If there is one area in which technology has most significantly affected humankind, it is the area of communication. The strides that have been made just within the last two generations to connect people all over the globe in a faster, cheaper and more comprehensive manner are breathtaking. What’s most remarkable is that the advancements happen so fast and so consistently, that it’s often hard to step back and truly appreciate the magnitude of the changes.
Consider how far humankind has come from the seemingly humble beginning when Alexander Graham Bell created the first telephone. That may well have been the most revolutionary development of them all. Even with all the increases in sophistication that communications technology has seen since then, nothing quite changed the world like the invention of the phone itself. That being said, today’s phones hardly are recognizable as being descendents of Bell’s genius, and indeed the functionality of the telephone itself has been rather eclipsed by all the other things that modern phones do.
Actual phone calls are becoming rarer. Certainly people still make them, but the ease and ubiquity of the Internet and wider cellular coverage mean many people are communicating more through text-based mediums such as text messages and emails on their phones, to say nothing of Twitter feeds and Facebook posts. Consider that some “phones” on the market today don’t even offer the ability to make calls! They are aimed squarely at those people who prefer interaction through text – sort of the spiritual descendent (if not a degenerate) of the handwritten letter.
Phones today are more like mobile computers than anything else, handling shopping, banking, research, airline check-in, and all manner of things, including a heavy dose of entertainment with games, movies and music. The Internet itself is another immeasurably valuable tool in global communications, so it’s somehow fitting to see two such methods of interaction converge. Such convergence likely will only become more common in the future.