it's important to remember that a lot of the "progress" that compounds is just digital progress which is quite different from material/atom based progress. atom based progress comes much more slowly and is often accompanied by mitigators of progress: you take a step forward and then another step backward.

the author states that progress is "exponential". that maybe true for digital but certainly not for real world problems, especially not in the long run.

Things maybe changing quite rapidly but that doesn't mean it's progress. for example, a Toyota corrolla had 35 mpg back in the 70s. after decades of innovation, it's still about 35 mpg. why so? although engines have become more efficient, cars also vastly increased in weight as well.

Or for example, in construction we can build houses a little more efficiently than 50 years ago but the cost of land mitigates all this progress and then some.

Today, we can travel 30 miles in 30 minutes with a much smaller cost than 200 years ago. and yet the average commute distance is x10 or more than it was 200 years ago, once again, mitigating all our progress. if the average commute today is 40 min and 200 years ago most of the population only needed a 2 minute walk (because they were all farmers who lived on the plot of land), it means our commute times have actually gone up significantly not down.