Establishing the groundwork for this discussion: What do you mean by "societal progress"? Do you mean things like reduction of poverty, or production of arts,

Establishing the groundwork for this discussion: What do you mean by "societal progress"? Do you mean things like reduction of poverty, or production of arts, or decrease in the frequency of mass murder, or some combination of all of the above and more? Or do you mean something else entirely? What constitutes "technological progress"? Does the progression from a dozen websites to ten million constitute meaningful technological progress - is pushing ten thousand cars off an assembly line twice as progressive as a mere five thousand? Or do you mean actual innovation? In the case of the latter, how would you measure the rate of innovation today with that of earlier periods? (In principle, the number of patents granted per year should give you a rough idea of this, but (1) patents have only been around for a fairly short period of time, and (2) their actual value in measuring innovation is highly disputed). Finally, you seem to imply in your last paragraph that the "greatness" of an era is a function of its social and technological progress, and no other factors. Is this reading correct? Or is the door open to other measures as well?