Why the internet and smartphones are the best inventions ever

Nicolás Schürmann Lindemann
4 min readAug 3, 2014

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Since the invention of writing

Some people may argue with this. They even could say that people where even better without the internet, everything was more private. Almost nobody could new what you where doing, and also you can “say bad things” of other people and not get involved into serious trouble. The worst thing that could happen was that the other guy that you said the bad thing would never talk to you again.

From the very beginning, people was always in the need of communicating their thoughts. Even in the prehistoric times people did drawings trying to explain what they where living, and how did they do it. That’s why we can find drawings of people hunting, mating, breeding, etc.

This of course give some problems (or benefits, depending on your paradigm). You will have to interpret this drawings. Every each of these drawings may mean something completely different. Could be a ritual, a hunting process, a hunting representation, how they farm, you get the point. So the main problem with this is how every other person could actually interpret whatever they want you have to start making conventions, so everybody understand the very same thing that you or i understand for, IE, reading this article.

So there you are, when in year 3200 aprox, they invented the writing. Of course this was evolving but think about this. Not everybody could “make history”. Because the history is made of a lot of concepts, like material stuff (like buildings, clothes, technology, etc.) and, the most important one, writing. So, back to the concept that “not everybody made history”. The very first thing that you need to make history is to actually “bind it” into something that could last years to pass from generation to generation and, eventually, reach other part of a country, city, neighbours, continent, etc. So the main problem was the distribution channels that people use to deliver this information. This information that you delivered could be word of mouth, could be a “thing”, could be in writing. But this writing must be a convention, so we could understand all what we wanted to actually say, and don’t leave any spot to interpretation, because when you start trying to interpret something, that means that people may don’t receive the same message that you actually tryed to deliver. So, the convention of writing started, and this convention wasn’t known by everybody, even nowdays there are people that doesn’t know how to read and write. So not everybody is making history, only “powerful people”. With the power of knowledge.

In spanish there is a word for this first people that actually know how to write and read, they are called the “escrivas”. This people where hired to write history or to write messages that needed to be delivered. This guys started writing the history, so therefore. Only people with “power” write history in those days.

Think about this know, before the internet and smartphones (early 90's, 80's). The only way to get communicated and actually know what was happening in the world was by the television and newspapers. This communication channels may or may not be manipulated by other entities like government. But the main important thing is that if you heard something that wasn’t on the newspapers or the tv, it was a “rumor”. This means that you may actually heard this, get emotionally involved with it, but you have no evidence besides the “a friend of mine told me”.

This was actually, in my opinion, was a bad way of communicating because every guy would interpret the message in the way that he wanted, and then started delivering this message that obviously was mutated by the power of interpretation. So, we needed a tool that could actually try to diminish the interpretation as low as posible, and also that we, all the people in world, transform into communication channels. This is the HUGE leap that humanity took with the invention of the smartphones, we where already communicated with the internet, but with smartphones we can actually attach evidence of what is happening, so no matter what happens, the manipulation of the big newspaper, radio and tvs network will be diminished by the power of the people.

For the companies this is a transitional moment, the are being manipulated by the people, when they manipulate info the wrath of the people will start, because they don’t like being lied. And the transition is “how to go along” with the people and not lose the power that was so hard earned.

There is also other good thing about the communication with internet, all the nasty things of the world are being revealed. They where always there, completely hidden to everybody, but now we can see that. Of course there are people that doesn’t like to see this and are actually demanding that this content should be filtered from the internet. But my personal believe is that we have a responsibility to watch and take actions for what is happening. Instead of giving the back to all the problems that are happening today to the world. Every time with the technology people are recovering what was theirs. So keep up, is our responsibility to watch and take actions. Be a news channel, show the good things, and also the bad things, we should potenciate the good, and obliverate the bad.

Thanks for the reading.

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