Instead of Atlas, we have Google Maps, instead of ticketing contact names and social networks, instead of the smartphone camera • How did the change happen and what awaits us in the future • Decade summary

• The candles also gave way to smartphone flashes. Hong Kong protesters // Photo: AP

A favorite viral video that has been circulating on the Web for some time illustrates the most beautiful change in the lives of Western Hemisphere residents over the last decade: Our desktop has been drained of its inhabitants: Instead of a photo album and an analog camera, we have a smartphone and a cloud, instead of the globe or the Atlas we have Google Maps Instead of paper letters we have e-mail, instead of notes there is an app, instead of the name card there are contacts, instead of the wallet there is a smartphone and so on and so on.

For most of us, this change may have been gradual and not noticeable, but indeed, slowly our lives converged into digital institutions: the smartphone became the handheld and pocket of us all, files, documents, pictures and memories all moved to the "cloud" (PC system alias) A huge sitting somewhere hundreds of thousands of miles away from us), the broadcasting channels have been abandoned for streaming services - with the biggest motives of all these changes being two: The recent internet network marked Jubilee's founding, and the mobile computing revolution that started on the iPhone, continued on Android and swept the world with billions of devices and women in them.

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Information is the new money

But this world also brought with him his unique troubles. Information has become the new hard currency, and as such it has become valuable for criminals of various types, some with black collar, and some in general wearing t-shirts and no offenders at all.

Our privacy has been violated and destroyed, and an entire generation only lives its life in the cyber world by voluntarily giving up its privacy to personal information thieves who trade it, or those who steal it with us, such as Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. Scandals such as Cambridge Analytica and the use of this information to bias democratic elections and influence their results have also come into the world, and it is important that as citizens of the digital world be aware of its effects and dangers.

And not just the fate of nations is at stake. Personal connections, too, and the intensification of loneliness, are precisely in an age that is supposed to be a friend's age more than ever. People may prefer the company of screens or a person on the other side of the chat in Wetsap than the people next to them, or at least divide their attentions between the present and the remote. And the rise of virtual and laminated reality will only make human communication more complicated.

But not everything is negative in the brave new digital world we created for ourselves. Autonomous cars will take us from the wheel, hoping that in a few decades car accidents will become a thing of the past, communication and connections everywhere will allow more remote work, fewer flights and less pollution, eliminating differences and gaps between center and periphery and physical location in the virtual world. While we are human beings, we may no longer meet face to face with our office or organization members, but conversations in the coffee corner of the neighborhood collaborative work space will take their place. Because in every world, the basic human need for dialogue has not disappeared. He just changed his face.