Let's say you were born in 1910. The revolutionary stuff (at the time) was applying electricity to stuff. Well, by the time you were 30, you'd seen all that. "X thing that we'd done before, but now done by electricity" wasn't a revolutionary idea any more. And by 1940, the really revolutionary advances in airplanes had mostly already happened (although the switch to jet engines was still to come).
What did it take to be revolutionary to a 30-year-old in 1940? Penicillin. Color television. The computer. There were still revolutionary things happening, but the bar was raised.
Or take the 1980s. It was revolutionary. Everything that people were doing anyway, they figured out how to do on a PC. I remember that time. Every month, there were new things possible, things that I didn't even think of trying to do on a computer.
By about 1990, that was over. Oh, you got the computer to do one more thing? I'm not surprised any more. I've seen that a hundred times over the last decade. It's just one more thing now.
Same with the internet. At first it was magic. Now, you can do one more thing on the internet? Yawn. Of course you can.
What's revolutionary now? AI. Twenty years from now, it will be a yawn too. Oh, you got AI to do one more thing right? No big news.
TL;DR: I guess that after a bunch of changes that can all be lumped into one bucket in your thinking, more changes in that bucket don't seem as interesting as the first few did.
How many new exciting things between 1950 and 1960? Color TV, jet airplanes, transistors, computers, early programming languages, nuclear power, artificial satellites, polio vaccine, credit cards, microwave oven, Xerox, fax machines.
How many new exciting thing between 2010 and 2020? AI, Netfix and crypto? Not sure I should be excited about that last one...
Transistors existed between 1950 and 1960. But they didn't really set the world on fire until the 1970s.
Computers existed in the 1950s, but they didn't explode into businesses until the IBM 360 series, and they didn't go into homes until the 1970s, and not in volume until the 1980s.
Xerox existed, but didn't explode until the 1970s.
And so on. It is decades from something being invented, to commercial availability, to widespread commercial use. And only when it becomes widespread does it change the world.
So I claim that the "revolutionary" part is when something already existing becomes widespread and applied. That was (in my previous examples) electricity in the 1920s and 30s, and personal computers in the 1980s and 90s. They already existed. But when they became widespread and used for everything, that's when the world changed.
So, what was that in the 2010s? I would say cell phones. Yeah, they existed before. But now everyone had them, which meant that everyone could be reached all the time, and everyone could take pictures, and read the news, and search the net, and watch sports, and listen to music, all the time, no matter where they were. That changed the world, or at least society, quite a bit.
What is it for the 2020s? It could be AI. That is, plausibly, exploding. If it continues to do so, it is likely to change everything. mRNA vaccines may become a thing that changes everything, at least as much as the polio vaccine, but we are not there yet - at this point it's still a maybe. SpaceX lowering the cost to orbit is a big deal. Starlink may be; I'm in the US, where internet rarely depends on satellites, so I'm not in a good position to judge that one.
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It may be based on your mental categories.
Let's say you were born in 1910. The revolutionary stuff (at the time) was applying electricity to stuff. Well, by the time you were 30, you'd seen all that. "X thing that we'd done before, but now done by electricity" wasn't a revolutionary idea any more. And by 1940, the really revolutionary advances in airplanes had mostly already happened (although the switch to jet engines was still to come).
What did it take to be revolutionary to a 30-year-old in 1940? Penicillin. Color television. The computer. There were still revolutionary things happening, but the bar was raised.
Or take the 1980s. It was revolutionary. Everything that people were doing anyway, they figured out how to do on a PC. I remember that time. Every month, there were new things possible, things that I didn't even think of trying to do on a computer.
By about 1990, that was over. Oh, you got the computer to do one more thing? I'm not surprised any more. I've seen that a hundred times over the last decade. It's just one more thing now.
Same with the internet. At first it was magic. Now, you can do one more thing on the internet? Yawn. Of course you can.
What's revolutionary now? AI. Twenty years from now, it will be a yawn too. Oh, you got AI to do one more thing right? No big news.
TL;DR: I guess that after a bunch of changes that can all be lumped into one bucket in your thinking, more changes in that bucket don't seem as interesting as the first few did.
But look at the rate of it.
How many new exciting things between 1950 and 1960? Color TV, jet airplanes, transistors, computers, early programming languages, nuclear power, artificial satellites, polio vaccine, credit cards, microwave oven, Xerox, fax machines.
How many new exciting thing between 2010 and 2020? AI, Netfix and crypto? Not sure I should be excited about that last one...
Yeah, but...
Transistors existed between 1950 and 1960. But they didn't really set the world on fire until the 1970s.
Computers existed in the 1950s, but they didn't explode into businesses until the IBM 360 series, and they didn't go into homes until the 1970s, and not in volume until the 1980s.
Xerox existed, but didn't explode until the 1970s.
And so on. It is decades from something being invented, to commercial availability, to widespread commercial use. And only when it becomes widespread does it change the world.
So I claim that the "revolutionary" part is when something already existing becomes widespread and applied. That was (in my previous examples) electricity in the 1920s and 30s, and personal computers in the 1980s and 90s. They already existed. But when they became widespread and used for everything, that's when the world changed.
So, what was that in the 2010s? I would say cell phones. Yeah, they existed before. But now everyone had them, which meant that everyone could be reached all the time, and everyone could take pictures, and read the news, and search the net, and watch sports, and listen to music, all the time, no matter where they were. That changed the world, or at least society, quite a bit.
What is it for the 2020s? It could be AI. That is, plausibly, exploding. If it continues to do so, it is likely to change everything. mRNA vaccines may become a thing that changes everything, at least as much as the polio vaccine, but we are not there yet - at this point it's still a maybe. SpaceX lowering the cost to orbit is a big deal. Starlink may be; I'm in the US, where internet rarely depends on satellites, so I'm not in a good position to judge that one.
OK, but does any of that invalidate my argument?