It pretty much is, you can't forget that an exponential curve looks the same no matter how much you "zoom" in. It takes ten thousand years to go from stone to bronze, a thousand years from bronze to iron, and then merely a few hundred years to go from simple steam coal mine pumps to nuclear-heated steam-electric turbines. You don't see an enormous change in quality of life for the average person, but the reality is that each of these advancements absolutely rocked their contemporary world. Combined with how technological advancement only takes hold with economic incentive (steam engines have been around for a thousand years, their uses have not) you get what looks like very little progress until just now. But in reality there was constant independent innovation and improvement around the world.