How did we come so far, so fast?

How come for hundreds of years, our only form of travel was horse and cart. Then
as soon as the car was invented, a technological onslaught happened. So much so
that in under 70 years we were able to go to the moon.

How did it happen so fast?
What was invented to help things along?
For me since we went to the moon, technology seems to have slowed down compered to
the rate it travelled from the car up to the space race.

It does seem that there was rapid advancement all of a sudden. I was watching a documentary about a year ago that addressed this question and one man who was supposed to be a government employee who spoke from the shadows, explained that many of the technologies we use today were developed through the study a crashed ufo. Once again - alien intervention. Why does everything always come back to that point?

Well, would've gotten here faster, but we had about 750 years of repressed scientific growth as the catholic church proclaimed to the world that technology is the devil, and burned people who practiced any of it.

Probably because it seems like the easy option sometimes. Instead of saying that
a brilliant team of scientists invented amazing technology, Which is more likely in
my opinion, it sounds more exciting to say aliens helped with our advancement.

I wouldn't necessarily say we have slowed down since the moon landing, but rather the area of advancements has just shifted. First it was about transportation, then communication, now I would say we are in a microtechnology age which I feel will bring about some amazing advances and may even overlap into the biology field. I'm not much of a historian, but I would bet that there have been similar cycles of advancement in the past, I'm sure we will get back to transportation sooner or later.

As far as the sudden advancements compared to the past hundreds of years, WolfOfWar may have it right there, or it may just be that higher generations always seem that much more advanced than the previous (all about perspective).

[edit on 8/27/2006 by somedude]

we would of gotten here much sooner had it not been for the dark ages. Its even been said that the steam engine was invented back in ancient rome and was lost in the fire at the library of alexandria.

More to the point though as technology gets better than our average lives get easier which means we spend less time doing physical labour which leaves more time for art and science. This allows technology to build upon itself until it is moving at blinding speeds, all i can say is you ain't seen nothing yet.

I consider reading the book "The Day After Roswell" by Col. Philip J. Corso. It offers an interesting angle from an employee at the Army's Research and Development office in the Pentagon. Each branch of the military supposeably had their own piece of the crash, and he ended up with some of the debris, his job was to see what the use of it could be for.

He explains that's how a lot of fiber optics, nanotechnology and infared advancements came about. It's not a bad book at all and a really good read.

Don't celebrate too quickly because China's environmental situation just keeps getting worse and worse. Even with a brand new five year USD $175 billion program now in place to solve their gigantic conundrum, it's sort of almost too late to actually deal with while at the same time maintaining their impressive economic gains.

Well electricity would have alot to do with it I'd imagine.Most of our technological advances require alot of power, it was probally the biggest catalyst in that sense.Its fairly obvious when you think about it.

Originally posted by thesneakiod

How come for hundreds of years, our only form of travel was horse and cart. Then
as soon as the car was invented, a technological onslaught happened. So much so
that in under 70 years we were able to go to the moon.

How did it happen so fast?
What was invented to help things along?
For me since we went to the moon, technology seems to have slowed down compered to
the rate it travelled from the car up to the space race.

Part of it has to do with transportation and culture and knowledge exchange, and part of it has to do with technological tools.

We see countless times that isolated civilizations don't develop as fast as those with extensive trade routes. Technology developed at a fairly rapid pace in the Middle East and Europe and Greece because there was a lot of trade and a lot of interaction between scholars and inventors and schools of the era. Africa below the Sahara was isolated by difficult access and tribalization and didn't progress as fast. The Americas also developed slowly because the people arrived before they had developed an early bronze age technology and their lifestyles usually took on a hunter/herd-following aspect.

Technology doesn't develop as fast in those conditions.

Finally, there's tools and theory. You can't make a combustion engine until you have metal technology that produces metals that will withstand the constant pounding of the combustion and a fuel that will power it. You also can't make one until you have the ability to machine and shape metals and to make good fasteners (screws) with regular threads. You also can't work on them with wooden or stone tools -- again, requiring certain technologies to be present first.

We couldn't develop modern PCs until we'd built older computers with vacum tubes. We couldn't build those until we had vacum tubes... and those weren't possible before the technology existed to make good lightbulbs.

...and good lightbulbs couldn't exist until we could make high quality glass of regular shapes and draw certain elements into hair-thin wires.

...and so on and so forth, on back.

We can advance farther and faster because our "toolbox" of theory and parts is several billion times larger than the ones available to the ancient Greeks and Romans. Something would be terribly wrong with our science and technolgy if, with all our tools, it marched forward at a very slow crawl.

It really started with the industrial revolution, I doubt theres been a generation since 1800 or so (at least in modern countries) that haven't marvelled at the changes one would see in their own lifetime. This, tied with the beginnings of a true capitalist economy around the same time, fed into the technology advances we are now seeing.

