Revista Colombiana de Obstetricia y Ginecología in the 21st Century

Abstract

Current trends in written media worldwide are driven by new events that began affecting our daily lives in unpredictable ways twenty years ago. At the beginning of the 90s, cell phones, the web and other technologies were already on stage helping people communicate throughout the world, and information was instantly available through mobile antennas, allowing such things as the live broadcast of the Gulf War in 1990. Also at that time, personal computers were already available to help individuals process and store large volumes of data, and mankind as a whole began to develop awareness about global warming as new evidence became available. Notwithstanding, very few people could envision the exponential growth of information and communication technologies, or the effects of global warming experienced during this century.

As we enter the second decade of the 21st century, we have access to computer software and devices that allow people to communicate in real time, regardless of where they are in the world. Some of these devices are embedded in tablets and mobile phones, with their ability to download all types of information, either e-mail, written news, free encyclopedias in several languages built through worldwide collaboration, and multiple other gaming, music and video applications. These devices and applications have enabled the development of social networks, such as Wikipedia with outside editing, and Facebook, a platform for multiple applications very popular among the youth, and more recently, Twitter, very much used by politicians who send their tweets to this network of an estimated 200 million current users. These networks have gained such power that they have been used to drive massive movements, as was the case with the Arab Spring in late 2010. Moreover, digitized images and documents are the building blocks for databases, maps and other images found in Google, for example; they make it possible to visit many places and run through history in great detail, or improve predictions about future scenarios.