The myth of progress

The NY Times published this chart recently purporting to show that progress, from evolution to technology, increases its pace logarithmically over time.  But is the argument "things are changing faster and faster" really true?  It seems to me that the argument suffers from the recency effect.  The chart above for example graphs the development of the computer and the personal computer as two separate and apparently equal bits of progress data.  But in 100 years or 1,000 years will anyone make such a distinction?  

Sure, there has been a lot of technical change since WWII -- atomic power, jet plane, space travel, computer, DNA, cell phone, etc., but progress has a pretty good run between the invention of the first telescope in 1600 and the microscope in 1665, too. That period included the invention of calculus independently by Newton and Leibnitz, Newton's definition of gravity, Galileo's description of the solar system, the discovery of the refraction of light and the circulation of blood.

Or how about the period 1833 to 1896 from the time the Pottawatomie ceded the area around the mouth of the Chicago river to the U.S. and the Chicago World's Fair?  During that period, the indestructable northern forests were destroyed. The endless buffalo herds were ended. The native Americans lost two-thirds of the continent.  The time required to travel from New York to Chicago was reduced from two week to 12 hours.  The telegraph and electric light were invented. At the beginning of the period, all food was whole, fresh and local.  By the end, people were eating out of cans and beef was being shipped from Kansas to New York in refrigerated train cars.

How fast change moves depends on what data points you consider significant. The more recent the event, the more likely it is to be considered significant. Even evolution doesn't necessarily move faster.  I'm sure a trilobite from 500 million years ago would have seen a great deal more significance in the variations among other trilobites than we admit today. Which is not to say that progress doesn't happen or that some times foster progress and change more than others. But how many years will have to pass before some future progress-ologist lumps "the evolution of mammals" into one big event?