Humans are the reigning champs when it comes to patting ourselves on the back. For thousands of years, we have toiled away at incremental technological progress, the entire time congratulating ourselves for figuring x technology out "so quickly!". It's actually so amazing that we've been able to so so much in so little time, isn't it?

Only 10,000 years ago, more or less, we came out of our caves and our temporary huts, and started building permanent villages around a new thing called agriculture. Now, we have cities spanning the globe, situated no-where near the farms that feed them. Where many would once die from something as pedestrian as a deep cut, now we have the technology to reattach a hand that’s been completely severed. We’ve even been to the moon and we have people currently working on plans to colonize other worlds! Oh how far we’ve come.

Except, have we really? Is our technological advancement really as rapid as we think it is? Sure, from aeroplane to space shuttle in 60 years sounds impressive, but compared to what? We know of no other intelligent life to measure ourselves against. Our development can only be fast if we reached certain milestones ahead of at least one other species. Without a method of comparison, its just a giant circle-jerk about how smart we are. For all we know, we could be the galactic equivalent of the loud kid on the short bus, learning to tie his shoes years after his peers.

Lets for argument leave the 'no point of reference' argument out of this whole discussion. Lets concede that our progress is probably super fast but there's no way to know for sure so we just go with it. Even with that in mind, our species is quite pathetic. Less than 0.01% of humans alive today contribute to the technological innovation over which we so often laud ourselves. Scientists and engineers have built our modern world through sheer force of will, and the rest of us sponge off of their hard work. While they find new ways to fight disease, invent interstellar travel, and create computers that can think for themselves, we will be here trying to find the best way to occupy our time. That's what most humans do; spend our time trying to find pleasure. Most of our industries revolve around this goal, rendering most of our species - including the 'innovators' in these industries - inert and useless for all intents and purposes.

Related: Technological Progress is not all it's Cracked up to be

Even time spent working only serves to provide currency to exchange for products and services that will be used to attain pleasure. The work in itself also serves no other purpose but to create pleasurable goods and services so the employer might exchange them for currency. It's just a cycle wherein people try their best to fill their time, while the very very few do work that will actually further our technological abilities as a species, and eventually serve the masses that would have done nothing to earn their new progress outside of pointless busywork.

So to sum up; humans aren't as technologically amazing as we give ourselves credit for. There is no point of reference for the speed of our technological progress, so there's no way to know whether we're actually really fast or really slow and stupid. Of course we would congratulate ourselves every chance we get, but most of us don't actually do much outside of seeing pleasure. Actual innovators (scientists and engineers) are the real heroes and the rest of us are just riding their coat tails and pretending to be one of them.