A lot of things can be reduced to deriving from an earlier discovery/invention. The plane found precursors in gliders and its first use was nowhere close to what we have now. The first cell phone was like a brick and weighed over 2 pounds and before that we had land lines. The internet was revolutionary but it stemmed from existing computer networks like arpanet and utilized technology from older networks like the telegram and phone lines.

Looking at innovations just from Apple we went from 8mp to 48mp iphone cameras, the invention of Apple pay, and the new M1 chipset that blew other chips out of the water when released. HD tvs transitioned to 4k as the standard for new purchases. A wireless VR headset (Oculus Quest 2) was created and sold for $300. Web assembly was announced and deployed to all popular web browsers making the way for robust web applications like Figma. Deep learning has been on the rise ever since AlexNet in 2012. Chatbots have evolved to pass the conversational Turing test. The MOOC model of education has flourished.

Plus all the things @ca mentioned!