I would certainly not choose to live in the world that was 100 or 300 years ago...
It is not about going back, it is about going forward. Our advancement in areas of technology have increased to the point it is costing us humanity. The goal of technological advancement shouldn't be to generate wealth for the owners, but to take us forward. The average improvement you speak of is because the past mechanisms required actual improvement to generate wealth. That is not the case today.