Its exponential too, every new advance in technology feeds on older advances, and opens more avenues for further advance. Increases in communications speed up research, which gives faster communication, etc.

I also disagree that the rate of advance has slowed since the Moon Landings, consider the vast amounts of technology we all use every day. The difference is now its largely being driven by companies and their economic goals now more than ever.

I could agree that the industrial revolution was a catalyst that began people WANTING more and actually being able to GET IT for the first time. Mass production allows for more people to have the lastest advances, faster.

My person opinion, however, is that our understanding of electricity has done most of it AND our ever growing population. We have a lot of people who don't die due to war, and therefore get bored. To keep them unbored, we throw them in school and tell them they have to produce a product or service when they get out of school.

So now we have POPULATION, ELECTRICITY, MASS PRODUCTION and you might want to tag on TIME. Yes, 100-200 years is a long time. Of course massive changes can happen in that time period.

In fact, some areas have not advanced very quickly at all... such as automotive production. We have more vehicles and more stylish vehicles, but rarely do we get ones with breakthrough technology. Is it Big Oil's fault? Not really. But if you want flying cars, you need light-weight materials, efficient engines, a demand in the population, trustworthy electronics, top of the line software, and people willing to take risks, just to name a few. It gets REALLY EXPENSIVE and requires a lot of dedicated professionals.

Not every project gets a MASSIVE BUDGET, DEDICATED PEOPLE, AND YEARS TO PRODUCE like the moon mission.

I think the phenomenon that we are discussing here is really the industrial revolution, although no era can be isolated completely from those that came before.

Byrd's comments are reminiscent of a very fascinating series called "Connections 1," "Connections 2," and "Connections 3."

As the Sherlock Holmes of science, [James] Burke tracks through 12,000 years of history for the clues that lead us to eight great life changing inventions-the atom bomb, telecommunications, the computer, the production line, jet aircraft, plastics, rocketry and television. Burke postulates that such changes occur in response to factors he calls “triggers,” some of them seemingly unrelated. These have their own triggering effects, causing change in totally unrelated fields as well. And so the connections begin...

www.documentary-video.com

[edit on 2006/8/27 by GradyPhilpott]

Technological growth is exponential, not linear. As you gain the ability to do more, what you can do with what you have to spur further advances increases. The reason for the technology "explosion" is that we have reached the part of the technology curve where exponential growth really starts to reap huge rewards.

For thousands of years, the advances were so slow that they were essentially unnoticeable, amounting to exponential growth of tiny percentages. In fact, technology did not change appreciably until the Industrial revolution, when the rate of growth reached integer proportions. Then in the next 100 or so years (say 1750 - 1850) our technology probably doubled. Then from 1850-1950 our technology increased by about FOUR times, doubling every twenty-five years. The next hundred years was/is an EIGHT times increase, so now our technology is about four times again what it was in 1950, and will be another four times greater by 2050. 2150 should similarly show an approximate 16 fold gain over the technology of 2050.

Ray Kurzweil calls this "The Law of Accelerating Returns"... technology not only increases, but the RATE of technological change increases as well.

As a related aside, I think that the primary reason we are not MUCH farther along technologically is the fall of the Roman Empire. The Romans were already well on the road to a lot of the advances of the Industrial Revolution, but most of that technology was lost after Rome crumbled. The loss of technology basically lasted from the Dark Ages until the Industrial Revolution, as all of that progress had to be "done again."

I imagine if Rome had stayed intact and continued its technological growth, that our current state of technology would be THOUSANDS of years advanced from what it is, measured by our current rate of technology advance.

[edit on 29-8-2006 by MrMorden]

Originally posted by thesneakiod

How come for hundreds of years, our only form of travel was horse and cart. Then
as soon as the car was invented, a technological onslaught happened.

I think you'll find it was the steam engine that changed everything not the car. The reason it looks like we have slowed down now is because people arnt putting enough money into research and the things that are invented tend to be improvements of a similar technology.

I think its clear Freedom ( Freedom of religion , Freedom of trade and Equal Rights ) opened up the world of science which led to the industrial revolution / electricity.

Ancient Rome was nearly to the level of technology comparable to that of 18th century Europe and even more advanced in many ways.
However the use of slaves inhibited a more widespread use of the advanced mechanical technology. Electricity and chemicals were known to the ancients however it was mystified and mixed with religion and or baned altogether.

Once science could be studied by anyone who wanted to study it without fear of torture or death at the hands of the church and the use of slaves was stopped technology made massive leaps and bounds and continues to do so.

BTW technology hasn't slowed down its only different in its nature. Now advancements are made electronically more than physicaly. In the past 20 years the internet , cell phones , I pods and countless other electrical items have became a norm.

[edit on 29-8-2006 by Heckman]

A consider of unworldly technological advance is quite apprapoe about here, assistance from a higher power in destiny acceleration. Why not advance 'thier" goals, by yet advancing us...?