people argue that but it's not anywhere in the numbers (and even more importantly, in lived experience). The argument can be made that this innovation just lags the invention of the internet but that's kind of unfalsifiable and looks increasingly like rationalisation.

One key difference is that inventions like the microprocessor or the steam engine are deeply fundamental. They're at the 'backend' of the chain. Internet based digital services are at the consumer end. Which has produced some growth, but could be argued to mostly fuel hedonistic consumption. (It's hard to figure out what deep growth watching hours of tiktok creates)

In his book Gordon points to the thought experiment of going to sleep in 1870 and waking up in 1970 in NY. You'd be in an entirely transformed world. Cars, buildings reaching into the sky everywhere, electrified subway stations, computers, drugs that save countless of millions of lives, modern agriculture and so forth. Go to sleep in 1970 and wake up in 2020 and what's changed, other than people staring at tiny screens?

But you're not describing the pace of innovation at all. You're just describing your own judgements about the value of modern innovations. What would COVID-19 look like in 1970? I bet there wouldn't be many people working from home...

COVID-1970 would be a lot slower in the spread due to much less globalized world. The West probably would still not have experienced it, neither the Soviet Bloc due to then fresh Sino-Soviet split and heavily militarized border.

I think the Spanish flu might not agree with that assessment. Both plagues also did a pretty good job of spreading to pretty much all territories that had any form of contact at the time.

IMO the better example was 1957 Asian flu pandemic. It also started in China in December-February, but was not yet registered in the West as of May.

It also never crossed the Iron Curtain into Warsaw Pact countries.

2070 very probably will be entirely different than 1970, though. What changed is that computers have allowed us to go to space (at scale) and other incredible feats.

I remember thinking in 1980s that year 2000 would be something unrecognizable. You can feel this optimism in movies like Back to the Future, Blade Runner, Terminator or Escape From New York. They would set entirely different worlds in relatively near future, largely due to expectations from then recent technological change rates.

In reality (aside from tremendous change of political landscape) the 80s and the 00s weren't particularly different to live in.

The ability to have all information at your fingertips everywhere is a big big change.

The choice of New York drives some of this. Go to sleep in Shanghai in 1970, and wake up in 2020...

You're focusing on semiconductors but the same period saw a large number of new plastics, velcro, contact lenses, credit cards, the atomic clock, the orbital rocket / artificial satellite, the laser, the seat belt, fibre optics, the LED, and many other materials science breakthroughs.