system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: each time a new wireless standard comes out, it seems better and faster than before. Any reason we couldn't have accomplished this sooner? What are the enablers we now have that we didn't have before?

I'm asking because I happened to be reading about Bluetooth 5. This is also applicable to wifi etc. Did we discover new encoding / compression algorithms or what?
gpt
Every engineering problem comes down to a trade-off between cost and capability. A wireless standard is limited by what the cost effective electronics of the day can accomplish. As time goes on, processing power gets cheaper, so you can do more at a target price point.