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by goodbyesf 1028 days ago
> Why’d it explode one day almost like we got a helping hand?

The fundamental difference between the past civilizations and modern civilization is that all past civilizations relied primarily on human/animal power and modern society relies on non-human power. This shift occurred in the early 1800s with the development of thermodynamics and the scientific understanding of the relationship between heat, work and energy. Once we could decouple work from human population, it allowed modern civilization to do more work with less humans. Something previous civilizations never were able to achieve. A train could carry more goods across the country far faster than a thousand horses. An excavator can dig out more dirt in an hour than a thousand men. Whether trains, excavators or super computers, the work that is done is due to thermodynamics.