Yeah, this.

In terms of consumer benefit in tech we've been at stasis for a long time. My computing experience isn't that much different now than it was 15 or 20 years ago. Sure, my computer and connectivity are far faster now, and thanks to Apple Silicon I can go whole days at conferences without plugging my laptop in, but those are incremental improvements not sea changes. We did fine with 4-hour laptops in 1999.

Also a number of "improvements" just aren't, like smart home devices and IoT crap. Virtually none of those things have made good on the marketers' promises, and 100% of them require some tech family member to end up sysadmining the TV or the thermostat or the light switch, and having to do that kind of crap for things that used to Just Work in the most basic sense is insane.

There's been a lot of heavy lifting in the smart speaker space, and it IS true that my 86 year old mother enjoys being able to ask Siri to play any song she wants, but that kind of thing seems picayune compared to what middle-aged nerds thought the second quarter of the 21st century would bring us.

The only area that comes immediately to mind for ME that includes staggering advances is medical care. I had a hip replacement a few years ago that was an OUTPATIENT procedure. A dear friend of mine ignored symptoms and therefore only "caught" his colon cancer well into stage 4 -- and yet still lived 6 years with pretty high quality of life. Time was, a stage 4 diagnosis meant "uh, maybe don't renew your cable this month." Another pal has progressive MS; 15 years ago, there were no therapies AT ALL for it. Now there is one, and it's making a difference for him and his family.

Nothing on that scale has shown up from "the tech industry" in a long time.