You have it on the head. The tasks we pick for computing are the ones that can be completed in seconds.
There is plenty of interesting computation we could and would do if what now requires a year would only require a second.
There is plenty of interesting computation we could and would do if what now requires a year would only require a second.
So there is plenty of computation being done that only requires milli or microseconds, but due to development practices now stretches just out into the annoying time frame.
(Prime example: the growth of web pages to match increases in processing, RAM, and internet speeds, means that the web is actually slower to use these days.)
Even the fastest computer and the highest-end Internet access can't get you such a huge advantage in performance that it can make the web feel snappy again.
Until you install an adblocker and disable javascript. An enormous amount of modern-web overhead is adtech and user tracking cancer.
If you don't believe me, install privacy badger/ghostery and ublock origin, visit any popular news/entertainment website, and look at the number of blocked elements/requests as you load a few articles. All of those take time and suck up resources.