The first antibiotic penicillin was made in 1928 but was not widely available until 1945, surgery itself was only done widely in the early 1900’s and arthroscopic surgery was not started until the mid 80’s and only widely done in the 90’s. Electricity was being put into homes in the late 1800’s or early 1900’s. Computers and internet became widely available in the mid 90’s. It is crazy to think that just 150 years ago you would most likely die from appendicitis, and now it is fixable with a operation where you can go home the next day. Why have humans advanced so much in the last 100 years? How come we didn’t invent these things 1000 years ago?
Retention and dissemination of intelligence has increased drastically over time. A thousand years, even a hundred years ago, we didn’t have the tools to make the tools to make the tools, that sort of thing.
I think it’s because information is now widely shared,not kept as a guild secret.
I once read that prior to the invention of air conditioning, the South was simply not conducive for much productivity. And I can believe it. As much as I hate the cold, I get very irritable and restless when I’m hot and sweaty. All I want to do is sit out on the porch and wait for the storm clouds to roll in, while drinking some sweet tea.
Ummmm… isn’t Italy hot? Didn’t they have this thing called the Italian Renaissance? I’m not sure heat prevents productivity.
People write whole books on this subject but the overall principle is fairly straightforward. Technology and industrialization lead not only to more advanced tools (used in the broadest sense here) but also the ability for tools to build even better tools in a loop. Computers are a good example of that but so was metal working and the development of electrical grids among many other examples.
Still, the ever quickening pace of some technology can also create an overall illusion that everything is developing at the same rate when, in reality, it is greatly uneven. We have made great progress in treating some diseases and even eradicated some but we still haven’t managed to nudge human lifespan (not average life expectancy) even one day over what it was 500 years ago. Commercial air travel is cheaper, safer, more efficient and more accessible than ever to the masses but the planes themselves look about the same as ones in the early 1960’s and ours don’t travel any faster either. You may have also noticed a distinct lack of flying cars in your driveway as well. Cars today are also better in most ways than those from decades past but they aren’t fundamentally different. You aren’t going to be surprised if you see a 1969 sedan cruising beside you on the highway and you could hop right in and drive one if you needed to because they are so similar.
Technology tends to develop in fits and starts and often has long plateaus or even dead-ends completely. You probably don’t think about things like cotton gins that much but inventions like that had a huge disruptive effect on both the agrarian plantation model and the economy of whole states in the 1800’s.
You may want to look up the idea of the ‘technological singularity’ that is popular among some futurists that claim we are almost upon it. I don’t believe in it personally but the idea is that artificial intelligence will learn to improve itself and then go into a self-learning loop that quickly overtakes all human intelligence.
Progress builds upon progress. “Discovering truth by building on previous discoveries” or standing on the shoulders of giants.
It will probably accelerate. Think Alvin Toffler, Future Shock.
Italy as a whole is not nearly as hot as the American South. Italy is at surprisingly high latitude. Parts of it have a very moderate Mediterranean climate while other areas like the Italian Alps are downright frosty. There are parts of Italy that get toasty at times but it isn’t the really muggy, oppressive type of hot that you get in the Deep South for months on end every year. For example, New Orleans was almost uninhabitable in the long summer without air conditioning. Thousands of people died every year from everything from Yellow Fever to heat stroke before air conditioning became common. People of any means left the city to go anywhere that was even a little less stifling. I grew up in the Deep South, lived in New Orleans and have been to Italy many times during the summer. Trust me, there is no comparison.
Hot in Venice, Italy is the mid-70s.
Good point. But what about North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky? They are only really hot during the summer…
Yeah, NOLA and Florida are pretty damn hot…
Accumulated Knowledge, availability of the same, economy of scale.
10,000 people working on a problem, often independently, brings a lot more progress than a few dozen in isolation.
…with a touch of mint. 
^ I don’t mean this to sound like a stinky old joke, but the humidity is a killer in those locales. Mornings in February in any part of the South can start off at 40F but the humidity is still 100% and feels it. Later, of course, the temp goes to 85 and that wonderful humidity is still 100%.
I think we are also underemphasizing the change in previous centuries. The industrial revolution, the formation of cohesive nation-states, the age of exploration, the dissemination of new world crops, the developmentof humanism…all of these were massive, and there is a lot more where that came from. Someone sitting there in 1800 would likely look at 1700 and say “Holy OMG, that’s a lot of change!”, as would someone in 1700 looking back on 1600 or someone in 1600 looking back on 1500.
I understand that progress builds upon progress but why didn’t humans invent penicillin or electricity thousands of years ago? Penicillin is just some moldy bread and electricity can come from wind or water power.
Wait, back up: history was my least favorite subject in school, but… we didn’t actually invent electricity, did we?
Lightening, static electricity and electric eels are cool but they won’t get anything good done in their natural state. When people say that ‘we invented electricity’ they are really saying that we invented electrical generators and distribution networks for it. There isn’t any need to be pedantic about. We didn’t ‘invent’ lots of drugs either including penicillin but there is a big difference in just being annoyed that you have to throw your food out because it has mold on it and realizing that mold can be harnessed and distributed to treat multiple deadly diseases.
Calculus.
(Only half joking.)
Aliens.
(not even half joking)
This is a major misconception humans are advanced or advancing fast.
Other than computers and electrons we are stagnating!!
Space rockets we have today are not any more faster or better than space rockets from the 60’s.
We still have no moon base or Mars base.
We gone no where in space.
No cure for motor neuron disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) ,MS, Parkinson’s, strokes,arthritis or brain injury.
No cure for Alzheimer’s and Dementia.
They made lots of progressive in some areas of cancer and hardly any in other areas of cancer.
Very little if any more understanding of relativity or Quantum Physics not to say gravity.
Military firearm technology and firearm technology the police and public use are not particularly more accurate or powerful than firearm technology 20 years ago.