Maybe there is more to this Renaissance analogy than he thought. During the period, which ultimately led to the Age of Enlightenment that made today's society possible, a lot of development happened and a lot of things that were lost from antiquity were rediscovered (we may never completely know the extent of it because of the Alexandria infocalypse). But the point is, the discoveries of today are usually obsolete tomorrow, in the sense that origin and context are lost while the discovery itself remains in place as a hidden stratum on which the technology of tomorrow is built.

Maybe it has never been different, it's just that in IT the process is much easier to observe due to its speed. But who really "invented" steam power, optics, advanced mechanics, or programmable systems? The more you dive into those things, the less clear the answer becomes - precisely because almost all of our advances are stratified.