At no time in the 10,000 years or so since the last Ice Age has the human race been in a state of constant knowledge and fixed technology. There have been a few setbacks, like what we used to call the Dark Ages after the fall of the Roman Empire. But the world’s population, which is a measure of our technological ability to preserve life and feed ourselves, has risen steadily, with a few hiccups like the Black Death. In the last 200 years the growth has at times been exponential—and the world population has jumped from 1 billion to about 7.6 billion. Other measures of technological development
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