How much faster is the theoretical rate of progress than the historical rate of progress?
score:2
Honestly, I'm not sure there are a lot of "innovations" that could have become popularized significantly before they did (that might be a decent question if it could be phrased properly).
One thing I've talked about here before is the Informationalist view of History. Since what you're talking about here is the acquisition and spread of knowledge, I think this is one case where it can be applied. Knowledge of course is a self-feeding cycle. The more you know, the more you can know. Given that's an exponential function, what needs to be analyzed here more than anything is the level of knowledge a society currently has, and in particular its means of distributing knowledge to people.*
For example, Europeans had actually set foot on North America and made some attempts to settle it long before Columbus. However, their settlements died out before the Printing Press was invented, which means that knowledge was much more difficult and expensive to distribute back then, so consequently orders of magnitude less people knew about it. Norse sailors knew about it. The Pope knew about it in as much as he'd need to occasionally send their parish new priests. However, almost nobody else heard about it until modern times. On the other hand, Columbus didn't even think he'd found anywhere new. However, his discoveries happened 50 years after the printing press, so all the educated of Europe ended up reading about it.
Likewise there had been several successfully suppressed popular reformist movements within the Catholic church prior to the invention of the Printing Press. However, Martin Luther posted a list of academic debate points, someone thought it might be worth printing them up with their newfangled German printing presses, and he backed into the protestant reformation. Threatening ideas that used to be suppressible by Church authorities no longer were in the new environment.
The first chapter of Douglass S. Robertson's The New Renaissance, makes a really good case for organizing human societies (or perhaps historical "Ages") by the amount of information available to any one person in them. I'll copy the basic gist here from a previous answer:
Where h is the amount of info one mind can hold, and is probably in the vicinity of 5Mb (5*106 bits), a society's information level is:
- 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. Knowledge is a self-feeding cycle, so this will of course show up in all kinds of little ways that we might collectively call "technology" or "rate of progress".
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. Think of it as like a fighter's weight class. A really good fighter can perhaps fight up a couple of weight classes, but too far over and its really not going to be possible for them to compete.
So as far as where we are now, that would be Robertson's Level 4. We probably haven't hit the limits on the amount of accessible bits to one person there yet, but when we do he was thinking the limit is probably going to be the limit on our ability to filter it all down to anything useful.
* - Mathematically, as numbers get larger, if one factor is exponential, all other factors fall away in importance, and can thus be ignored for the purposes of analysis.
More post
- 📝 What was the purpose behind Charles II's charter for Connecticut squatter settlements?
- 📝 What did European people of the 5th century AD eat during spring and what was the availability?
- 📝 Why were old fortifications shaped like stars and not like circles?
- 📝 What was the area of Nazi Germany at its height?
- 📝 What was the most important change that took place in American society as a result of the New Deal?
- 📝 Constantine XI Palaiologos
- 📝 What did typical mid-18th century housing look like in English villages?
- 📝 Was the alphabet invented only once?
- 📝 Why was the Aztec Empire known as an Empire?
- 📝 What is the history of the tradition of the out-going president attending the inauguration of his successor?
- 📝 How was the U.S. divided regarding the French Revolution around 1789?
- 📝 How is it that King Philips War devastated the colonists so much, but the Colonists were not driven out?
- 📝 Did the Minoans practise human sacrifice?
- 📝 Were any of the early settlements in America attacked from the sea?
- 📝 Did Theodore Roosevelt ever say the "things that will destroy America" quote?
- 📝 Who won the wrestling match between Lincoln and Jack Armstrong?
- 📝 Which regions/dynasties do the flags in this Fresco about Byzantine-Persian war represent?
- 📝 How was the Roman army in fact organized during Caesar's campaigns in Gaul?
- 📝 How many suicide attack (kamikaze) pilots died and how many of them successfully hit ships during World War II?
- 📝 What were the business models of real estate development in ancient Rome?
- 📝 In what language was the first Zionist congress in Basel in 1897 held?
- 📝 What is known about the Antiu?
- 📝 Raising children in Europe in the Middle Ages
- 📝 Is there a relationship between Gobekli Tepe and Stonehenge?
- 📝 What language did Gaius Julius Caesar speak with Cleopatra?
- 📝 Why did the French "surrender" all of its troops during the armistice in World War II?
- 📝 What was the Soviet reaction to the revelations about secret US programs like Projects ARTICHOKE, MKULTRA, MOCKINGBIRD, etc., revealed in the 1970s?
- 📝 What kind of AA defenses did the US East Coast have around the time of Paukenschlag?
- 📝 What group is identified by the term "Egyptians" in the Flushing Remonstrance?
- 📝 What is the role of towers in Romanesque architecture?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 How much faster is the theoretical rate of progress than the historical rate of progress?
- 📝 How much faster were the printing presses than hand writing?
- 📝 After the Cold War, how did Berlin develop so much more rapidly than Moscow?
- 📝 How much smaller were medieval farm animals in England than today?
- 📝 How much evidence is there regarding the naval punishment of keelhauling?
- 📝 How did gold come to symbolize lower ranks than silver in the United States Air Force?
- 📝 How much were telegraphists in the 1950s paid?
- 📝 How much did it cost to attend events at the ancient Roman colosseum?
- 📝 How much did J. Robert Oppenheimer get paid while overseeing the Manhattan Project?
- 📝 Why did the German air force lose experienced pilots faster than the Allies, even though they were defending their home airspace?
- 📝 How much is known about the Punic language (of classical Carthage)?
- 📝 What historical reasons did the Nazis give for hating the Jews? How did they identify non-practicing Jews?
- 📝 Approximately how much travel time was saved by the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869?
- 📝 How much of an impact did the Roman emperors' civil wars have on their decision to debase the coinage?
- 📝 What forces/incentives drove the Mongols to conquer a much larger territory than they could comfortably settle or rule?
- 📝 How much did it cost to buy a ticket on the Orient Express from Paris to Istanbul in 1914?
- 📝 How does the amount of equipment carried by various historical infantries compare?
- 📝 How much louder was a Napoleonic era cannon than a musket?
- 📝 How did native Hawaiians achieve such a high literacy rate prior to the 1850s?
- 📝 How much oil was spilled by the naval combatants during WW2?
- 📝 How much did Pan Am tickets to the moon cost?
- 📝 In Viking combat, how much damage was done using the shield?
- 📝 How much authority did a traveling lord have in England in the late 16th century?
- 📝 How much tax revenue did the British Empire receive from its colonies in a given year?
- 📝 Did more Jews live in Poland than any other country, prior to the Holocaust, because of how Polish laws and people regarded Jews?
- 📝 How much of the Jonestown money actually got given to the USSR?
- 📝 How much of the *Iliad* was confirmed scientifically?
- 📝 How did the Catholic Pope manage to become more powerful than Kings in old Europe?
- 📝 How much of the Napoleonic wars were paid by the sale of Louisiana?
- 📝 How much was the wealthy elite harmed by the Bolshevik revolution?
