In its January 2000 issue, Discover magazine notes that about 80 percent of all the scientific discoveries ever made occurred in the last 100 years. What's more, as the magazine goes on to predict, the 21st century will far exceed the 20th in terms of scientific and technological progress. Simply put, the advancement of knowledge is accelerating. Any biologist would tell you that is not the case. The big difference, almost certainly, is in the transmission of useful information, knowledge and insight.
Faster transmission begets greater discovery.
You can see the effect of this most clearly in the development of agriculture. Beginning about 10,000 years ago, our ancestors began to improve their harvests and animal stocks by systematically restricting mating to organisms that displayed desirable characteristics. In other words, they successfully selected food grains and domestic animals by directing evolutionary forces toward useful ends. There were no newspaper headlines or technical papers heralding the first plantings of wheat or the domestication of the dog and the earliest cattle. In fact, the most important early developments in agriculture predate the development of written language.