From Hunting Mammoths to Ordering Uber Eats: Technology and Economic Growth

(Or: why your great-great-grandparent worked twice as hard to eat half as well as you)

About 12,000 years ago, all of humanity lived pretty much the same way: hunting, gathering, surviving day to day. Today you order food without getting off the couch and it shows up in 20 minutes. Between those two worlds there’s a single word that explains almost everything: technology.

Technology isn’t just phones and robots

When economists talk about “technology,” they don’t just mean chips and screens. They mean any new and better way of producing things: the plow, the printing press, electricity, the internet, and yes, also the phone.

Every time someone figures out how to produce the same thing with less effort (or more things with the same effort), the economy takes a step forward. That is, literally, economic growth.

The invention that changed everything (and it’s not glamorous at all): agriculture

Before agriculture, humans had to constantly move around looking for food. When someone figured out how to grow plants and domesticate animals, something enormous happened: people could stay in one place, produce more food than they needed to survive, and use that surplus to do other things: build, trade, think, invent.

“History’s first food surplus probably financed, without anyone realizing it, the first city, the first temple, and the first tax.”

From there, every technological leap repeats the same pattern: you produce more with less, you end up with spare time and resources, and you use that to invent the next thing.

Why did growth suddenly explode?

If you graph the world’s average income over history, you’ll see something curious: for thousands of years, the line is almost flat, and then, just 200-250 years ago, it shoots straight up like a rocket. That lines up exactly with the Industrial Revolution: steam engines, factories, electricity, and later, computers and the internet.

Technology doesn’t just give you “new stuff.” It completely changes how much one person can produce in an hour of work. That’s called productivity, and it’s probably the single most important number for understanding why some countries are rich and others aren’t.

Real example: the farmer from 200 years ago vs. today’s farmer

• 200 years ago, a farmer with hand tools could feed a few families besides their own.
• Today, a single farmer with tractors, fertilizers, and modern technology can feed hundreds (or thousands) of people.

That didn’t happen because today’s farmers work “harder.” It happened because they have better technology. That’s the difference between working a lot and producing a lot.

So… is technology always good?

It almost always helps the total economic “pie” grow. But just like with trade and specialization, it doesn’t automatically slice that pie fairly. When a machine replaces a human job, someone loses their livelihood while the country as a whole becomes more productive. That creates real tension, and it’s part of why technological growth also brings political and social debates, not just applause.

So what does this have to do with you?

Everything. You were born at a moment in history when technology changes faster than ever. That means huge opportunities (careers that didn’t even exist 10 years ago), but also the need to keep adapting — the topic of the next article: what’s going to happen to jobs?

“Long-term economic growth isn’t explained by working more hours. It’s explained by producing better, with better tools, generation after generation.”

So next time someone says “life used to be better without so much technology,” you can gently remind them that the same person probably wouldn’t want to give up clean water, anesthesia, or Wi-Fi.