Industry is a term that refers to the group of operations that are carried out to obtain, transform or transport natural products . Originating from the Latin word industry , the term is also used to name the facility reserved for this type of operations and the set of factories of the same genre or the same region (as occurs, to cite some examples, with "the textile industry " or when talking about "American industry" ).
Just as agriculture represented a great step for man and marked the beginning of the transformation of the environment to satisfy needs, industry became, thanks to technological advances, the engine of economic development starting in the 19th century. . The industrialized countries (those that had the factories and technical resources to carry out mass production) became rich, while the agricultural countries (generators of raw materials) were unable to survive.
In any case, it is important to highlight that investment capital for the industry arose, in principle, from agriculture itself. That is, the profits from agricultural activities were invested in the industrialization of products and in the means of transportation that were believed to be adequate and indispensable to promote international trade.
Industry activities
The transformation of raw materials into a product with a specific characteristic is known as manufacturing . Therefore, the products that we usually use are manufactured by some industrial company .
More complex products, such as automobiles , are created in different stages. For this reason, the same industry can contemplate several production processes and even complete the production of the good in different factories.
The loss of control
Just 20 years ago, the big producers, those internationally renowned companies, seemed to dominate the world. Their only threats were their competitors, and an equilibrium was maintained in which the consumer's task was merely to work to save the money necessary to buy, buy, buy . Nobody wondered if this situation would be interrupted, since the market monsters were seen as demigods, the only ones capable of manufacturing those products that people liked so much. But no one counted on the modern version of the Adam's apple: the Internet .
Education, as oppressive governments know, is a double-edged sword; It turns an ignorant and manipulated person into someone capable of seeing beyond, of thinking for themselves, of making their own decisions. And, worth the analogy, these multibillion-dollar companies controlled their consumers as if they were puppets for years; but that ended the day people had access to more information.
Industry and the Internet
The problem arises when the knowledge accessed is incomprehensible to the subject; At that moment, three very different cases can occur: stand aside and not give an opinion, or try to learn enough to understand about the topic, or simply, the most common option, make incorrect and indiscriminate use of these concepts, avoiding the fatigue of delving into them. In this way, the Internet has become, little by little, the worst enemy of companies and artists , whose products are subjected to exhaustive analysis and exposed for the whole world to see their defects.
Once the true manufacturing cost of an appliance is known, thanks to numerous sites dedicated to disassembling them and revealing all their secrets, consumers demand a reasonable price. Once it is known that a singer is doing lip service, after scrutinizing each of his performances, people become upset and merciless criticism begins. The giants no longer reign; Their only solution is to pretend to be on the side of the people, to prevent the billions of Lilliputians from attacking them and devouring them in seconds, as they have done with so many of their colossal companions.