I am a hobbyist historian, and if there was something very different between the Roman Empire and the 18-19th century and that would have been the rise of the middle class. There was no such paradigm during the Roman Empire and it is commerce that drives the development of technology. It would also explain the excellent examples of technological practice during the Roman empire but in limited examples. The technology existed but was not readily available unless you could pay for it. Whereas those two elements were resolved ~1800 years later where more people had the resources to leverage tech and subsequently the remarkable change. This is also highly evident today with the low-cost proliferation of tech, and the availability of information. Imagine COVID hat hit during the 1990's? Video conferencing was 'available', but for the rich. No one could really work from home, and that would only be possible if you could afford the cost of a PC and the 14400 dial-up modem - so inefficient and limited.