So, there's another side of this, which is something that's also happened to cars and many homes. Construction materials and techniques have become good enough

So, there's another side of this, which is something that's also happened to cars and many homes. Construction materials and techniques have become good enough that it's greatly extended the life of so many items over the years, and by nature, technology. I just finally switched to an iPhone Pro after years of Android based primarily on Apples switch to USB-C (finally!) and the titanium build (mocked in the OP). People complain about the 2-3 year Android upgrade cycle, but it's inexpensive and iterative. The iPhone 15 Pro line was the first I've seriously looked at where I've thought "I might be using that phone in 6 years and it will still look and work fine." I saw so many people throughout the '10s with messed-up looking iPhones waiting on their cell phone contracts to upgrade; I've always been a "buy an unlocked phone with cash and upgrade when it's not right" kind of guy. I own two 10 year old cars. Both require almost no maintenance. When I was a kid, a 10 year old 100k mile car was a beater. Both of these cars look and work fine. I pay almost nothing for them, as they're both very fuel-efficient, and the cost of insuring a 10 year old car can be surprisingly low. In the 80s, a 10 year old 100k car would be considered a beater or a hand-me-down. Today, it's fine. But still, it's difficult to come up with new developments that I think will radically recontextualize society as we've experienced. The digital T1 line was used for inter-city phone trunking in the '60s. We landed on the moon in 1969, and UNIX was born the same year. C was created in 1972. Ethernet and GPS were proposed in 1973, TCP was created in 1974. For those now middle-aged Gen-X people, it was always possible to see the potential future as children, as the frameworks had been developed before we were born. (Many of us did.) But we're living in a new era of refinement and decay, as the life-changing things get incrementally better slowly, but while the confusion stemming from the continual growth of the last millennium receding ends up resulting in less opportunity, less wealth, and less excitement and hope.