In this trilogy of articles related to connectivity for the China Daily community I want to address some incredible innovations that changed our lives, the way we do business and companies strategies. These changes deal with our capacity to communicate, to be tuned and informed in a new world of connectivity.

This trilogy is divided in stories about the way we receive information (first article), the way we send information or communicate (second article) and finally, how companies can take advantage of this connectivity (third article).

I start this first article telling a personal story. Let me remember "those were the days my friend, we thought they would never end…" We will go back to 1977 and 78, when I lived in the USA, while my father was doing post-doctoral studies. Our family was in Brazil and I remembered that international phone calls were so expensive, that we could communicate by phone with them on Sundays and for a few minutes. Forget mobile phones, we used those old equipment with rings to dial. There was an "operator" also to work as intermediary of our phone call.

My grandfather used to post the newspaper for us every Monday morning, and we received it the next Monday (7 days by regular mail). So we were updated about news, business, what was happening, sports, with long delay. Times of the old Boeings 707 of Pan Am, that we could take pictures using our old cameras with films to be further developed.

Then in 1995, almost 20 years after, I lived in France to study during my Masters of Science. Those years faced the beginning of the e-mail communication systems; the infant mobile phone industry was also taking first steps. There was a central computer at the University where we could receive and send emails. A few innovators were using, with no wide acceptance since it wasn't user friendly, and computers were the only desks ones, large, expensive and with limited resources.

In 1998 and 1999 I lived in the Netherlands, doing part of my PhD. We were already with the web working, a lot of content, and others. Email was widely used and mobile phones were all over. I could read newspapers from Brazil at 8AM in the Netherlands, and Brazil's time was still 3AM, everyone was sleeping. I used to joke with my colleagues in Brazil that I was ahead of the time. So from reading the newspapers 7 days after, I "moved to the future" and could read the newspaper 5 hours ahead. From very expensive phone calls on Sundays, in 1977, to free calls via web sites today. I can travel and follow my family, see them live, for free. My expenses with international phone calls came to zero.

And then we faced the web revolution. These 10 to 15 years that we lived will be strongly remembered by history books (1995-2010) changing life dramatically. We are connected all time, we are informed all time, we changed ways of entertain ourselves. From a lot of time spent in front of TV's, we moved to computers that offer billions of channels, of contents.

Contents from professionals, contents from normal people. Everything is there. If we miss some information of something we click, search and find the answers there. We are uploaded by information all time. In our phones, computers and other devices, like the recently launched tablets. A real revolution in the industry.

Things that did not make part of our lives 10-15 years ago now are just beside us all the time. Just imagine and look around you now. Look how many things are surrounding you that weren't in the past. Look at you mobile phone and perceive that it carries 5 or 6 industries in just one device. It is a camera, a film machine, a watch, a tape recorder, a computer, a radio, a GPS, and even… a phone. On the past, all these functions were performed by separated equipment's produced by different companies.

With the web, we can see maps, we can program trips, compare prices of products and services all over the world, follow GPS systems and avoid getting lost, economizing time and money, we can even see films of the places we plan to visit, of the Hotels we plan to stay. The web reduced information asymmetries, reduced our transaction costs.

We upload our curriculum and other personal data and we receive information of our old friends in connection sites, ones more dedicated for professional information, others sites where they report day to day activities, we meet new friends, we are informed about what our friends are doing. Suddenly, they appear in our computer, in our connection.

We can join communities and receive information of promotions, we can buy together in collective buying sites and we can read QR codes and download a lot of information about a product or service.

There is another form where we can divide our lives in two: before the web and after the web. In the next article, I will address the other way around, the incredible changes in the flow of information from us to someone else.

The author is professor of strategic planning and food chains at the School of Economics and Business, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil (www.favaneves.org) and international speaker.