a little bit _too_ low level to start with, while Arduino is a little bit too high).