I have a faint memory of watching a Youtube demo video couple years back of a concept similar to Bret Victor's DynamicLand where you connect lego-block-like things together and they do cool stuff. Does anyone remember what that product is, and what its current status is?
I think a more useful metric would be average life expectancy of the subset of people who lived over say 20 or 30. We could compare that number at 1600s with the present to see the net impact of lifestyle changes (fast food, minimum exercise) vs advances in medical care.