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this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2026
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No Stupid Questions
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No such thing. Ask away!
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I suppose it depends on the scope of your question. I'm far from being a history expert so my opinion is not a strong one based on concrete data. That said, if we think of humanity as a whole over the past 2000+ years, and plot on graph that change, i would bet that curve looks exponential. Zoomed into shorter periods or populations, there will absolutely be more variance showing that quantum leaps. Something like bronze tools while taking a century to spread, greatly increased efficiencies in developing new technologies, like iron and steel. The ability to communicate almost instantly around the world has taken that all to an extreme level.
I don't think that exponential growth is something that can continue, and given my Moore's law example, that ended a decade ago. But with technology like LLMs that can theoretically push things to the next level, ignoring all of the ethical implications and current shortcomings, that traps change could still go crazy for a long time.
Like I said, I'm no expert, and I could be way off base. It would be interesting to see "change" somehow quantified over the span of humanity and see what looks like graphed out. It's definitely not linear growth, and it may not be purely exponential, but it for sure trends that way across all of humanity.
Your point on communication largely being the key to the rapid spread of technology I think is the most important part. It's allowed technology to be spread fast enough that as long as you have the resources and a capable enough government that isn't corrupt, and are relatively stable, your state can catch up technologically rather fast. This is proven by China and it's rapid advances over the last 50 or so years. Not that they didn't have help, especially early on from the soviets. But they've bought western products, and reverse engineered them and made their own versions. Between that and advancing education policies, allowed them not only to catch up, but in a lot of areas, surpass the west.
If African nations could fix their corruption issues (specifically exploited and kept in place by outside powers) and use their resources to grow their economies they could catch up quickly as well. Unfortunately there's so much of a power unbalance, there's not a lot of ability to nationalize diamond mines for instance.
Ukraine is another great example of how quickly a country can advance if there is enough of a will. Existential crises have a tendency to create a will. But if there was no Internet, and no fast travel, they wouldn't have had much of a chance to defend itself.