The Big Brother is in Our Hands

The Big Brother is in Our Hands 

Almost fifteen years ago, while I was talking with a very smart guy we came to the conclusion that internet would become an unstoppable communication tool, capable of taking education to the most isolated regions in the country, as long as there was a device capable of making the big leap from computers, something that wasn’t as expensive as PC, and that could provide more mobility, laptops seemed for a moment to be the answer,  although they weren’t cheap, we envisioned something small, the size of a radio, ti be true, we never imagined that phones would be the answer, at the time, we had cellphones, yes, they were capable of taking photos and video, but we never imagined internet could get into cellphones and become that such envisioned device.

I certainly hated cellphones, to me they were sort of a leash, were I could be found at any time, either by my family or my boss at work, I loved the feeling of getting away from work at six pm on Friday and not having to worry about it for a couple of days, I loved to take my car and drive outside the city and been lost from civilization for a couple of hours, this latter became impossible, because either my boss could found me on weekends, making the stress of work endless, and also my father or my mother could find me at any time on those days driving to escape from civilization, yes, for  me cellphones became a leash.

But cellphones give way to smartphones, sorry I wasn’t smart enough to materialize the “educational device” before smartphones, but they have become a great tool for work, I can’t say telephone companies are happy at all, because people don’t talk anymore, they first started sending messages thru the phones, and then they started communicating via whatsapp, which definitely made companies sad, because they couldn’t charge at all for calls, now people don’t talk, they “text”, or write messages, which is not bad at all, I like writing a lot, is like the lost art of letters returning after all, although to be exact people don’t write letters, it’s more like telegrams, very short and with lots of abbreviations.

My worrying here, is where the hell technology is taking us?, People are falling madly in love with their cellphones, they take pictures of themselves all the times, they write and write online about their own life, I guess privacy is becoming all fashion, people are becoming “whistleblowers” in a certain way, denouncing via video or pictures what’s going on in their world that they don’t agree with, we are now little “Mannings”, or “Snowdens”, in a way, but that same communication ease works in either way, we are exposed, we are naked and most of what we put online is available to everyone else, we are delighted with the bright side of communication, but we better keep in mind 1984 by the great George Orwell, the eye of the Big Brother could be watching us, and it could became impossible to escape from it in the future, our smartphones now can tell everyone where we are, how we look like, how we thing and who we know, and the choice of turning off the smartphone could be taken away from us, we still have the choice now, our children may not have the choice if things continue this way.

Smartphones could be great communication tools, they could help us take education and information to completely new positive ways, we can transmit information everywhere, but we could also end up exposed in negative ways, smartphones built long distance relations, they make available education to remote places, but they also put distance on our close relations, they brake relationships and can star revolutions, is a dangerous tool if used the wrong way, and we can lose the control over it if we don’t learn to use it the right way.