When I attend a BR match today, it is often surprising to me how little the sport and especially the rifle, has changed in the past thirty-odd years. This is not to say that the scores have not improved; especially at the top levels. The technology has changed very little however. The basic rifle has been refined to a certain extent but is still remarkably similar to the winning rifles of over thirty years ago.
What has changed is the availabilty of real quality rifle components. In 1977 you could get glass stocks from Chet Brown,  Lee Six, or Gale MacMillan. Today there are a half dozen others at least.
In 1977, barrels came from Hart or Shilen. The occasional maverick would shoot something else (Atkinson, Sherer, Pat MacMillan). Today, one can still win with a Hart or a Shilen but he can also use Krieger, Pac-Nor, Lilga, Rock, Bartlien, Gaillard, Lothar-Walther  and a bunch of others.
The plethora of actions, and quality actions at that, is another change. Not too often will you see anyone competing with a common 40X action today.
These changes though, are not changes in technology; they are just changes in the landscape. Many of the actions are just Remington clones made with a greater attention to precision alignment and dimensional uniformity. The barrels are made in essentially the same way as they always have been.
The changes in stocks have amounted to slight changes in conformation and the utilization of materials which were unavailable or, at least, uncommon. in the 1970's. Still, there has at least been a certain amount of experimentation in the field of stocks. The rest of the rifle, not so much.
Essentially, the actual design parameters of the rifle have changed little if any since the late seventies. A short, stiff barrel is chambered (for a 6mmPPC, of course) and threaded as precisely as possible and is mated to a single shot bolt action which is rigid, concentric, and true. The resultant unit is glued into a synthetic stock. The 2 ounce trigger, which works just like the two ounce triggers of 40 years ago, is installed and the high powered scope is affixed to the receiver. This was the formula in 1977 and it is the formula today. That techniques have been refined and are more universally employed is meaningless. The design parameters are the same.
The upshot of all this is that benchresters have become shockingly conservative. Look past the brightly painted exteriors and you will a rifle which is technologically moribund. The response, of course, is that there is little reason to experiment, things work pretty darn good as they are and this is the truth. Have we reached the pinnacle of rifle developement? I don't know but it almost seems like we have hit, if not a pinnacle, at least a plateau.
Please understand, I'm not saying this is good or bad; I'm just saying it is so. Regards,   Bill.