Coincidence or Simulation confirmed?
Or another way to look at it: during the N years I have lived, how much has the the world changed compared to the period of time between 1900 and 1900 + N? Though on reflection, I guess this is probably the sort of thought experiment that becomes more interesting as one gets older..
Additionally, many during the last 200 years probably thought they were in the most exciting period of technological innovation. When you factor this in the probability of existing during such a period seems much higher than coincidental.
I feel like it wouldn't be that hard for a person from today, especially someone who keeps up with scientific and technological progress, to quickly get up to speed with the world of 500 years from now... but I might be wrong.
A) you're just in an unlikely position
B) the population will rapidly shrink and never recover
C) this is the most "interesting" time in history, and there are so many simulations of it by the people of the far future that we are more likely to exist in this time.
And it's a daft argument because if you don't have a soul, you are the product of your environment. You couldn't be born as someone else, or somewhere else, or somewhen else, just like the River Amazon couldn't be on Mars or in Pangaea, because it's defined as "the thing in Brazil, currently". You couldn't be born in the Wild West because you are defined as "the child of your parents" and they weren't there, then. You didn't end up /in/ that meat body, you /are/ that meat body.
(And if you do have a soul, and they are randomly assigned to meat bodies, this argument is still like saying "roll two dice, the most likely combined outcome is a 7, I got two dots and one dot so that must be what 7 is")
Although echoing the opinions of many other commenters, I believe the early 20th century probably takes that crown.
The decades around 1900 were more innovative than what we've been experiencing the last decades.
And yes you can find people thinking the same thing way back in history, with the difference is that now it's been psychotically amplified by mass media, and it is actually annoying.
In popular press, and when people have things to sell, they do not include historical facts, because then they cannot drive the hype to new degrees, if they the include historical facts.
You may think that they have done their homework when they say "never before in history" but they have either never checked or deliberately ignored history.
I've had people I know, and the press swearing up and down that 'this time it's different' since the 90s when it comes to 'A.I' for instance. I'm sure older guys can go back even earlier and remember 'the impending A.I revolution'. Sweet money in that hyped narrative.
If you think that "this time it will be different" - congrats they got into your brain, and they do not care that they have done it just 10 years prior. With enough repetition of the same information, and the way the human memory works - it doesn't really matter.
You will help them every time by reliably assuming that someone else cared enough to check history before saying that something is "historical", "first time", "never before in millions of years of human civilization". They haven't, and it doesn't matter for their goals.
One of these times something will eventually happen. Until then PR money, clickbaits, VC money, startups.. the whole classical techno-utopian centrifuge.
Look yonder at yon contraption! A beast of iron and stream that can pull yet more buttloads [0] than a team of a hundred horses doth speed along tracks at a brisk pace of 80 miles every hour!
Yes, yes... quite right, Wigglesbarton. Truly we live in an age of wonders!
Well, I must away to beat my servants. Cheerio, old boy!
[0]: Actual unit of liquid measurement, eq. to 126 gal.
If you look at all of our youths, the biggest difference is between my dad and me, not between me and my son.
My dad grew up without TV, 1 person in the street had a radio. Later cars arrived.
When you look at my youth, we had computers, but internet arrived when I was 18.
My son watches TV, plays computer games, watches star wars, etc. Not that much has changed. Sure they have smartphones and social media, but the difference are details.
The biggest impact of computers is already passed us, and happened probably between 1970 and 2000
And it's just as likely to be a misleading perception today as it would have been at any earlier time.
How small we will look to them.