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In China they have hardly used credit cards: they have gone from cash to mobile phone payment via QR codes.

Perhaps this is one of the most recent cases of leapfrogging, which describes when a society progresses technologically but not linearly, but abruptly, skipping natural stages. In Africa there is another surprising case with ebooks.

African ebooks

Although it may sound counterintuitive, rapid progress does not take place in the most developed regions, but in the least developed ones. This happens because in more developed countries and regions, citizens are tied to a certain way of thinking or doing things, so it is more difficult for them to let go of the past.

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But as explained Michael Hannan in This studio Regarding structural inertia, in less developed countries and regions, people adapt better to new radical changes, which offers a better observation point on the future.

A surprising and paradigmatic case, it's the ebook. In the most modern societies, its implementation is slow because users still find incentives for physical books. But what happens in a place where there are hardly any physical books? The same as in a China without credit cards.

For this reason, Africa could become, according to Mauro F. Guillen in his book 2030, the world's first ebook reader, in the same way that it is already at the forefront of mobile payments. Snappflify, for example, is a South African company that has become the largest educational content platform on the continent and already serves almost 200,000 students.

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For its part, worldreader, a San Francisco NGO, offers free access to a library of ebooks to schools in any developing country.

In rural areas, without coverage, it offers an integrated solution that includes solar panels, USB hubs, LED lights, e-book readers and access to the digital library.

Thanks to the magic of Leapfrogging, then, contentants like the African could receive aan unprecedented cultural and intellectual shock, suddenly, and in a few years; the equivalent of the shocks of thousands of years that the West received with the 38 most disruptive books for culture and science:

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The news

Leapfrogging: when a society makes a technological leap by skipping stages

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

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One of the first authors to imagine a kind of robot, this time made of meat, was a woman: Mary Shelley. His Frankenstein Monster (1823) addressed the fear of a Faustian pact with Promethean echoes. Eighty years later, another woman conceived another mechanical robot but made of wax at a time when plastic or steel did not yet exist: Handcuffs are made to order, of Alice W. Fuller (1895).

The first robot considered as such, and in the real world, would arrive a little later: in 1939. Its name was ELECTRO.

ELEKTRO, the first android

ELECTRO, this is the nickname of the first robot in history and was conceived by Westinghouse Electric Corporation. Elektro was two meters tall, weighed 120 kg, could walk by voice command and say 700 words (thanks to a 78 rpm phonograph). In addition, he smoked cigarettes, blew up balloons, and moved his head and arms.

Joseph Barnett, an engineer at Westinghouse Electric Corporation, used cutting-edge technology to create this first humanoid

Its body consisted of a steel gear and cam skeleton, and its photoelectric "eyes" could distinguish red and green light. Its brain consists of 48 electrical relays that function like a telephone switchboard.

Elektro was on display at the New York World's Fair in 1939 and returned the following year with its companion sparki, a robot dog that could bark and sit.

Elektro participated in films such as: Sex Kittens Go to College from the year 1960, and appeared in the newspaper comic strip The Amazing Spider-Man. In 1992, the dance band Meat Beat Manifesto produced the song "Original Control (Version 2)" which included fragments of Elektro's monologues, quoting lines such as "I am Elektro" and "My brain is larger than yours."

An Elektro robot was seen in the November 24, 2019 episode of Mr.Robot , located in a Queens Museum storage room that was near the site of the Original 1939 and 1964 World's Fair.

It is currently owned by Mansfield Memorial Museum. In 2013, Elektro was displayed at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn.

Someday, perhaps, we will be surrounded by robots made of atoms, or maybe bits (given our tendency to dematerialize the world). Be that as it may, perhaps we will disappear, engulfed by a new way of life or a viral conception of exponential reproduction. That's enough for another science fiction story, like the one I'm telling you here:

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The news

This was the first robot in history and could say up to 700 words out loud and smoked cigarettes

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

.