From the first shaped stone to reusable rockets and machine cognition, a few breakthroughs compounded into everything we have. This is the arc, drawn from real data, and the laws of progress that drive it.
Every breakthrough as an illustrated plate, sized by the GDP unlock it created and wired to what it made possible. Drag to explore, press play to fly the arc, hover to trace a lineage, and click any plate for the full record.
Invention is the cause. These are the effects, every series drawn from Our World in Data. The shape repeats: nearly flat for most of history, then a near vertical climb in the last two centuries.
Progress is not random. It follows patterns regular enough to be named. These are the curves of learning, scaling, networks, and distribution that turn single inventions into compounding systems.
From the first clay record of a debt and the first coin struck in Lydia to a planetary economy, set against the resource base of near space. Value in US dollars on a logarithmic scale, so every step is ten times the one before it.
A single metallic asteroid holds metals valued above every dollar of human output and debt combined. That figure is a resource estimate, not a bank balance. Flooding any market collapses the price, and industrial extraction remains decades away.
On the left, the compounding engine of Earth. On the right, the resource base of near space, presented with the honesty it demands.
The steam engine and the transistor were rails the modern world was built on. Five technologies could carry the next leap. Status today, and where each could go.
Civilization Unlocked / a data driven study of human progress, past and future.