A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology

Economic Prosperity and Innovation

Prosperity has economic connotations, but its dictionary definition is broader, referring to thriving and success rather than to just monetary riches. For most of prehistoric days, prosperity meant living in a benign climate with ample wild game, abundant plant resources, and security from attack by other bands of humans. The Neolithic revolution, as classically described by V. Gordon Childe, was launched by the invention of agriculture, leading to population growth, political and military institutions to defend land, division of labor producing a greater variety of goods and services, and cultural advances such as writing and organized religion. Occurring first around ten thousand years ago, the Neolithic revolution gradually built the technical, demographic and economic basis for the industrial revolution, starting around 250 years ago. If prosperity is the greatest good for the greatest number, then the millennia-long progress of technology symbolized by these putative revolutions has increased human prosperity by something like a million times, from a hunter-gatherer population of ten or twenty thousand at the dawn of humanity to 6 billion today, roughly two-thirds of whom could be described as fabulously wealthy by ancient standards.

It is not at all clear that technological progress is faster today than decades ago, nor that innovation is currently playing a greater role in promoting prosperity. A case can be made that household electrification ...