Which historical developments led to mankind becoming ingenious towards todays exponential growth?
score:4
I believe what you are talking about is the rate of accumulation of knowledge, aka information. There's a relatively new branch of history called Informationalist History that studies this.
As an example, Douglas S. Robertson has classified all societies based on the amount of information, in bits, that a typical member has access to. Each is categorized based on the enabling invention that allowed humans access to that amount of information.
Where h is the amount of info one mind can hold, and is probably in the vicinity of 5Mb (5*106 bits).
- Level 0 - 107 bits (h) - Pre-Language
- Level 1 - 109 bits - Language
- Level 2 - 1011 bits - Writing
- Level 3 - 1017 bits - Printing
- Level 4 - 1025(?) bits - Computers
The exponent on that number of bits is the important thing. How far one society outclasses another can be gauged by the difference in those exponents.
In Robertson's view, this is why Native Americans, the most advanced of whom barely had writing, had no hope of competing with Europeans with printing presses, but under the right conditions could actually replace a society of Europeans with no printing press a few years earlier. Being a couple of orders of magnitude back can perhaps be dealt with. However, be several back and you'll be lucky if they bother to treat you as the same species.
More post
- 📝 Did any civil resistence against the allied occupation of Japan exist?
- 📝 What is the oldest known board game for 3+ people?
- 📝 Why is Crispus Attucks the one who gets all the attention?
- 📝 Was high-altitude naval bombing ever effective in World War II?
- 📝 Has anyone written Australian history from the perspective of the original inhabitants - the aborigines?
- 📝 How many people died of hunger and malnutrition in the post WWII 20th century?
- 📝 What is the significance of 4200 BCE in context of farming replacing foraging in Europe?
- 📝 How important was the role played by the US in rebuilding Germany post-WWII?
- 📝 Was Marine Corps B. Gen. Evans Fordyce Carlson -- leader of the Carlson Raiders -- suspected of being a communist?
- 📝 What was the reason for Gandhi's visit to Africa
- 📝 Where was Emperor Hirohito during the Kyūjō incident?
- 📝 Where in Pittsburgh did the 1883 Congress of the International Working Peoples' Association meet and write the Pittsburgh Proclamation?
- 📝 What ship is this in Sasebo, Japan Harbor, Korean War Era?
- 📝 How did the KPD relate to the German state during the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact?
- 📝 Were Russian recruits ever chained?
- 📝 What would the Wikipedia page for Spain have said in 1490?
- 📝 Canadian inter-tribal wars
- 📝 Whereabouts of the ancient Korean cannon in Kamchatka
- 📝 Was Columbus viewed as a failure at the time of his death?
- 📝 Why are the Russian Federation's Strategic Rocket Forces and the 12th Chief Directorate separate?
- 📝 Mesopotamia laws 196, 197 and 198
- 📝 Can someone help me identify this sword?
- 📝 Was Buddhism the dominant religion of India for 1 thousand years?
- 📝 Is there evidence of people moving east to Europe?
- 📝 Does Genghish Khan Worship Tengri?
- 📝 Was Laz near Pribram at any time situated in the Sudetenland?
- 📝 Was the Bundesbrief a forgery?
- 📝 Is there any historical evidence for a co-regency of Tiberius and Augustus?
- 📝 The nature of the Preliminary Articles of Peace of 1782
- 📝 What do we know about the !Kung "major gatherings" (up to 200 peoples)?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Which historical developments led to mankind becoming ingenious towards todays exponential growth?
- 📝 Which lost historical documents, when uncovered, led to the most substantial revisions in historiography?
- 📝 Are there ancient historical sources which have been permanently lost?
- 📝 What are the historical reasons for religious and political negative attitudes towards h*m*sexuality?
- 📝 What differences led to Technicolor becoming the dominant color filming technology in Hollywood?
- 📝 Which historical figures are remembered for actions contradictory to their intentions?
- 📝 Are quantitative or mathematical methods becoming more dominant in the 21st century historical research?
- 📝 Which juridical reasons led the Netherlands to lose control of the seas?
- 📝 Know of any historical tales in which a man kills the woman he loves as a sacrifice in the name of duty, religion, etc.?
- 📝 In which modern-day location did the historical battles of Bagrevand happen?
- 📝 Does Historiography have a usual technical term for historical writing which makes factual claims without giving references for them?
- 📝 Which factors led to the different casualty ratio betwen British and German forces during the Battle of Normandy?
- 📝 Has historical revisionism ever led to problems in history?
- 📝 Do we know of any course of action chosen based on historical precedents which was successful?
- 📝 Which astronomical events have been the most important in dating historical events?
- 📝 Which historical figure is attributed with the most death of his people?
- 📝 Which culture used no personal names?
- 📝 Which came first: polytheism or monotheism?
- 📝 What was the historical context of the 2nd amendment to the US Constitution?
- 📝 Are there historical examples of audiences drawn to a work that was "so bad it's good"?
- 📝 Which European Languages are not Indo-European?
- 📝 What is a major historical event historians are deeply divided over?
- 📝 Which monarch had the longest break in their reign?
- 📝 What led some people to (correctly) believe that there was no land under the ice cap at the North Pole?
- 📝 What is the historical basis for the Exodus?
- 📝 Which year in history had the highest ratio of non-natural deaths?
- 📝 Which countries (or comparable geographical units) have a lower population now than they used to at some point in history before 1950?
- 📝 Is there a historical explanation as to why the USA people are so litigious compared to the French?
- 📝 What led to the first fight in the American Civil War?
- 📝 Under which conditions does the losing party actively commemorate a battle?
