Was there more progress from 1890 to 1950 than 1950 to 2010?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm not sure what I think of the idea of 'more progress' as something measurable, but subjectively, from a social history point of view, I think I'm in agreement here. A definition of modernity that only lasts for forty-six years is pretty weird (I'm reminded of your construction of a single 'Japanese Golden Age' comprising the entire Meiji, Taishō, and Shōwa eras), but finessing a subdivision of 'high modernity' or 'peak modernity' corresponding to the lost world of the early twentieth century would perhaps not be amiss. (Although a search indicates that the term 'high modernity' is usually used, when it is used, to refer to the sociocultural environment of the early Cold War, so perhaps something else would be better.)

The 'Victorian Internet' idea isn't perfect, but in its basics it's I think a better model for expositing the history of telecommunications than the sort of feverish quasi-utopian understanding of computing that's so popular these days.