Mankind has made incredible leaps in technolgy in the last century, what was responsible for that?

Answer 1

The Roswell crash and area 51. LOL!

Answer 2

Al Gore

Answer 3

The Saucers At area 51,Your mom and yes even Elvis!

Answer 4

Electronics technology has not changed in the last 60 years....but we have mastered shrinking the technology...we owe silicone a tribute to today's technologies.

Good Luck

Answer 5

education and learning from the past. Working together.

Answer 6

Our developing minds

Answer 7

bigger population, better communication. these are results of technology and they also improve technology so technology improves itself indirectly, wit hthe wills of humans of course.

2nd theory: aliens are selling it to us for drugs. and anime.

Answer 8

Funny bunch of prior answers, and some specific germs of fact.

Today we see the result of centuries of accumulated effort to learn, to remember, and to test. Every new idea today comes from one earlier - and often stimulates still more new ideas.

Perhaps the real issue your question provokes is "How long will this epoch of intellectual and related practical growth continue?" Is this a period of great energy that will taper off, or even result subsequently in a long era of decline before a new age of exciting growth comes along?

Throughout history, there have been periods of time when people suddenly developed new "technologies" that led to a huge change in the conditions of people.

One of these was a way to make a primitive "boat" - more than just a floating log, but perhaps several logs, or some bouyant rushes or grasses, that would carry people and goods across water. (We know that very long ago, people inflated animal skins to help them cross rivers, but the idea of the "boat" is far more than a primitive kind of water wings.)

Between 20,000 and 10,000 years ago - or more - these early "boats" combined with lower sea levels to allow people to spread to most portions of the world.

These "boats" also contributed greatly to the rise of civilizations. Some time after the "boats" were devised - various recent archaeological projects place these events as much as 8,000 - 14,000 years ago, much later than we were taught in school - people began to cultivate crops. That event, combined with the domestication of animals, made it possible for people to settle in one area and live more stable and productive lives.

Then, when suddenly there was more food than the community could eat by itself, the "boat" helped start trade and spread populations along rivers and sea coasts. This contributed to the growth of populations, the specialization of people into different occupations, and the rapid growth of ideas.

You might say that water transportation and cultivation of crops was the first "technological explosion" in human history - and it created in its time much the same kind of change and stimulation of ideas that we have enjoyed since the "industrial revolution."

The cycle repeated itself many times with significant new developments in human understanding of the world and materials, mechanics, cultural and social organization, and abstract thought.

At times, people became careful, cautious - they had enough of what they needed, they had a belief system that shaped their understanding of their world and themselves, and they chose to try as hard as possible to keep things as they were. This is best understood by looking at 3,500 years of Chinese history - during a long time of "conservative" cultural stagnation when ideas were very, very carefully watched and usually suppressed to preserve harmony and stability.

Today's great leaps in technological development really began when a comparable climate of intellectual and cultural regimentation was broken. One of the progenitors of our time was the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei - who in the 1400's was forced to take back his published explanations of the solar system. But the ideas, and those of Johannes Kepler, Copernicus and the other great students of physical events in the late Medieval and early Renaissance time, had already escaped.

And oh! by the way, just about then came another clever fellow who helped spread ideas and knowledge like a nasty flu bug - Gutenberg. He did not REALLY invent moveable type - that was done by the Chinese oh so long before - but he developed the first practical printing business with a combination of moveable type, "affordable" paper (instead of rather dear parchment), and INK that actually transferred cleanly and stayed on the page.

Now we see the combination of ideas and the means of transmitting them widely, and preserving the ideas in books. Even before all these events took place, the "university" concept had arise in Western Eruope and by the Renaissance had spread somewhat widely - so there was also a setting in which ideas could be taught and discussed - often rejected by scholars of the day, wedded to some very ancient concepts of the cosmos.

There is a huge difference between the early ideas of the Renaissance and other early "technological bursts." Whether the creation of boats, the cultivation of crops, the forming of a stone arch, or the movement of water by aqueducts, earlier technologies were all practical, applied "sciences." Most were hardly science at all.

The blooming of the Renaissance and the very very first steps toward our present technological explosion began with a new way of seeing EVERYTHING. It was a dramatic new concept of the Universe itself, a shattering and frightening challenge to established religious and academic principles that had been used to define the very relationships of humanity and the heavens.

This was a breakthrough unprecedented in all of human history. Not one other great event before or since has been as significant as changing the total world view of people. And, by the way, that process did not occur as soon as some rogue published a pirated pamphlet based on Galileo. it took a very, very long time, and some incredibly crazy stuff done by such people as Isaac Newton, Robert Hooke, James Boyle, Hakluyt, Leibnitz, Voltaire, Franklin, Watt, and a string of other folks right up to the "stars" of science and technology today.

And the process of "reforming" the world view is far from complete. As long as new ideas, new technologies, and new perceptions continue to confront accepted "truth" of any kind, there will be bitter debate, division, and denial.

To some extent, now the entire world is engaged in a very difficult struggle over this precise matter. Science and technology in themselves are secular and neutral - they don't have a religious or cultural viewpoint. But these disciplines deliver new ideas, new challenges, new information, and perhaps a changing concept of ourselves and our place in the universe, often to people who like life as it has been, and who believe quite strongly that life should remain as it has been.

We have no way of knowing whether this recent burst of intellectual and material energy will continue and expand - or, perhaps, drop off and stagnate until some day in the far future, human comfort with its meaning and its uses at last arises.

Answer 9

internet, instant communication and available resources