I remember sitting down on a plane once and striking up a conversation with the passenger next to me. They were visiting their grand parent and thought it was amazing that their grand parent had been alive both when people thought it was impossible to fly (1900) and when we had a plane that could fly into space (the Space Shuttle). They said this wistfully like they would never see that kind of change in their life.

I asked them about their laptop. It was a Sony Vaio, they were going to watch a movie later on it. I pointed out that when they were born the thought of an individual owning a computer all to themselves was absurd, that their laptop had more compute power and storage than all the computers at NASA had when they sent a man to the Moon, and that their computer would do more calculations in the two hours of showing a movie than were done during the Manhattan project to design the A-bomb.

The difference was that you only see the change in the rear view mirror and even then only if you know what you are looking for. Sailors think they are holding a straight course but when you look back at the wake you see if its really straight or not.

The article's cites Tyler Cowen who suffers from this same blind spot. There are literally thousands of things that have changed in a kitchen, from Microwaves to the Silicone cooking mats which keep your cookies from sticking to the layered composites that do heat spreading on ceramic cook tops. But you don't "see" those as a casual user (and I'm guessing Tyler only casually uses his kitchen) just like my seat mate as a casual user of their laptop didn't "see" the change it represented. There must be a name for that.

Good points on the blind spot.

I wanted to add the range hood as well, but it turns out that was in the last 60 years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_hood

"(and I'm guessing Tyler only casually uses his kitchen)"

And you'd be wrong :)

Cowen is talking about major/radical innovation, not iterative/incremental change. Yes, a microwave is significant if you have only ever used a stove. But going from a live fireplace to the other technology he mentions is a major change.

>> Yes, a microwave is significant if you have only ever used a stove. But going from a live fireplace to the other technology he mentions is a major change.

I would argue that the microwave oven is a significant innovation because it's not based on burning fuel -- wood or gas -- as was done in previous stoves.

True, but to be fair, radical innovation is usually the low-hanging fruit of some new discovery.