What’s with the massive boom of technology and invention over the last century and a half compared to the slow advancement of the many centuries before?

Question

What’s with the massive boom of technology and invention over the last century and a half compared to the slow advancement of the many centuries before?

In: 9

Answer 1

Technology begets technology. More people freed up from subsistence work puts more minds to work on innovation, and so you see a somewhat exponential growth of technology over the millennia.

Look at the course of history

A million years to go from nothing to stone tools

100,000 years to go from stone tools to agriculture

5,000 years to go from agriculture to metalworking

2,000 years to go from metalworking to steel

Then the race is really on, and we race through late antiquity and the middle ages developing weapons and technologies at a rapid pace. 1000 years from romans building stone arches to ships armed with cannons sailing the globe.

440 years after the first circumnavigation we land on the moon.