I would consider fire, seafaring, language, and clothes to absolutely be “technology” and they existed well before 5000 years ago.
And I think our version of seafaring, spacefaring, will be fruitful over a timescale of thousands of years, and maybe much shorter than that.
Our ancestors walked from Africa to the corners of the globe. Today, the cheapest and safest way to travel thousands of miles (as well as the most common) is to hurtle across the sky at nearly the speed of sound at altitudes that would kill you if not in a pressurized volume. The energy used for this, a round trip from one side of the globe to the other, is about the same as needed to place you in orbit (with hyper-optimized chemical rockets). I don’t see why we think the last ~50 years is the end of such progress of our technology.
we may be ok for the next ~50 years (but i have my doubts, and i really don't think we will ever get much out of earth orbit), but a million years? i don't think many people realise how long that is, and how we could be human at the end of it.
And I think our version of seafaring, spacefaring, will be fruitful over a timescale of thousands of years, and maybe much shorter than that.
Our ancestors walked from Africa to the corners of the globe. Today, the cheapest and safest way to travel thousands of miles (as well as the most common) is to hurtle across the sky at nearly the speed of sound at altitudes that would kill you if not in a pressurized volume. The energy used for this, a round trip from one side of the globe to the other, is about the same as needed to place you in orbit (with hyper-optimized chemical rockets). I don’t see why we think the last ~50 years is the end of such progress of our technology.