Tech — the exponential backdrop

Bitcoin runs on computing, and computing has exploded in one lifetime. Space — in my view the most competitive tech of all — tells the same story of fast, relentless progress.

Why read this page

There is one pattern running through climate, computing, space, money and human prosperity: pressure drives innovation, and stability lets it pay off. Cold, hard times seem to spark invention; warm, stable times let populations and wealth grow.

This page lays out the evidence — ice ages, the quiet Sun, the explosion of prosperity after 1800 — and then asks the real question: if every crisis forced a leap, what does that say about Bitcoin, born from the 2008 crisis, and about Bitcoin + AI today?

It's a longer read. Stick with it — the payoff and the summary are at the bottom.

Computing power

From a 30-ton machine to a chip in your pocket — and now quantum.

Computing notes

1945 — ENIAC: the first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer worked — 18,000 vacuum tubes, ~30 tons, a whole room.
1947 — the transistor (Bell Labs) replaced fragile tubes and started the shrink.
1958 — the integrated circuit (Kilby & Noyce); 1965 — Moore's Law predicts transistors doubling roughly every two years.
1971 — Intel 4004: the first microprocessor — thousands of transistors on one chip. (Same year the dollar left gold.)
2019 — quantum supremacy (Google Sycamore); 2025 — a quantum chip (Microsoft Majorana 1). The curve keeps bending upward.

Space — the most competitive tech

From a beeping metal sphere to fully reusable mega-rockets in under 70 years.

Space notes

1957 — Sputnik 1: first artificial satellite, a metal sphere beeping in orbit — it sparked the Space Race.
1961 — Yuri Gagarin: first human in space.
1969 — Apollo 11: first humans on the Moon.
1981–2011 — Space Shuttle: first reusable spacecraft.
2020s — reusability at scale: SpaceX passed its 400th orbital-rocket landing in 2025 and set a record ~170 launches that year; Starship, the first fully reusable mega-rocket, is in active test flight.
Why it matters here: like computing, space shows how fast a competitive, open field compounds — the same exponential spirit behind Bitcoin's growth.

Ice ages & warm times

Earth's climate swings between cold "ice ages" (glacials) and warm spells (interglacials), on roughly 100,000-year cycles driven by changes in Earth's orbit. We live in a warm period right now.

The cold/warm record

For the past million years the cycle has been roughly 100,000 years — long cold glacials, shorter warm interglacials — with temperature swings of almost 10°C.
The driver is Milankovitch cycles: slow, predictable changes in Earth's orbit and tilt (~20k, 40k and 100k-year rhythms).
The Last Glacial Period ran ~115,000 to ~11,700 years ago; the coldest point (Last Glacial Maximum) was ~26,000–20,000 years ago, when ice sheets reached northern Germany.
A final cold snap, the Younger Dryas (~12,800–11,700 years ago), ended abruptly — within decades — and ushered in today's warm Holocene.
Lower sea levels in the ice age exposed land bridges (like Beringia) that let early humans spread across the world — which is why this ties into the origins story below.

Zoom in: the Little Ice Age & the quiet Sun

Within our warm Holocene there have still been cold spells — and they line up with periods when the Sun went quiet (very few sunspots).

The quiet-Sun connection

Maunder Minimum (1645–1715): about 70 years when sunspots almost vanished — fewer than 50 seen in nearly 30 years, versus tens of thousands today.
Spörer Minimum (~1450–1540): an earlier quiet-Sun stretch.
Both line up with the coldest parts of the Little Ice Age — long, harsh European winters.
How we know: careful telescope records from the 1600s–1700s, plus carbon-14 in tree rings (it rises when the Sun is quiet) — confirmed by astronomer John Eddy in 1976.
Honest caveat: the quiet Sun likely contributed to the cooling, but the cold actually began a little before it, and volcanic eruptions are thought to be the bigger cause. A real correlation — not a proven single cause.

And where is the Sun right now? The cycle runs about 11 years, peak to peak (and minimum to minimum), measured by the number of sunspots. Here is the last 25 years:

Where we are now

We are just past the peak of Solar Cycle 25 (the smoothed maximum was around late 2024), so the Sun is now on the slow downslope.
Cycle 25 began at a minimum in 2019 and is expected to run until about 2030, when the next minimum is due — then the rise to Cycle 26 begins.
Only the sunspot count defines the cycle: high count = active Sun (more flares, auroras), low count = quiet Sun.
Note: this chart is a fixed snapshot of past data — the cyclical shape does not change, and the "we are here" mark moves slowly (years), so it stays accurate for a long time.

Does cold drive innovation?

Your instinct has real support — but with a twist. Cold, hard times seem to spur invention, while at the same time hurting prosperity. Innovation and wellbeing are not the same thing.

What the research actually shows

Cold → more innovation: a study across ~500 years and 5,000+ European innovations found rates were higher in prolonged cold periods (and during volcanic dust veils). A 0.5°C rise in temperature lined up with a 0.30–0.60 standard-deviation drop in innovation.
Why: harsher climate created economic pressure and scarcity — and necessity drove invention. Pressure makes people solve problems.
But cold also hurt prosperity: during the Little Ice Age a 1°C long-term cooling shrank city size by around 70%, via failed harvests and higher mortality — with hunger, epidemics and wars.
The honest takeaway: scarcity can spark ideas, but it damages wellbeing. They move in opposite directions — invention is not the same as a good life.
It also ties the charts together: the cold Little Ice Age + quiet Sun (Maunder) sit right where pressure-driven invention was rising — just before the 1800 prosperity eruption.

The origins of humankind — two views

An honest, side-by-side look. These are different kinds of claim: one is a matter of faith, the other is the mainstream scientific reading of physical evidence. Both are presented as what they are.

