Excellently put.
Looks like the hype cycle of ‘technology as a bedazzling factor’ for humanity is getting over. What instead happening and perhaps more to come is a slow, incremental change that will creep up and perhaps will cease to surprise us.
Take autonomous cars for instance. What goes inside an autonomous vehicle is monstrous amount of technology to put it together. As a technological feat, it is no less flashy than the first iphone, yet if we saw one on the streets, will we gawk in awe and surprise: not quite, perhaps because the bits and pieces of the technology would already be discussed and detailed and debated to death. Yet, if someone were to come back from the previous century, that person would find it hard to believe that such a thing could exist.
The age of dramatic discoveries are over. Now is the age of consolidation.