This is a optimistic story but notice how the two largest wars in history are mere blips. Only China's Maoist revolutions show up as periods of significant radical decline.
Do not let the apparent stability of the gapminder presentation give you the impression our society is on an ever upward trend. That belief is one we need to snap out of and fast.
Major questions need to be asked of the past. There are serious holes in the hypothesis that everything is getting better and better.
Why is it half a century since men walked on the moon. Almost 50 years. That is a long time! Blah blah 'politics' doesn't cut it.
Why aren't new effective medicines being invented and why is the cost of production in drug manufacture doubling every nine years while the costs of discovery (genome sequencing and x-ray crystallography) have radically declined.
Why are the majority of people in Western society's not getting richer over the last two-four decades? The diversity of things to spend on has increased without a real increase in the quantity of money in the bank account and wallet.
Why did African decolonization result in epic (and ignored) failure? Today's states are poorer by most metrics than they used to be half a century ago. Take a look at photographs of Egypt, South Africa and Zimbabwe from that time period. The difference is undeniable.
Why aren't prices declining for basic materials in house construction? During the housing boom up to 2008 (materials should have been expensive) basic materials were cheaper than they are now. It seems like nobody is talking about basic supply & demand being inverted. You cannot explain this with economies of scale or price rigging cartels, there are limits to those things. Prices have doubled for basic materials while demand radically dropped in the interim (at least in my country, about 5k builds last year in the capital). Does anybody understand what the fuck happened here? A new build today must be > 300k as a result. We'll have an epidemic of homelessness if this continues for much longer.
I can point out lots of good things that happened in the last half century, such as the Net, it is just that major questions are utterly ignored by the media and happy-go-lucky TED talkers.