Ideas?

So I am getting my outline of my book together and I need some ideas. I wanted to do it in a time where life was simpler and we were not so dependent on things like computers and stuff.
Brian then suggested I do a future where the industrial revolution happened. It seems so small a thing but it affected so many things. Then we thought well maybe just a few key inventions. The microchip, and the combustion engine for instance. So what else would make our lives so that we relied on steam engine's carriages and farming even? Maybe the people that invented these things were never born or something? What about the medical field? Where would we stand without computers to document and compile information?
Any thoughts that might help me create this world?