The Effects of Technological Progress

From its most primitive form thousands of years ago, to the present day of technological advances, technological progress has been pivotal to human survival and instrumental to humanity’s dominion over the environment and its resources. Innovative and inventive minds have, through the ages, pushed for advancing people’s understanding of the world, as well as created technological developments that have aided in sustaining the growing and thriving human populations around the world. Technological innovations, however simple by today’s standards, helped hunter-gatherers of the past survive in a harsh and competitive environment thousands of years ago and enabled horticulturalist and agriculturalist to produce for themselves, and later their communities in the millenniums that followed. Nation-states’ economies depended on agricultural production as well as trade in raw goods and minerals for centuries. However, for well over a hundred years, humanity has had to adapt to an emerging industrial culture, which was brought about by revolutionary technological innovations; what can only be seen as the age of machines. With the advancement of industrialization in the 18th and the 19th century in the west, some economies shifted towards manufacturing and later trade of manufactured goods and services that accompanied such industries. Thus, the rise in specialization and production led to dramatic population growths and higher standards of living in industrialized nations in decades that followed. Consequently, humanity is more dependent on economic development and growth through technological progress than ever before.

Invariably, technological progress is of great importance to economic growth in underdeveloped and developing nations, as it was once and continues to be for advanced nations. As such, it is apparent that technological innovations are of vital importance to humanity in pursuing survival in a world with increasing population growth, depleting...