The industrial revolution increased the pace, but it was already there, not flat or randomly flunctuating (think ancient hominids versus early agriculture vs bronge age, vs ancient Babylon and Assyrian empires, vs later Greece, and Persia, later Rome, later Renaissance and so on).

Post 1970s most of the further increase has been based on mirages due to financialization, and doesn't reflect actual improvement.

I think you have missed that it's easy to get "massive improvements in your quality of life" if you start from merely-post-revolution-era China or 1950s Africa or colonial India.

Much less so if you plateaud as US and Europe, and live off of increased debt ever since the 1970s.