I think people generally tend to underestimate technology levels from 50 to 100 years ago. For the most part, the biggest innovation of the last hundred years has been miniaturization rather than any one particular technological advancement. And frankly, I think that’s the answer to the question; People from the 70s wouldn’t necessarily be in awe of one particular technology, but they’d certainly be in awe of how much we’ve been able to fit into a tiny ass amount of space.

Honestly, I think they’d be more disappointed than excited. We have not been to Mars, we don’t have flying cars, and we don’t have computers that can think for themselves despite what LLM providers would have you think. Our 2001 looked nothing like that which was imagined.