How did humans advance so quickly in the past 200 years?

For the past 10,000 years, people lived off subsistence farming and never really communicated with others on a large scale. They had piss poor technology compared to today and spent their days picking wheat and shitting in the woods.

Now, there's billions of people with access to the Internet (one of humanity's greatest inventions for sure), which allows mass communication. Everyone and their uncle has a smartphone, which would make any 1920s time traveler shit their pants. We have video games, cars, and freaking AC. We have rifles capable of killing at 2,000 yards and enough explosive munitions to wipe out the planet several times over, compared to just 200 years ago when all we had were some cannons and muskets with shittier accuracy than a hungover guy with morning wood.

So, OT, how have we come so far in the past few centuries?

Obligatory:

i think u can credit much of the quick achievements to the discovery of oil, and cars, planes and electricity and increased human population. All this gave man the ability to do the work of hundreds to thousands of people with 1 machine, be it farm equipment or factory robots.

Being able to farm food on a mass scale to feed people freeing up human capital to achieve other things like research and scientific discoveries in computers, engineering, medicine etc.

Take away oil and electricity and we will go back into the stone age overnight.

I don't think it was aliens, but who knows. Some of the computer advancements in the last 20-30 years are pretty amazing and hard to understand. Some people think the government gave out pieces of alien technology in the 1940s and 1950s to American companies to reverse engineer and thats where we get all our current tech from.

Also most recently, the internet has been the greatest part of all this, people are now all linked together to share information at an instant making it possible to fix problems you couldn't have before. The most simple problems to maybe some of the most difficult.

Thank the physicists.

technology and information stacks. When you make industry and quick communication, the growth is exponential

I forgive your blasphemy against the mathematicians.

Could have been quicker if it wasn't for the "dark ages"

Industrial Revolution!

The United States of America happened.

Aliens for sure!

@gamerguru100 said:

For the past 10,000 years, people lived off subsistence farming and never really communicated with others on a large scale. They had piss poor technology compared to today and spent their days picking wheat and shitting in the woods.

Now, there's billions of people with access to the Internet (one of humanity's greatest inventions for sure), which allows mass communication. Everyone and their uncle has a smartphone, which would make any 1920s time traveler shit their pants. We have video games, cars, and freaking AC. We have rifles capable of killing at 2,000 yards and enough explosive munitions to wipe out the planet several times over, compared to just 200 years ago when all we had were some cannons and muskets with shittier accuracy than a hungover guy with morning wood.

So, OT, how have we come so far in the past few centuries?

Obligatory:

not to mention space

aliens may have been in the picture but not the last 200 years, maybe in the dawn of man, but if you look at the intelligence of gorrilla's and chimpanzees, i doubt it

What was the big turnaround is the steam engine and electrical motors. So when people could change types of energy, mechanical to electrical, steam to kinectic. Before that we had to use the levers wheels combined with animal and human strenght, or even gravity.

It all started when people stopped believing in god and started believing in science, something that started in the 1600's. The moment people could use power of electricity and steam, everything changed. The steam engine developped by james watt in 1791 set in a lot of things in motion literatlly, the various discoveries in electrical motors and motors later on made sure people could use powers that were way stronger than any human, animal or lever could provide.

So no aliens there, but james watt and he wasn't an alien, steam engines were even build before that , but weren't very powerfull, james watt just perfected the steam machine.

@evildead6789: It all started when people stopped believing in god and started believing in science, something that started in the 1600's.

I would actually put the turnaround point some 550 years back to the invention of the printing press, it was at that point that things began to advance as it allowed the written word to spread beyond a few elites in society , such as the church for instance. this was around the time when there was a rise in the number of universities being founded (compared to very few earlier on), and there was certainly an attempt by the elites in society to keep knowledge in the hands of a few , even the Christian bible was only allowed in Latin (meaning most people couldn't understand any of it)

now fair enough , it didn't mean everybody became intellectuals, heck most people were still illiterate , but it certainly expanded the amount of people who had knowledge, this was also accelerated by the collapse of the feudal system in Europe and the discovery of new trade routes, which allowed for at least some social mobility

I don't think a Newton , an Einstein or a Freud for instance could have existed in the Middle Ages, their social status would have confined them to being peasants, and the lack of access to knowledge would have kept them as peasants unless they became part of the clergy.

@Darkman2007: yea I think there is something to this. When people who were born rich stayed rich and people born poor stayed poor we had very limited growth. People born into wealth had all the resources but no real reason to work to advance and people born poor had little resources and their time was spent just surviving.

@jasean79: there is no denying at one point religion was holding back advancement. Maybe not the belief of a god but but the people in charge didn't want to hear any if the science nonsense or you were a heretic. They had power by people being ignorant and that's how they wanted people to stay. Not until science and religion could coexist could people start to advance.

Once we invented replaceable parts, the assembly line, and electricity technology development was able to skyrocket forwards. Each advancement now allows for an even greater advancement. Humans just had to invent the necessities first, which took time.

Maybe that's what evildead was trying to say, but his delivery was terrible. I know back in the day the "fear of God" was a lot more prevalent than in today's society.

Science unrestricted by religion.

Seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave.

The ink of the scholar is more holy than the blood of martyr.

The acquisition of knowledge is a duty incumbent on every Muslim, male and female.

Go in search of knowledge even into China.

The learned ones are the heirs of the prophets. They have knowledge as their inheritance; and he who inherits it, he inherits a great fortune.

One scholar has more power over the devil than a thousand devout men.

He does not die, who takes learning.

Knowledge from which no benefit is derived is like a treasure out of which nothing is spent in the cause of God.

One who treads a path in search of knowledge has his path to Paradise made easy by God.

Whoso honors the learned, honors me.

To listen to the words of the learned and to instill into the lessons of science is better than religious exercises.

'nuff said.

The Industrial Revolution, electronics, the Catholic church no longer executing people who go against their doctrine, etc.

Science / the scientific method.

the explosion has mainly been since ww2 because death squared was becoming a problem now we have nerdcubed

everyone always goes at religion as detrimental to progress and science that is a recent phenomenon primarily in america most scientific breakthrough from just a few centuries ago came via religious institutions due to them having the cash

1) The discovery of oil. I know people knew about it forever, but when it really took off was lubrication for machinery (Industrial Revolution) and.........

2) The invention of the internal combustion engine.

3) Modern assembly line techniques

4) Invention of computers in the 40's.

The waning influence of religion that has prohibited discovery for so long.

Science, slavery, and less ruling power of religion