At my grandfather's 100th birthday a few years ago, someone asked him (a guy with a career as a computer technician that spanned the dawn of the digital age) what modern technology he would have been most impressed by when he was young.
His answer: modern synthetic fabrics. In his childhood and early adulthood, raincoats were expensive, heavy, thick rubber and still barely worked. By the time he retired, they were thin, light, entirely waterproof, durable and cheap. Along similar lines, it's hard now to imagine life without elastic in socks and underwear, not to mention shirts made of modern sweat-wicking poly-cotton blends.