I'd probably point to the 1971 Dodge Charger

And the 2015 Dodge Charger.

I mean - cars is cars is cars. They're both Dodges, they're both ugly, they're both expensive.

But the comparison doesn't hold up. For one thing, you really gotta fuck up to not walk away from a wreck in the 2015. The '71 had a steering column that would impale you like a bug. The '15 has eleventy seven airbags and shoulder belts for everyone. The '15 also makes like 700HP and 31MPG. The '71 got 16 with a tailwind and 400HP running voodoo 104 octane nuke gas.

And the '15 is a primitive slug by any automotive standards. It's still running pushrods, FFS.

Here's the thing: the advances of the 20th century were mechanical. You can look at a typewriter from 1915 and a typewriter from 1955 and go "we've come a long way, baby." It's all right there. Your average male could look under the hood of a '71 Dodge and have a pretty good idea what everything was and what it did. The '15? Find the spark plugs in this picture:

So yeah - mechanical advancement hooah. But if I show you an NE5534N...

next to a Westmere EP...

One of them has more pins. But the NE5534 is a quad op amp. The Westmere is a 12 core workstation processor. And if electronics isn't your thing, it doesn't look like "progress."

I think that the 20th century saw an improvement in mechanical things that any casual observer could tell was going from zero to sixty pretty damn quick. I think that if you aren't really big into electronics, the distance between a Motorola Startac and an iPhone seems like a big phone to a little one but it's hella more than that. And I think what you linked to is a variation on "we can put a man on the moon but we can't cure the common cold" which just illustrates that the speaker doesn't understand that the Apollo program was essentially Robert Goddard plus money, energy and trial and error while one of the guys who discovered DNA is still fucking lecturing.

I mean, take a breath. Your phone can give you directions because it leverages general fucking relativity. Your TV is thin and flat because it has the same shit as the surface of the sun instead of an electron tube. And you can get a fucking status report on the diseases and shit you're likely to face in your life for $99 online.

Fuck your paradigm shift. 20 years ago neither you nor I would ever meet, let alone read this article, let alone argue about it. Take a step back to 1971 and imagine the fucking Khan Academy.

Yeah, motorcycles still have two wheels. Your computer still has a QWERTY keyboard. But I said "okay, Google, take me home" yesterday to an empty car and got turn by turn directions to my house from the very fucking building I was in.

Maybe a toaster doesn't need a paradigm shift.

To add: No animosity towards you or anyone here. The argument just gets to me sometimes.