Why has technology advanced so more rapidly in the last hundred or so years and even faster now but people for thousands of years have lived without electricity and many of the lazy things we take for granted today?

Friar Tuck

Technology advances with a geometric progression rather than an arithmetrical one. More recent inventions like the mobile phone started weighing and looking the size of a house brick, but in a few short years they have almost become match box size and able to receive and transmit moving pictures. Each time somebody invents something, many more will try and improve it or use the technology to invent different things. Experts say that the space programme has more than justified itself with all the inventions that are a direct result of it. Nov 27 02, 4:00 PM

Gnomon

In around 1750, the people of England finally cut down the last of their trees. This meant that they had nothing to burn for their fires. They had to start mining coal and with this came a need for new technology to support the coal mining industry. Thus was the industrial revolution started. The revolution took the whole of Europe with it and eventually spread to the rest of the Western World. Gradually over the years since 1750, the pace of new technology has accelerated as each new invention allows many more to come soon after. Vernor Vinge, the science fiction writer has theorised that some time in the next 50 years, the rate of technology will go off the scale and there will be a 'singularity' in which something really amazing will happen such as the development of greater than human intelligence machines with god-like powers. Nov 27 02, 10:28 PM

Jack Flash

One thing leads to another, and as technology advances so does the speed of discovery. Sir Isaac Newton summed it up very well in his statement about 'standing on the shoulders of giants'. Nov 28 02, 12:46 PM