Change has become a tool in the hands of the people.

It's interesting, and somewhat irritating, that every time changes come our way people tend to forget that things haven't been a certain way. Specially in the last hundred years, we have seen changes come with unprecedented speed and scope.

For the looks of it, things will continue to keep constantly changing in the short and medium terms. Only the speed of these changes might change depending on the area we are talking about, but things will be changing we like it or not. We'll have to adapt, and solutions found to the new issues that those changes bring.

At the end of the day, people will have to learn to adapt to change and make the best out of it. For the look of it, the new generations are learning not only to cope with change, but actually be a part of it or be who makes change happen. More and more people are not willing to see change, but to change things by themselves.

Change is becoming a tool, and not a problem. People are learning to see change as something to be desired, specially when people takes control of it with the communication tools we have now at out disposal. Things like smartphones, and the social media they allow us to tap into, means that organizing for change at the glass root level is becoming not only easier, but actually affordable for an even larger portion of society.

The question is how long it'll take us to master this power for change, so to make it more effective to change thing in our favor. I'm still hopeful that is more of a when it'll happen, and not if it'll happen.

From this time forward, is time to take a more active participation on building the future we want.

Ignorance is not bliss, but the tool that keeps us subjugated.

One of the biggest ironies of having the tool that enable people to actually look into things to learn about them, or find all the information you need to understand whatever you want, is that most willingly don't do it. There are people who are even proud of not doing even basic research to have some level of understanding about any of the subjects that affect them.

In some ways, ignorance is now somewhat of an option. With the advent of the Internet, and smartphones that give us access to it from mostly everywhere we are, is hard to make a point that people don't have access to information they need to learn about anything. Not only that, now there are many ways to access courses that allow people to learn almost any skill they choose, or have an interest in.

Not knowing something is not an excuse any more not to go, and learn something about it.

Whats more, now more than ever before we have access to news from many different point of views. Which means that making our minds is far easier than before, and we have better information to question what we are being told. Now we can actually come closer to the source than ever before, while having access to more than one expert to better understand what is going around us.

Not being actively learning, and keeping in touch with what is going around you, is detrimental to your interests and those of your community. It saddens me when I hear people repeat misinformation, and half truths, they hear because they didn't take the time to do even basic research to verify what they heard.

What's worse, is that the expectation of simple solutions to complex problems. It seems that there is a denial that reality is complicated, as such there is no silver bullet to solve the problems we face. Solutions will take time, and effort, in order to work. Most importantly, we'll need to keep learning new skills in order to face the problems that we'll be facing in the future.

Ignorance is not bliss, but the tool of those who want to keep us subjugated to their interests. If we want to be free, we need to arm us with knowledge and the skills needed to build a fairer world.

Socialism, the Internet, smartphones, and free markets.

One of the oddest combinations the Internet, and smartphones, have created is combining socialism and the free markets.

What I mean, is that they have brought together people in order to see socialism as the form of government that brings the most benefits to the majority; and the free market as the economic system to follow that brings prosperity to the majority.

As a democratic socialist, I've always believed that the combination of a socialist form of government, and a free market economy, is the best way to create more fair and inclusive society.

The main reason why the combination of the Internet and smartphones is bringing socialism and the free markets together, is that it not only increases the transparency of both governments and corporations. It also allows people connect self organize, and have more say on how the government works, and to free markets even more by allowing, both the individuals and small producers, by allowing them a more direct access to the markets.

I feel somewhat vindicated that now I've the proof that socialism and the free markets can go together. It has always been a matter of how to bring them together, no if they can go together.

Socialism is a form of government, and the free markets are on the economic side of things. As such, socialism is the way we give the market a framework over which to work in such a way its benefits reach the most people as possible, while the negatives are minimized as much as possible.

The idea that markets will self regulate in a way that benefits the people, has been proven wrong several times. That's why we need a way for the peoples have way to regulate markets, through other means than the markets themselves. So far, governments have been the best way to do so.

Yet, the advent of the Internet, and smartphones, that allow people to connect among themselves and create groups, to have a more direct way to sway not only on governments, but on the markets themselves bypassing the need to use the old gatekeepers.

Now more than ever, the combination of socialism and the free markets, empower the people to have a stronger hold on their destiny.

Smartphones have change more than we realize.

For me, its mind-blowing that having a device on your pocket that allows you not only to connect with others in real time, access wealth of information on any subject, but also create content or contribute any way you in an instant, has become so normal.

Smartphones give us the ability not only of being consumes of knowledge, or content. They also give us the chance to contribute with knowledge to be used by other, or create content in a way that years ago would be unthinkable. In many ways, they also have made harder to control how knowledge spread and how we consume content.

More than ever, this abilities gives people to take ownership of both knowledge and content in more immediate, and powerful way. And even though we are still far from being something that everyone can take advantage of, we are well in the path of it becoming a reality in just a few decades.

Now, the importance of making sure that our children have the tools to process all of this vital not only for them to make sense of it. Also because they need to be able to discern misinformation, lies and the such to be able to give the best of use of the tools smartphones are.

The genie is out of the bottle, so to speak. As such, what we need to do is not to put it back in, but give people the tools to make the best use of what this means. If we do so, all the changes that smartphones have brought will be for the better.