> Like, switching from nomadic hunter-gatherer to agriculture and animal husbandry is a small technological change
No. For agriculture and animal husbandry, you need the right species in your environment to start with and thousands of years of domestication. All our major food sources have been domesticated milliena ago and comprise only a handful of different species. Even with today's knowledge, experts find it next to impossible to find a new plant or animal for major food production instead modifying the old ones.
> but a huge change in standard of living
Well, yes, but not in the way you were indicating: agriculture actually *worsened* the standard of living, as has been found by comparing bones of agriculturists to those of hunter-gatherers. What agriculture did was to allow more people to live in the same area and the existance of specialists like rulers, warriors and priests who did not have to work for food. With greater numbers and better organization, such societies replaced the hunter-gatherers, although those lived better.
> and a huge decrease in risk
No. Living close to many other people and animals increased the risk of catching a disease. Lots of people died before our ancestors developed immunities. However, with the diseases and immunities together, they conquered almost all the rest of the world. By far most of the natives of the Americas, Africas ond so on died of the germs brought to them by Europeans. Columbus was a walking biological weapon.
> Then, industrialization [...] wiped out the need for 95% of our population of factory workers, creating the service economy of today
Industrialization created the need for factory workers, it was automization that wiped it out.
> so, the benefits of innovation today only seem to be small, while the innovations themselves are far bigger than they've ever been.
One could argue that this is the point the article is making: we need to put more and more resources into an innovation to have the same benefit from it. The danger, therefore, is that we are stuck on a plateau: pumping all we have into improving technology, yet gaining next to nothing from it.
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> Like, switching from nomadic hunter-gatherer to agriculture and animal husbandry is a small technological change
No. For agriculture and animal husbandry, you need the right species in your environment to start with and thousands of years of domestication. All our major food sources have been domesticated milliena ago and comprise only a handful of different species. Even with today's knowledge, experts find it next to impossible to find a new plant or animal for major food production instead modifying the old ones.
> but a huge change in standard of living
Well, yes, but not in the way you were indicating: agriculture actually *worsened* the standard of living, as has been found by comparing bones of agriculturists to those of hunter-gatherers. What agriculture did was to allow more people to live in the same area and the existance of specialists like rulers, warriors and priests who did not have to work for food. With greater numbers and better organization, such societies replaced the hunter-gatherers, although those lived better.
> and a huge decrease in risk
No. Living close to many other people and animals increased the risk of catching a disease. Lots of people died before our ancestors developed immunities. However, with the diseases and immunities together, they conquered almost all the rest of the world. By far most of the natives of the Americas, Africas ond so on died of the germs brought to them by Europeans. Columbus was a walking biological weapon.
> Then, industrialization [...] wiped out the need for 95% of our population of factory workers, creating the service economy of today
Industrialization created the need for factory workers, it was automization that wiped it out.
> so, the benefits of innovation today only seem to be small, while the innovations themselves are far bigger than they've ever been.
One could argue that this is the point the article is making: we need to put more and more resources into an innovation to have the same benefit from it. The danger, therefore, is that we are stuck on a plateau: pumping all we have into improving technology, yet gaining next to nothing from it.