Is man an exponential technology?

by Tommaso Spezzacatena

In recent years we have been witnessing an important growth in innovation and research. This trend can be confirmed by analyzing the continuous positive trend of new patents filed. The birth and development of these innovations are completely revolutionizing our everyday life.

To give you an idea of ​​the speed of this innovative process, just think that the first iPhone was launched in the USA in 2007 and before then very few could boast an internet connection on their mobile phones. Or that Facebook was launched for commercial purposes only in 2004 and 11 years later it had already reached a billion users and even Airbnb was born in those years. The list is potentially endless. To see how fast things are evolving we need to take some time.

But why did humans began to speed up at this rate? To answer these questions we can try to imagine humans as an exponential technology, which in the last few centuries have found a method to grow and improve faster and faster. In fact, if we consider that from the appearance of the sapiens man on earth about 200/300 thousand years ago to the discovery of the wheel, which occurred around 3500 a. C., approximately 244 thousand years have passed and that the time from the discovery of the wheel to the mass motorization it has been around only 5400 years, perhaps it means that something extraordinary must have happened also to the man himself.

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