The creation view (belief)

Held as a matter of faith, drawn from scripture — not from measured data.
In the Biblical account, humankind is created directly by God ("in the beginning"), distinct from the animals, with purpose and design.
Many who hold this view read the timeline as thousands of years, with mankind present from the start rather than emerging gradually.
This is a worldview about meaning and origin that science does not measure or disprove — it sits in a different category from data.

The scientific view (mainstream reading of the evidence)

Built from physical evidence — fossils, dating methods, and DNA — interpreted on an evolutionary timeline.
It places early human ancestors millions of years ago, with anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) appearing roughly 300,000 years ago in Africa.
A "leap" often cited is the behavioural / cognitive change — art, symbols, complex tools — roughly 50,000–70,000 years ago.
This is presented as the current scientific consensus, which is a reading of evidence, not a certainty about ultimate meaning.

BITMI's view: these answer different questions — one "why and by whom", the other "what the physical record shows". We lay both out plainly and let you decide. There is no measured dataset that charts a creation event, so the creation chart above is a belief timeline, not data.

The big question: why only now — and did it help?

First, the single most striking chart in human history — when progress "erupted." For thousands of years living standards barely moved, then around 1800 they shot almost straight up.

When progress erupted

For most of history, world GDP per person was around $158 a year (in today's money) and barely moved.
In the 18 centuries from the first Roman Emperor to the last French king, incomes rose only about 50%.
Then from 1831 to 1881 they rose 100% — twice as much progress in 50 years as in the previous 1,800.
World GDP per person quintupled in the 20th century alone.
Life expectancy went from about 30 to about 80; child mortality from roughly 1 in 4 to 1 in 200.
The kink — the "eruption" — is around 1800, the Industrial Revolution: energy, machines, specialization and trade compounding together. Computing (1945) and the internet are the latest blades of the same stick.

Why only the last ~200 years?

Not because people got smarter — they didn't. It took a stack of ingredients to finally lock into place at once.

The ingredients

Fossil energy (the big one): before ~1800, energy meant muscle, wood, water and wind — all limited. Coal then oil gave near-unlimited concentrated power; one machine could do the work of hundreds.
The printing press (post-1450): knowledge could spread cheaply and accumulate. An idea no longer died with one person — it compounded across generations.
The scientific method (1600s): people began testing ideas systematically instead of trusting authority. Discovery became repeatable, not luck.
Property rights & patents: if an inventor could own and profit from an invention, it paid to innovate — aligning self-interest with progress.
Specialization & trade: doing one thing well and trading multiplied output far beyond self-sufficiency.
The core reason it was stuck: for most of history any extra wealth just grew the population back to subsistence (the "Malthusian trap"). Only the energy + ideas + institutions stack finally broke it — and then it compounded: steam → rail → electricity → engines → computing → internet.

Could BTC + AI be the next big bang?

Every eruption on that curve came from a new layer in the stack: energy, then information, then computing. The honest case is that we may be living through the next one right now — AI as a new layer of intelligence and productivity, and Bitcoin as a new layer of money that no one can print or seize.

No one can promise it — that would be hype, not honesty. But if money and intelligence are both being rebuilt at once, it could be as big a turn as 1800 was. The lesson from the whole curve: those who understood the new layer early, and stayed in control of it, benefited most.

That is what BITMI is for — learn it properly (Crash Courses) and stay safe (Scam Trace).

Why was there no computing machine earlier?

It was not a lack of intelligence — people were just as clever thousands of years ago.
Computing needed a stack of prerequisites to pile up first: writing, mathematics (especially zero and binary), precision metalworking, and above all electricity.
The idea came early — Charles Babbage designed a mechanical computer in the 1830s — but the materials and power to build a reliable one did not exist yet.
It also took a problem big enough to pay for it: ENIAC (1945) was built to compute wartime artillery tables. Necessity and funding arrived together.
So the machine appeared "late" because everything beneath it had to be invented first — each layer standing on the last.

Did life actually get better because of tech?

Better, measurably: longer lives, less famine, modern medicine, instant knowledge, the power to send value across the world in seconds.
Worse, in real ways: lost community and quiet, new anxieties, constant surveillance, debt, and dependence on systems we do not control.
The honest answer is both — not a clean yes. Tech is a tool, not a verdict.
The point that matters: the same tool can free you or trap you, and the difference is who controls it. Custodial accounts, debt, and surveillance are tech that controls you. Your own keys, your own node, your own money are tech you control.
That is the whole idea behind BITMI: use the technology — but hold the keys yourself.

From the first computer to reusable rockets to a money no one can print — progress is real, but it only serves you if you stay in control of it.

The claim, in one place

If you read nothing else, here is the thread of this whole page:

• Climate shaped us both ways. Cold, scarce periods seem to spur invention (necessity breeds ideas); warm, stable periods let farming, cities and population grow. Innovation and prosperity are not the same thing — and the cold-drives-innovation link is a real but still-debated correlation, not settled law.

• Progress compounds, and erupts under pressure. Flat for thousands of years, then exploding after ~1800 once energy, ideas and institutions stacked up. Every crisis — including 2008 — tended to force the next leap.

• Bitcoin fits this pattern. Its ideas were built up over more than a decade by the cypherpunks — hashcash, b-money, bit gold through the 1990s. Bitcoin didn't spring out of nowhere in 2008; that groundwork was simply finished and released right at the 2008 financial crisis, which gave it its timing and its purpose. Today, Bitcoin + AI may be the next leap on the same curve. No one can promise it; but the lesson of the whole page is that those who understood a new layer early, and stayed in control of it, benefited most.

• Why it could matter to you: a money that can't be printed or seized, in a world of rising debt and shrinking purchasing power. Learn it properly (Crash Courses), know its risks (Weak Spots), and stay safe (Scam Trace).