> we're still one of the first generations to see major change _within_ our short lives.
One could argue that people were seeing major technological/scientific/philosophical/cultural changes within their lives at least as far back as the Enlightenment (and I'd argue much further back than that), and what has actually changed is just that the number of people affected by those changes has grown (perhaps exponentially). Likewise in the future the rate of change we're so impressed by now may look laughable, and that's even ignoring the possibility of significant lifespan extension in the future!
Lets accept that the rate of change of technology during the enlightenment was as rapid as the last 100 years (it wasn't but lets accept it) - that was two centuries ago, these prints are 200K years ago, that's 3 orders of magnitude older.
There have been points in our history where technology/knowledge has advanced quicker than the baseline but the last two-three centuries (and particularly the last one) have been exceptional.
Whether that rate of change is sustainable for another century I don't know, I'd like to hope so since it'd mean humans are doing pretty well.
But if you took someone born in 1880 (a century before me) and they lived 90 years they'd have seen the invention of flight, the invention of the motorcar, the electrification of the world, the invention of wireless, the invention of TV, the invention of the internet, the invention of antibiotics, the invention of synthetic materials, the invention of the telephone, the first heart transplant, the invention of the nuclear bomb, the discovery of the structure of DNA and literally thousands of other technologies and discoveries in one human lifespan).
At no other point in human history has a single life span seen so much*.
One could argue that people were seeing major technological/scientific/philosophical/cultural changes within their lives at least as far back as the Enlightenment (and I'd argue much further back than that), and what has actually changed is just that the number of people affected by those changes has grown (perhaps exponentially). Likewise in the future the rate of change we're so impressed by now may look laughable, and that's even ignoring the possibility of significant lifespan extension in the future!