We talk about this at work all the time. A lot of people would agree with the article, but that position really comes from a certain degree of ignorance. Think about this: What would someone from the 1920's think if they were transported immediately to the present and saw you using your cell phone? They'd probably think, "wow, that's a phone that doesn't need wires... and it's really small". They would recognize it as a means of long distance communication very similar IN FUNCTION to the telephones they were familiar with. In fact it is a radically different device relying on completely different types of technology than the telephones of the 1920's with which our time traveler is familiar. Most of the technology that allows that very familiar device to operate didn't exist in the 20's. To the lay person a telephone is a telephone, but to a scientist or an engineer there are vast differences between seemingly similar items. What would a person from Victorian England say when they saw a maglev train? How about "wow that's a crazy fast locomotive... where's the smoke and steam?" Other than shape and function a steam locomotive and a maglev train have very little in common. They are based on vastly different technology and speak to our continuous pace of technological advancement. Sure going from using a horse to using a horseless carriage seems like a big technological leap, but going from a bi-plane to a stealth fighter involves many more significant technological and scientific advances. Yet to a lay person the two items are clearly related and the advancement is all "under the hood".
The fact of the matter is that the human body can only do so many things and so the technology that assists us to do those things is going to look more or less the same, no matter how advanced it is. There are technological advancements that allow us to do those same things in new ways, and it is those that make it look like a major leap. For example telegraph communication existed for quite some time, but it seemed miraculous when the first trans-Atlantic cable was installed. It was heralded as a technological triumph of the ages, and in fact it radically altered (advanced) the way the world operated, but technologically speaking, it wasn't that big a leap. Sure the effort of making the cable and stringing it across the Atlantic was epic in size, but the technology was not a giant leap forward. There were problems with the first cable and it soon stopped working. Good science and engineering resulted in a clever solution, but again it wasn't like the discovery of fire. To the world though, it seemed like a really big deal, the guy who goofed up on the first system had mud on his face and the guy who came up with the solution was hailed as a genius. It changed the world, but it just wasn't that big a leap.
One day soon we'll probably be able to communicate neural implant to neural implant, this will be a huge technological leap, and it may be heralded as a giant leap forward. But it may also be seen as a really small cell phone installed in your head... ho hum. It's not that technology has stopped advancing at a frightening pace, it's that we've grown so accustomed to it.
