I can perform calculations in 2009 50,000 times faster than in 1980 with approximately the same amount energy.

But you still don't seem to understand basic arithmetic.

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(As an aside, your insult doesn't actually apply; the definition of arithmetic doesn't include exponentiation, other than in the I-can-derive-all-math-from-11-axioms sense.)

My guess is that you like most in our society you have invested in highly specialized skills that may lose their value if we are forced into a major paradigm shift.

Irrelevant to his point - he's giving a concrete example of how investment can increase productivity and efficiency. His skills allow him to be more productive than someone without those skills; ergo, by investing in those skills he increases society's overall productivity, and allows more to be done with the same resource inputs.

Might those skills be less useful in the future? Perhaps, but that's not what's under discussion here.

In a free society with money there is no way this sort of activity is going to stop. Interest bearing loans will continue into the future.

There is that little niggling annoyance commonly known as an exponential function.

If you immediately leap to talking about exponential growth as soon as someone says "interest", you don't understand what you're talking about.

Interest is nothing more and nothing less than rent on money. Buying a house for $100,000 and then selling it for 10 yearly payments of $11,000 is functionally the same thing as lending the eventual buyers $100,000 and charging 10% (overall) interest, and there's not a hint of runaway exponential growth.