Very thought-provoking post, excellent! And thanks for the mention in the beginning :-)
I've never thought about the importance of fire in human history to be honest. It has become so evident that we forget that there was a time when it wasn't.
I fully agree on what you said about the correlation between dependency and empowerment. However, I'm still not sure how a dependency to things like Snapchat may empower us "to do things better" as you said.
I'm totally with you when it comes to technological revolutions in the sector of medicine, science, research, construction, transportation or whatever non-interpersonal field.
Yet I believe that technology won't ever be able to replace personal relationships, face to face situations, real life encounter, interpersonal communication, emotions, feelings.
You may do a million facetime conferences, skype chats or whatever real time streamings. They won't ever be as powerful as one single meeting in person.
That's where technology can't provide empowerment... and that's why all steemians still talk about November 2016 (steemfest) :-)
The implications of new technology are never clear at the outset.
The kids using snapchat "pictures as speech" are communicating in a way that conveys more information accurately in a faster time. If it wasn't, they wouldn't be doing it. How this will play out, I don't know, but it is clearly a powerful way to communicate and we will see the impact that power has over time.
Good point. I agree on accurate and fast though :)
BTW, I don't use Snapchat either. After writing what I wrote, I'm afraid that I'm already an old fuddy-duddy at 32 and I'm worried just how out of touch and left behind I will be by 50 O.o
Haha, I'm 36 so tell me about it :-D