I mean do you think if we looked in 40, 80, 160, year increments there would be outstanding examples

You may think of the Radio , beguinning of 20th century , most of the people at that time could not read , and the main source of info was coming from the churchs , so the radio made a huge impact on them

The 19th century saw a huge advance in chemicals , railways ... .They changed religion for science

Is not that all the times happened this , when the roman empire fell down most of western europe towns got isolated and forgot a lot of techniques and culture

Many of the bridges built by romans were the only way of cross rivers in many areas of Spain until beguinning of 20th century

So I would say that very often in the past people felt (or media told them) that they were having an unprecedent exponential change in their lifes