I think we have all wondered at some point in our lives, how is it possible that 3000 years ago people were hunting with wooden weapons and sleeping in caves, and now we are touching a screen that knows exactly what we want to do. Even at this moment, I find it astonishing that I am pressing some buttons and letters are popping up on my computer’s monitor. So in this article, we will discover together how technology managed to become such an important part of our lives.
Let’s take as beginning the moment people realized that those purple lights that are striking on time of storm were natural phenomena that produced more than just sudden bursts of light. For the discovery of electricity, we have to thank Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison alongside many others, whose bright minds help us enlighten our homes every day.
Then, exactly 145 years ago, Alexander Graham Bell initiated the first telephone call with a phone invented by him himself. The conversation was this iconic line: “Mr. Watson, come here. I want you.” This was the beginning of the end, but Graham had no idea what his invention would lead to, his interest in science coming from an innocent source, both his wife and mother being deaf.
The New Year’s Day of 1983 is considered the birthday of the Internet and it has revolutionized the computer and communications world like nothing before. The invention of the telegraph, the telephone, the radio, and the computer set the stage for this unprecedented source of information. It is impossible to attribute the invention of the Internet to a single person, but ARPANET is considered to be the mother company of this multi-diverse platform, including names like Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf.
Following Bell’s and Kahn’s legacy, Simon is the next big name in technology. Despite what you may think, Simon is not a person, but the name of the first smartphone, invented by the company IBM in 1994. It featured a touchscreen, email capability, and a handful of built-in apps, including a calculator and a sketch pad. Despite this, Simon suffered from several issues, such as reportedly having a battery life of just one hour.
We all know what happened next: Apple invented the first iPhone in 2008, called ”iPhone 2G”, followed by the next shocking arrival: social media. Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Instagram, Youtube are all now parts of our daily routines. This evolution proves nothing but what genius minds, succeeding and learning from each other, can create and I am thrilled but also a bit fearful to see what innovations will appear in technology in the next decades.
Editor- Teodora Cîrjan
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