I had no idea. Thanks for pointing that out; I feel right foolish for having used the term without knowing what it meant all this time. Happily, I'm now (somewhat more) educated. :-)

There's no easy answer to your conundrum. On the one hand, I bet you that even if the statement "there's never been as exciting a time to be alive as now" has always been true (to the extent we can agree that it's a good thing, and not exciting as in that "interesting times" Chinese curse kind of way) it must at least be possible to more acutely feel it these days than ever before. We're literally seeing quantum leaps in just about every avenue of innovation and development.

On the other hand, besides your other fingers, there's the issue, so seldom pondered, of whether every step forward is really a step in the right direction. I'm not sure that came out right, as I'm not about to argue in favour of being a Luddite, but for quite some time now, it has seemed to me as though people felt that progress was something that was happening to them, not something they were themselves driving. (Perhaps that's just telling of the kind of people I've been around, but even so, I'm making a point here). Now clearly unless you're in the top tier and at the very forefront of the cutting edge, you'll probably be able to relate, or at least know someone who can, whenever you hear something uttered along the lines of this: "I don't know why they're changing all this, the old system was working just fine." In some cases, the people saying that just have trouble letting go. In other cases, they're perfectly right.

Yeah, no, I don't have an answer for you. It troubles me greatly that the very definition of progress is advancement, and our tendency to narrow things down leads us to see that as linear progression along a vector that we've tagged as "good" or "beneficial", when in fact there are times when it feels like the next-gen implementation of what was once a great idea feels for all the world as though it's really a step back. And sometimes, the reason it feels that way is because it is.