[ExI] what if

[Stefano Vaj]

On 15 December 2012 19:24, Tomasz Rola <rtomek at ceti.pl> wrote:

> Forgot to mention, but we are not 2000 years after Romans (and other
> ancients) in terms of technological advances. Not even 1500. I understand
> than we surpassed them just some 300 years ago, with introduction of
> calculus and steam engine... and rediscovery of concrete, of which for
> example Colosseum and Roman Pantheon had been built.
>

Indeed. I believe to remember that the agricultural returns (proceeds? how
does say that in English?) got back to Roman standards only in the
XVII-XVIII century.

This is why I find Kurzweil's exponential curves, even though S-shaped,
pretty unpersuasive.

The truth is that we have known periods of unprecedented acceleration of
progress and of revolutionary breakthroughs in a background landscape of
stagnation and not so rarely regression...

-- 
Stefano Vaj
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