I think Ron is just casting about in boredom. He mentioned that he has been interested in GCA for 43 years. The inovation has come in smallish incriments, but once in a while innovation came along as mentioned above - growing turf in the desert, or on crushed lava, and building upon that. It takes innovation in construction, machinery, and an archie to conceive hole designs that work on such.
Ron can point to ball and impliment technology, but the rules and perameters of the game are the same. Hit it out onto interesting or strategic ground, find it and figure out how to get it to a green and into the hole. Arranging that is within enough constraint that without big changes in the method of play, not all that much novelty or innovation can be allowed.
People seek interesting arrangements of golf on interesting ground and that is their consumption of architecture. But, they aren't going to seek golf that is contrary to their basic understandings of how the game is played, and they continue to seem to enjoy the way the game is generally arranged on the field of play now. They don't seem to want oddities like a 7 iron off tee, followed by FW wood and long iron after that, or some other unconventional approach to playing the game they know as it is.
Eliminating the middle man doesn't seem to be anything new either. There have always been one-off or one-trick ponies that build their dream course from conception to working on constrcution, themselves.