Why has infrastructure and technology developed so quickly in the passed century but not so much before?
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This is like a hella long post, of multiple overlapping developments, that requires *more* time than you assume.
The Industrial Revolution, the change from massive labor required just to produce *food* to massive labor using machines required to produce *anything else* cannot be understated.
Almost every thing else that follows can be directly or indirectly attributed to shifting labor from food production to industry. Call that ballpark early to mid 1800s in the US.
The ability to produce *structural steel* allowed the construction of high rises, leading to cities as we know them today. You can see the difference between older buildings, typically limited to around 4 floors maximum height before this.
The first “generally affordable” automobile was sold in 1908, Ford’s Model T. All of a sudden the average person had significant mobility.
First Flight was 1903, with first commercial flight 1914, and aerial combat in WWI a few years later.
Never mind the rise of electricity over gas, Edison’s light bulb in 1880 allowing for longer shifts, which then led to other developments.
The invention of the computer, and then the transistor, which allowed size reduction of said computers allowed for increased complexity, and increasingly complex computation. Hell, they were still doing complex calculations *by hand* for a significant portion of space flight during the 1960s.
Thats just various applications of engineering.
Significant advancements in medicine, allowing for better outcomes usually follow wartime developments. IE battlefield medicine from the Civil War, chemical weapons in WWI, and “modern” antibiotics in WWII. Development of “modern” anesthetics and surgical procedures across that time greatly attributed to survival of things that would otherwise be fatal.
Nevermind things like the discovery and production of insulin in the early 1900s to treat diabetes, which has been known since Antiquity (ancient Greek for example).
The creation and enforcement of the FDA, giving rise to standards in food, medicine, cosmetics also cannot be understated.
You also have the rise of Public Health – vaccinations, sanitation, etc.
I’m getting a bit too longwinded, I can tell, so to sunmarize:
TL;DR – the reduction of labor required to feed a population frees up time and effort to further enhance the welfare of the population, which allows for more technological advancement, which further enhances this cycle.
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