Making old mama understand a smartphone

Someone from the 60s that doesn't know what a phone is can get to know and understand what a phone is and how it works, but an explicit way of explanation will be very much needed because of the complexity of a mobile phone. To explain this to the 60s oldies that hasn't used these gizmos, analyzing the ways of communication during their era will help them to better understand how the smartphone works

Mama, please, listen and follow my explanation. Human beings according to geological time have been existing for more than 2.6 million years and during that period that man evolved, there was nothing like civilization, and tools were not in existence as well. But as time went by, civilization started creeping in gradually and different information age started unfolding. It started from stone age, to bronze age, to iron age, to industrial age, to electronic age

Mama, there's what is called information transmission. It's the transfer of information from one person to another. Before now, or let me say in the olden days during your own time, traditional methods were used to transmit information. There are ancient methods used to send information or messages from one place to another. One of it is oral information transmission

Oral information transmission involves verbal transmission of messages in speech. To pass information about culture, history, law,traditions, and so on, certain people with the knowledge about that information pass it across to the people face to face and they listen to the speech. Such people that pass the information are intelligent because they store information in their memories and pass it on to another generation to keep the history, laws, and traditions alive

Also, beating of drums was a way of passing information to people to send messages across distances in a village, bestow praise to the gods, to issue warnings to people or send invitations, and so on. Once people around hear the sound of the drum, they know what it means. So drums was capable of sending information to communicate with people within a short distance

Mama, I believe you also know of town criers that the king uses to make public announcements across the village on the street or the marketplace. The town crier carries a gong and beats it loud to call the attention of the people to the message from the king

As time went by, people learned how to read and write and write a letter to their loved ones that are living far away. So people living far from their family can still communicate through letter but it takes days, weeks or months for the message to be delivered in some cases and you can only hear the voice of the person that sends the letter through the letter and not physically

Gradually, the educated ones thought of a way to communicate with people that are far away from us and started doing their research. Then they came up with a device that you can hold and communicate through it even if you are far away in another country. The two people that want to communicate must have the device and when one person wants to talk to another person, he will press the device and the person on the other end will press his own too when he receives the signal and they will put the device by their ear and mouth and start talking

They can also see themselves through the camera on the screen of their phone. Mama, if you are wondering how this is possible, it's technology. It's what you elders call oyinbo witch. Mama, I know you've seen a plane flying in the sky and also a boat or a big ship floating on the water. That is the power of technology that was also used to make a smartphone that can send information to any part of the world even when you are in the comfort of your home, play music, watch video, and so on

So mama, that is what a smartphone is. It made life easy. We don't use town criers to pass information anymore. The phone does that. No more writing of letters to talk to people far away from us. We can just pick up our phone and call the person and have a long conversation. Smartphones has helped us in the area of communication as we can now communicate with ease. Hope you get it mama