It does seem that technological progress has been accelerating for some time, especially since the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th and early 19th century. Consider some of the major milestones in technological progress throughout history:
| Milestone | Reached in |
| Harnessing of fire | 1 million BC |
| Emergence of Homo sapiens | 300,000 BC |
| Farming, first cities | 8500 BC |
| Writing, Bronze Age | 3500 BC |
| Iron Age | 1000 BC |
| Scientific Revolution | 1600 |
| Industrial Revolution | 1800 |
| Electricity, indoor plumbing | 1860 |
| Mass extraction of oil | 1870 |
| Aeroplanes | 1903 |
| Synthetic fertilizer | 1910 |
| Nuclear power | 1942 |
| Digital computing | 1943 |
| Lunar landing | 1969 |
| World Wide Web | 1991 |
Clearly, something is amiss here: there has been more technological progress in recent times. Although the choice of milestones is semi-arbitrary, historians have compared different sets of "major milestones" as defined by dozens of respected publications, and found that the acceleration effect is present in every list.
One obvious reason for the acceleration of technological progress is that there are simply more people nowadays. For most of humanity's history, there were fewer than three million people on Earth. By the invention of agriculture in 8500 BC, there were about five million people. By the birth of Christ, there were 200 million. In 1800 the world population was approximately one billion, and as of 2008 is 6.6 billion. 10% of everyone who has ever lived is alive today, and we are more educated, interconnected, efficient, and automation-assisted than ever.
More people means more farmers, more factory workers, more businessmen, more scientists, inventors, and geniuses of every stripe. The more people there are and the better technology they have, the more likely they are to invent new technologies and distribute them. It is a fundamental fact of economics that new inventions are incredibly beneficial. Once invented and distributed, they can permanently increase output per capita for billions of people. So there is a powerful economic incentive, in capitalist societies, to invent new technologies.
Technologies build on themselves in a recursive fashion: better tools can be used to construct ever-better tools at an accelerating rate. Futurists argue that advanced technologies likely to be developed in the 21st century, such as molecular nanotechnology and artificial intelligence, will fuel the continuation of the technological acceleration effect, producing an era of very rapid progress. Where this future progress leads us is anybody's guess.
Michael is a longtime WiseGEEK contributor who specializes in topics relating to paleontology, physics, biology, astronomy, chemistry, and futurism. In addition to being an avid blogger, Michael is particularly passionate about stem cell research, regenerative medicine, and life extension therapies. He has also worked for the Methuselah Foundation, the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, and the Lifeboat Foundation.