Progress has all but ceased due to the fact that accountants are controlling the purse-strings of research: around 1900, the automobile, film camera-projector, and aeroplane came into being.
In the case of the Wright Brothers, who achieved the first workable powered flight in 1903 at Kitty Hawk, they were two bicycle-makers who were shunned by the scientific community of the day, and experimented on their own without external funding, building their own wind-tunnel, etc.
Others refined their ideas later, but without their discoveries, the aeroplane would never likely have been invented by the 'official' scientific community.
A hundred years later, there are no radical new inventions like a hovercar, working [practical] jetpack, let alone walking androids or a time-machine. All we get are things like hi-def TV, hand-held devices etc, which are merely extensions of existing technology, rather than brand-new inventions, like the aeroplane, automobile, and cinematic film were a century ago.
Today, probably billions are spent on scientific research , certainly far more in real terms than was funded in 1900, but no radical new ideas are forthcoming, probably because new fronteirs of ideas are blocked by sterile-minded accountants.
Yes we have the internet, but it's the only real radical change in the world in the past 20 years [sat-nav is just an extension of tracking technology and spy-in-the -sky technology, which has existed for decades].
