I always felt like the software industry is like a Shepard tone [0]. Feels like it's always rising but it's actually a cycle of overlapping trends that start over and over. And the illusion is kept for both programmers and users as long as it doesn't start over with everything at once but just one bit at a time.
Like a lawn where you cut just one strip every day and you never get to see the whole lawn either too grown, or "shaved" to the ground. But it's the same lawn and it never grows taller than that last strip.