I guess it depends on when you were born.
I was born in the 1940s so I still kinda think of the 1950s as being "modern".
You know: transistors replacing vacuum tubes, jets replacing propeller airliners, rock&roll replacing swing, computer punchcards, beatniks, etc... ultra modern.
I still think of Eminem as being recent even though many here weren't even born when he was recording.
My grandmother was born in a time of horses and buggies, kerosene lamps and telegraphs. By the time she died at the age of 97 she'd seen the coming of electric lights, cars, radios, airplanes, income taxes, 2 world wars, the great depression, the atom bomb, television, men on the moon and computers in people's homes.
I remember horses on the streets of Toronto, washboards, iceboxes, shellac records, and vacuum tube radios and coal furnaces, but I was quick to jump into computers, the internet, peer-to-peer filesharing, decentralization and of course Bitcoin.
You can relate to the past without being stuck in it.
When you put it that way... I guess it was exciting to see the progress (well... kinda... until facetwit was invented) over the last 40 years. From having to go to a phone to pick it up, waiting for your favorite show on TV once a week, using a paper map/atlas, or having to go to a library to search for information, to having all that and much more in my pocket is quite cool and impossible to explain to my kids.
I also had the misfortune to witness a revolution, 1/5 stars, would not recommend, but it happened and it was exciting for all the wrong reasons.