I occasionally notice that people younger than me seem more impressed by smartphones than me (and I assume, maybe incorrectly, my generation).

One theory I have for this is that younger people are taught by teachers, when they are at an impressionable age, to revere the smartphone as the pinnacle of human achievement.

To me, the smartphone impressed me for a couple years, but it's just one of many miracles of miniaturization I've lived through - and less qualitatively different than, for example, personal computers or the GUI or the internet going public.

My father noticed a similar phenomenon with Rock n Roll. People younger than him saw it as a musical sea-change, but to him it just sounded like the boogie woogie music the radio already had been playing for a decade.