Not sure where to put this; it’s not exactly a debate, not quite alternate-timeline fiction. Since I"m fishing for opinions, I’ll put it here for now.
Ever since the industrial revolution, technology has been advancing, often at a rate where a human lifespan encompasses a total change in one’s way of life. This means that often certain technologies don’t last long enough to develop ingrained traditions and customs. The steam locomotive and the train as primary means of long distance transport was around just long enough to develop a sort of romantic tradition: the train as metaphor for journeys in general, the wandering hobo riding the rails, etc.
Although I can’t postulate any plausible mechanism that would allow technology to advance to X point and then stop, suppose just as a given that it could. Suppose technology could be frozen at a given year, and then stay there for centuries. Long enough for society to develop ingrained customs and tradtions based on the way of life commeasurate with that level of technology. What period of history do you think would be interesting to contemplate extended for a much longer period of time? 1870s? 1900? 1930s?
Technology has repeatedly backslid through history when governments fall, barbarians invade and the people WHO KNOW get killed off and are not able to transmit their knowledge to a new generation.
Technology has also stood still for generations when people decide that the way things are done is tradition, that there is no need to change the way things are done. In fact, I would almost go so far as to declare the modern western world to be an aberation in the History Of Mankind. Sure, the Rennaissance brought some serious leaps in then current use technology, but very little of it was beyond, or even up to par with the best technologies of the Roman Empire, or that of China.
As far as your question, I could easily imagine a world which stayed with late early 1800’s technology, with very little change, for several hundred years. Or even a millenium of 1600’s technology. But those would assume a world with a heckuva lot less national rivalry, which was the traditional driver of technological improvement.
Actually, technology freezes all the time. During the development process, companies know that by the time something actually gets into production, the design will be somewhat, if not totally, out-of-date. However, because of the demands of manufacturing, they can’t hope to get it into production if they wait for the next advance to come along, so they freeze the design, and any improvements discovered after that point will be incorporated into later incarnations. NASA has to do this with their computer gear, as by the time they can get it radiation hardened and into space, the technology has progressed a great deal. This is one of the reasons why the Hubble went up with 486 PC onboard, even though 586 (or better) machines were being sold to consumers at that time.
Even with the rapid technological developments we have today, romance still develops around technology. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t have car collectors, arcade game emulators, and old PC emulators. Not to mention the whole steampunk movement.