The smartphone has become so omnipresent that you can barely even see a human without one. But, have smartphones completely obviated the need for the true scholar?

After all, this new breed of tech-savvy mobile devotees can’t all be bona fide intellects. People have been arguing about whether these new smartphones will create a generation of ADHD-suffering consumers who lack a real connection to their fellow humans. Will this encourage humanity to become even more narcissistic, devoid of compassion and self-awareness?

We have all become dependent on gadgets. We will have to turn our attention to the humanist side of ourselves.

Certainly, though, smartphones have taken many of the irritations associated with our previously restrictive lifestyles and lives of our parents and grandparents and applied them to a new generation of humans. Things like homework, housework and other menial tasks have all become even more irritating and arduous. Those with jobs are constantly envious of the unemployed and the middle-class who can live with themselves every day without needing to go to the supermarket. Many young people are suddenly having to work full-time in order to pay for the smartphones they’re so addicted to.

It’s not all bad, though. Using technology, in general, has increased the quality of our lives significantly. Before the advent of the digital revolution, we were dependent on the postal service, phone boxes, fax machines, paper, petrol stations and photocopiers for almost all of the ways in which we recorded information. Now, we can essentially self-publish anything and post it to the world on the world’s largest paper-based website.

I believe the digital revolution has created a new and interwoven generation of smart people.

Of course, a different kind of revolution has also taken place. For the first time in history, technology has permanently altered our cultural landscape and brought us together in a way that we haven’t been before.

Though most of us grew up with relatively few boundaries between what we could see and what we could do, it was often the case that people were very much defined by the experiences that they had before they grew up. Before the digital revolution, we were often taught in school that “kids today” were still relying on analogue devices like the radio and a colour TV to play games and watch films. But, smartphones have been a game changer in the education of the future generations.

Today, they are being taught the way that we were taught in the 1980s, with the internet a basic part of their curriculum. Schools have been flooded with these modern devices, which have become an integral part of life for the next generation.

There are exciting, exciting new things coming, but it’s already clear that they are not going to replace our grandparents and the rest of us as workers. We will still be working and working is something that is better for the soul than being online and playing video games.