Is Technological Progress Accelerating?

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 ...  more