It's living during it that is the tumultuous part. There was an article posted here recently arguing that luddites were not irrational, they were out of a job with no recourse. It might be that every few hundred years we need to totally shit on a generation to make the future a better place, but being that generation is rather bad luck.
The industrial revolution was responsible for a greater increase in human wealth than almost any other even in human history. We are all tremendously better off getting to live after it instead of before it.