Techo-optimism peaked in the 1960s. After that people became much more cynical or realistic about technology.
The last three recent major technological advances in term of impact on everyday life are the internet and mobile phone in the 1990s and then the smartphone as ushered by the iPhone in 2007. All three are intertwined and really what makes today different from 1990.
Amazon is a 1990s company. In the 2010s it was fully established and a giant. It's a retail and logistics company that understood the impact and possibilities of the internet.
AirBnb (founded 2008) understood and exploited that the internet and smartphone allowed a new approach to holiday lettings but isn't doing anything hard technologically.
Uber (founded 2009) has done the same for taxi cabs. Nothing technologically hard but making full use of the ubiquitous smartphone.
Perhaps you remember the 2010s as more exciting because it was when the smartphone was new so there was this burst of apps and services to make use of it.
Energy usage per capita peaked in america in the 1970s[1]. After that, maybe there were efficiency gains, but by using more energy you get crazy progress in the early 20th century, like doing 100x or 1000x more work per person. With efficiency gains I doubt you'll even get 2x the work in most cases.
There's also the Productivity Paradox[2] where progress in IT (computers, internet, ...) didn't translate on higher productivity in society. There's different theories about this, like it being caused by the change from industrial economy to a service economy.
It's perhaps also about impact. People went from horses and no electricity, etc at home to watching the Moon landing in front of TV over the first half of the 20th century.
After that it was mostly evolutionary improvements while the downsides became more visible.
The last three recent major technological advances in term of impact on everyday life are the internet and mobile phone in the 1990s and then the smartphone as ushered by the iPhone in 2007. All three are intertwined and really what makes today different from 1990.
Amazon is a 1990s company. In the 2010s it was fully established and a giant. It's a retail and logistics company that understood the impact and possibilities of the internet.
AirBnb (founded 2008) understood and exploited that the internet and smartphone allowed a new approach to holiday lettings but isn't doing anything hard technologically.
Uber (founded 2009) has done the same for taxi cabs. Nothing technologically hard but making full use of the ubiquitous smartphone.
Perhaps you remember the 2010s as more exciting because it was when the smartphone was new so there was this burst of apps and services to make use of it.