Notice: This is only a preliminary collection of relevant material
The data and research currently presented here is a preliminary collection or relevant material. We will further develop our work on this topic in the future (to cover it in the same detail as for example our entry on World Population Growth).
If you have expertise in this area and would like to contribute, apply here to join us as a researcher.
We are a species capable of producing technology: we are able to understand our world and use this knowledge for practical purposes.
The list of technology we rely on every day is long: it includes the vehicles that transport us, the houses we sleep in, the medication that heals and protects us, the machinery we use for production, the instruments to produce music and art, and the gadgets we use to communicate with each other.
Many of the developments that we focus on at Our World in Data are driven by technological advances. Technological change was necessary to achieve the doubling of life expectancy around the world. And it is what makes economic growth – and thereby the decline of poverty – possible. In this sense much of what we write about here is fundamentally about technology.
On this page we focus on some of the fundamental metrics of technological advances, especially in technologies that got developed very recently and in which innovation is particularly fast.
Technological change is obviously not necessarily positive. Some of the greatest risks humanity is facing are due to technological innovation.
