¿What is being digital?

V1: Andrea Ortega Jimenez

V2: Daniel Gómez Restrepo

and click… we have entered the world of the internet, the Fourth Industrial Revolution. 65,000 messages per second, more than 300 hours of video per minute, 0.2 seconds to offer a result, a billion websites… The world does not stand still and neither do human beings. With the advent of the digital era at the end of the 19th century, humanity gave birth to the global village of knowledge and information; a new configuration of everyday life and the way we relate to each other. Each step, each technological advance, each new development and innovation, opened the doors to information and knowledge, opened the doors to the future.

To be or not to be, Hamlet asked himself in the 15th century, to be or not to be digital, human beings ask themselves in the 21st century. Those who can read Shakespeare today have the technological developments and innovations of our hominid ancestors to thank for it. Thanks to them, the first tool was made approximately two million years ago. Over time, and thanks to the constant evolution of these technologies, we thinking apes gave free rein to our imagination, and our imagination knew no bounds. 

Human beings fantasize about the future, we have the enormous capacity to imagine, and from there begin to create. Utopias, although very distant, bring us little by little closer to possible imaginaries. That past in which flying was only for the gods or birds, reaching the moon was crazy, and words like universe, digital and internet did not even exist, seems inconceivable. If we talk in quantitative and qualitative terms the evolution is amazing, language and writing, collecting data and giving them a meaning, inquiring and being curious, are just a few of the characteristics that led humanity to make the great leap to the digital age.

The Internet service is used today by four billion six hundred and sixty million people around the world, and it was only 30 years ago that the first website was published. The world and time seem to move at the speed of light. Being digital requires a degree of knowledge, learning, dedication and cooperation, but above all responsibility and respect for oneself and for the people who make up and inhabit this global village of information. What then defines digital human beings, homo digitalis? To be digital is to be curious, to experiment, to be fun, to be opportunistic, to share, to be detail-oriented, to be fast and to wander. 

 The common thread of this whole process is knowledge and how we use it. That is our true purpose, our responsibility and the main input that has driven all human activity and evolution. 

Truly digital people ask questions instead of answering them, they jump into the unknown, taking the leap as our ancestors once did. Beyond evolving, they revolutionize the world, they are protagonists of the digital age.