> The 21st? The iPhone? Meh. Humph. I think the iPhone (actually, smartphones) is right up there with the biggest changes of the 20th century. It's what put

> The 21st? The iPhone? Meh. Humph. I think the iPhone (actually, smartphones) is right up there with the biggest changes of the 20th century. It's what put humanity on the Internet. That may not be so obvious to someone from developed countries, where pretty much everyone already had a PC with Internet connection by then, but that was only about 1 billion out of our nearly 8 billion population... about 6 billion more were connected by smartphones over the last decade. The final billion can't afford those yet, but that's changing fast. The thing is, the smartphone wasn't just cheaper than a PC; it's more accessible and provided greater motivation for connecting people. Messaging like WhatsApp has lowered the cost of what people were already considering essential (staying in touch with friends and relatives) enough to justify the higher initial cost, and voice commands and voice messaging made it usable even for people who were essentially illiterate. The impact on billions of people's daily lives has been enormous.