why didn’t humanity advance technologically for thousands of years when it comes to things like electricity and other electrical power devices like WIFI, but now humanity is advancing rather rapidly?
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The ability to produce excess stuff allowed more human resources to be focused on new technology and methods. This further increases productivity (since we started at a low level) and this frees up even more human resources to do new stuff.
Prior to the industrialization, most (say around 80-90%) of the world’s population had to work in agriculture (or very nearby occupations – transportation, etc) simply to feed societies. This kind of economic system is very sensitive to weather etc and things like hunger, disease and famine were not uncommon. Basically the vast majority of human effort went to provide the basics like food and shelter – education, science etc were restricted to a small elite.
The industrial revolution meant that transportation became much easier, things like cloth became easier to produce, labor moved from farms to cities. Cities are a great form of organization for human interaction and innovation.
Nearly all technology is based upon an early step forward, without the initial step subsequent step can’t be made, but once the barriers are removed progress flows forward.
I hope someone gives you a better answer than the one I’m about too….
There have been many factors working against a lot of technological advances over the last couple of thousand years, big ones being religion, war and lacking of organised education has been a big holdback also….
Long periods of relative peace and stability tend to allow people the time and ability to learn and study their environments and to work out ways to make life better, easier and new methods and equipment gets developed. The Greeks and Romans were great innovators in their time, yet they and their technology fell to violent invaders and lots was lost, sometimes due to religious people objecting to what the pre-scientists were doing and getting the civil authorities to burn them for witchcraft….
There were similar series of events in many other parts of the world that saw innovative people get the stuffing kicked out of them and their hard work and knowledge lost. Technology advances very slowly most of the time, then a discovery will be made that starts a chain reaction of often rapid advances before slowing again. The Bessemer process of the 1850’s allowed for the creation of steel in a cost effective manner, steels properties allowed for much stronger things, like boilers for steam engines, rails
For electrical devices, as your example, there are a huge number of knowledge and practical discoveries that needed to be made first, for the theory, metallurgical and design phases, each had many subcategories where knowledge needed to be gained first. Each element of an electric motor required someone to think up how to get the stuff it’s made from, and how to put it all together to make it work. For example, the same dudes that were casting the bronze for the weapons of the Ancient Greeks contributed to the theories that ended up powering a Tesla. As did the guys designing Roman plumbing in Rome….
The invention of mechanized methods of mass production in the late 18th and early 19th century created great wealth and a huge incentive to continue to innovate. Technological innovation has accelerated ever since.
Unfortunately it wasn’t all good. Industrialization has also created problems, including the present climate crisis.
Because we didn’t have the scientific method. Now that we have knowledge, it makes it easier to get more knowledge which makes it easier to get even more knowledge, and with knowledge we can make stuff. It’s basically like a snow ball. The bigger it gets the more snow it accumulates which in turn causes it to become even bigger.
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