Human of 2020

Let's scroll through the time from the time when humans had primitive instruments, as we remember us from the beginning, to the present, as described by the futurists a little less than a century ago, when humankind got a complex view of the modern world. Smartphones upended every element of society during the last decade, from conversation, transportation to food extraction.
The advent of the smartphone marked the combining of man and gadget. These devices might not be embedded into our forearms just yet, but they have so fundamentally changed over the past decade how we interact, explore and now even augments the world nowadays. We're each wholly devoted to these flat rectangle bars, rarely out of hand or at the very least rarely out of reach.

It took 2007's first-generation iPhone, however, to spark the smartphone's rise from novelty to ubiquity. As our digital addiction grew, so did our dependence on intangible tools - apps.

Now in 2020, the smartphone runs a close second to oxygen as an essential. It can quickly call up any ounce of information discovered in human history, letting us answer "How to calculate the length of a circle" via
Google and end stand-up debates on any topic. It lets us produce art, document global events and let our voices be heard at any instance from anywhere. It can help us find like-minded people, organize online meetups on special days without borders, save and share our memories, even translate from an alphabet which does not exist anymore — or hang in uncertainty in the endless hunt for "Likes". It has engulfed our wallets and stereos, diaries and sketchbooks, cameras and maps, newspapers and game consoles. Apps let it transform into a book, a TV remote or a carpenters' level.

However, the smartphone has shaped the "Always online" generation, where most of us become neurons of the huge global brain, ready to respond to each kind of stimulation. Laptops made the workplace mobile, but smartphones tethered people to the workspace in a way we never thought possible — and when the iPhone gave out, plunging humans first into panic and then a kind of calm.

The strengths of 5G and cellular connectivity will make us more reliant on the smartphones because they'll interact with more things throughout our worlds, adding to the ways these devices become extensions of our bodies on the way to the stars.