From Vaclav Smil’s Numbers Don’t Lie:
But the doubling time for transistor density is no guide to technical progress generally. Modern life depends on many processes that improve rather slowly, not least the production of food and energy and the transportation of people and goods— and such slow rates prevail not only for pre-19so advances but also for essential improvements and innovation coinciding with the development of transistors (their first commercial application was in hearing aids in 1952).
He then lists the rates of improvement in staple crop yields, power generators, intercontinental travel, steel costs, which all improve at 1.5%-3% year, which is very different from Moore’s Law, in which semiconductors get better at a rate of 35% a year. I agree with his point about life not improving at the rate of digital technology’s progress.