Is web evolution accelerating?

I still remember those old days when, after downloading for a while, the (now) ugly looking old site would come up with a silly tiling background an a flashing red and green button.

The web has evolved quite a bit since then. The browser, then the search engines, then the small dynamic pages, online newspapers and CMSs, forums, ads, wikis, blogs, google maps, digg, youtube, myspace, ... and the list goes on and on.

It seems like the web has matured and the collaboration tools and techniques available nowadays are enabling the developers to go faster and faster. It is not any more just a few guys here an there interchanging a few e-mails, it is armies of the most clever developers around the world developing together massive quantities of quality code and open source projects by leveraging on incredibly powerful and readily available, advanced tools (and processes). Ideas are also being shared and discussed by big and disperse groups faster and easier than ever before.

This would explain a better-than-linear evolution. In other words, is technology itself starting to enable quicker technology development and therefore accelerating its own advancement speed? Or... wait a second... that has always happened... I just think this time, on this narrow subject, it is a big acceleration rate that we are seing.