Is the culture integral to the maintenance of the technology or is it just that people are unwiling to participate in the culture so the older folks have no one to impart their knowledge to?
I don't think "that people are unwiling [sic] to participate" since it's a matter of choices. But I would agree that the issue of cultural continuation looms large as newbies need to be present to be trained by "the older folks," indoctrinated into the culture, as 'twere. And with no one to continue the culture and maintain its language, rituals, monuments, and icons, the culture will die.

For example, the US once had a culture based on self-sufficiency and communitarian values whose cultural attributes fell into disuse and were replaced by our current culture of materialistic consummerism. And like the old folks in the oilpatch, there are still some practitioners of our former culture.