That’s not how technology works. We went from first flight in 1903 to a man on the moon in 1969. Then we basically did almost nothing in aerospace for the next 50 years. We never got past the supersonic barrier for feasible commercial air travel. Apart from somewhat worse fuel efficiency, a 747 from 1969 can achieve basically the same trips in the same amount of time as a 787 or A350.

What looks like exponential curves turn into S-shaped curves everywhere. In the last century, coal power plants have gotten less than twice as efficient. A professor at law school was giving a lecture on technological singularity back in 2011. And I pointed out that Moore’s law was already dead. And in fact in the decade since then improvements came far slower than they did from 1990-2000.

When things are spread out over time people are able to adjust to the point that society, as a whole, might not even notice there was a problem, even if for some segment of that society it might feel like the end of the world - or at least an incomparable inflection point. The only real problem you have is when things come on hard and fast, like a tsunami.