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
It’s the snowball effect.
1000 years ago, technology and innovation were just snowflakes.
100 years ago, they turned into snowballs running down a mountain.
Now those snowballs have turned into an avalanche.
Prior technology makes it easier to create new technology.
And now that we have so much prior technology it’s incredibly easy to create new technologies.
Cheap, plentiful Energy which then begets far fewer people/animals needed to provide just basic subsistence, when then begets more people who can do something besides farm.
As the increase in energy availability allows more people to do things other than struggle for survival (and allows more people to exist above a bare subsistence level), it also provides the inputs needed to create building blocks for innovation. Specifically plastics, concrete, steel, and ammonia, which then leads to globalization.
Sails, then steam engines and telegraph, then diesel engines, flight, and radio, and now large diesels, turbines, containers, and microchips. Instant-ish communication, and transport of just about anything just about anywhere.
Generally speaking, the core issue was a lack of literacy, a lack access to previous historical research, and valuing rhetoric over experimentation.
In order to get consistent growth in science and technology, you need to have easy access to all of the work that has been previously done. If you don’t have have copies of the research and can’t read the copies you do have, you are kind-of stuck.
There is also the problem that a lot of early science was just philosophy. People would present arguments and whichever person was more convincing would have their theories and ideas become accepted. This mean that lots of ideas that sound right, but are just wrong got accepted and passed down, especially in medicine.
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