What if just like previous developments towards an industrial level of production, like the Roman proto-industrial developments, and the later Song Chinese advancements, the Western European trials towards an Industrial civilization have also been a failure, the late 18th century push towards textile mills and improved steam engines leading to nowhere?
How would society look like in the present day? Still somewhat like Europe around 1700? What would have changed and what would have developed further and why?
This may be a heterodox take, but there's an argument to be made that the Industrial Revolution was not a technological revolution at heart, but an economic one. Obviously the steam engine and water-driven textile mills were important, but the things that made the Revolution "stick" were the economic inventions (stock market, centralized banking, advances in state finance) that had already taken root in Europe starting in the early 1600s.
This interpretation of the Industrial Revolution can take the OP in two different directions:
1st Interpretation: What happens in a world with modern banking, modern corporations etc. but no actual technological industry (steam engines, power plants etc.)?
This honestly seems fairly close to OTL. Take pre-1950s Japan as an example: large corporate zaibatsus existed but their actual production was still quasi-artisan-based; gargantuan factories were rare and steel production was a fraction of that found in the most industrial economies. Still, Japan was fairly well off - modern amenities, schools, hospitals, good living conditions etc. Outside of the horrors of industrial war and obviously less fancy high-end tech - making enough steel for an all-metal ship would be near impossible - the life of the average inhabitant would be probably pretty similar, though perhaps a bit poorer than OTL.
Imperialism likewise would be somewhat reduced but happen generally on schedule. The economic mechanisms are still in place that allow circa 1800 UK to bring to bear 1/10 of its GDP in a conflict, while China is limited to only 1/1000 of its own GDP due to the crippling lack of modern banking. This disparity means the UK and other colonizers can still make a mess of things, though individual campaigns may be harder fought with less difference in armaments between the opponents.
2nd Interpretation: What happens in a world without modern economic systems?
This is a much trickier question. First and most importantly, European colonization and imperialism is strangled in the cradle. Without the economic advantages, they can no longer leverage their generally smaller populations and poorer resource bases into a superior position as OTL.
A huge amount of scientific advancement will "go to waste" from our perspective. Advances in metallurgy, healthcare and the hard sciences will be generally infeasible to put into practice; things like widespread sanitation systems or public transit would be incredibly difficult to finance. Any city larger than maybe 1 million people could barely exist. Even a city of that size would essentially leach population out of the countryside due to the high mortality rate. Multiple large cities in the same country would be impossible except in huge countries like China or India. This would seriously hamper societal and academic progress.
The social framework would be incredibly different. The advancement of firearms ended the aristocracy's monopoly on force, as shown by the Hussite Wars. This led OTL to the military aristocracy in Europe being basically replaced by the wealthy merchant classes, ancestors of "The 1%" as it were. In this world the military aristocracy is still made obsolete but there will not be a large enough merchant class to replace them. This may lead Europe to a more Chinese-style social system if scholars take the place of the diminished knightly class. Alternatively the church could make a comeback or the aristocracy, being major land holders, might retain power by virtue of dominating the still agrarian economy. It all depends.
