Since the dawn of computing, hardware (computer & memory) has been getting cheaper. And software has been filling the gap.

So if throwing effort at hardware no longer improves things, it must be time to put real effort into improving software. No, not making it bigger! Not by adding features. We could start by making it smaller, at reducing/removing/replacing. By investigating alternate models, instead of adding minor tweaks or very-specific-purpose features to our existing software.

Fixing "software" won't be easy, and won't be quick, or cheap. But we've put enormous amounts of effort (money) into hardware. It must be time to put serious effort into some of the alternative software architectures that have been proposed.