Which historical developments led to mankind becoming ingenious towards todays exponential growth?
score:4
Accepted answer
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
- 📝 What was the official theoretical journal of the communist party of the USSR?
- 📝 What was the name of the father of Mesha, king of Moab?
- 📝 Was there public resistance to Queen Hatshepsut's reign in ancient Egypt?
- 📝 Economic status of whites in the US South at the height of slavery?
- 📝 What was the Hospitaller gonfalon like in the 12th and 13th centuries?
- 📝 Were union disputes the only reason for low female employment in WWI German factories?
- 📝 Could besieged medieval cities develop a micro-economy during wars to endure the siege for long time?
- 📝 Were the Vikings descendents of the Tribe of Dan?
- 📝 Did Nikita Krushchev's support of Stalin's purges play a part in his removal from office?
- 📝 Where did John Adams write of the night he shared a bed and an argument with Benjamin Franklin? Did Franklin write of it as well?
- 📝 Can someone help me ID this insignia?
- 📝 Is there support for the theory that the 1918 influenza resulted from churning up microbe-laden French soil?
- 📝 Did Aboriginal Australians know slings?
- 📝 What were Argentina's intentions for the Falkland Islanders?
- 📝 How did people cut their nails in the past?
- 📝 Has the feminization of the labor force continued after WW1?
- 📝 How did Quebec transition from French Law to English Law?
- 📝 History of "False Flag" Coups
- 📝 Is there any evidence of armies enrolling women in fighting roles in significant number in antiquity or the middle ages?
- 📝 Is there any truth to the claim that freed slaves who moved to Liberia enslaved the local population?
- 📝 Right before D-Day, how were naval mines cleared secretly?
- 📝 Is the EU the world's first supranational political union?
- 📝 What uniform is this chap wearing?
- 📝 Alignment of South American and Egyptian Pyramids
- 📝 What other courts were similar to Louis XIV of France's court in Versailles?
- 📝 What was the first recorded reference to the fact that the sun rises and sets at different times across the Earth?
- 📝 How were the Incas able to build such great works of architecture without using mortar?
- 📝 Which year in history had the highest ratio of non-natural deaths?
- 📝 How might someone have gotten a note forwarded from a transport train headed to Auschwitz?
- 📝 Are there any documented cases where a society was capable of large scale selflessness for the benefit of future generations?
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?