use of information technology in daily life essay

How Technology Affects Our Lives – Essay

Do you wish to explore the use of information technology in daily life? Essays like the one below discuss this topic in depth. Read on to find out more.

Introduction

Technology in communication, technology in healthcare, technology in government, technology in education, technology in business, negative impact of technology.

Technology is a vital component of life in the modern world. People are so dependent on technology that they cannot live without it. Technology is important and useful in all areas of human life today. It has made life easy and comfortable by making communication and transport faster and easier (Harrington, 2011, p.35).

It has made education accessible to all and has improved healthcare services. Technology has made the world smaller and a better place to live. Without technology, fulfilling human needs would be a difficult task. Before the advent of technology, human beings were still fulfilling their needs. However, with technology, fulfillment of needs has become easier and faster.

It is unimaginable how life would be without technology. Technology is useful in the following areas: transport, communication, interaction, education, healthcare, and business (Harrington, 2011, p.35). Despite its benefits, technology has negative impacts on society. Examples of negative impacts of technology include the development of controversial medical practices such as stem cell research and the embracement of solitude due to changes in interaction methods. For example, social media has changed the way people interact.

Technology has led to the introduction of cloning, which is highly controversial because of its ethical and moral implications. The growth of technology has changed the world significantly and has influenced life in a great way. Technology is changing every day and continuing to influence areas of communication, healthcare, governance, education, and business.

Technology has contributed fundamentally in improving people’s lifestyles. It has improved communication by incorporating the Internet and devices such as mobile phones into people’s lives. The first technological invention to have an impact on communication was the discovery of the telephone by Graham Bell in 1875.

Since then, other inventions such as the Internet and the mobile phone have made communication faster and easier. For example, the Internet has improved ways through which people exchange views, opinions, and ideas through online discussions (Harrington, 2011, p.38). Unlike in the past when people who were in different geographical regions could not easily communicate, technology has eradicated that communication barrier. People in different geographical regions can send and receive messages within seconds.

Online discussions have made it easy for people to keep in touch. In addition, they have made socializing easy. Through online discussions, people find better solutions to problems by exchanging opinions and ideas (Harrington, 2011, p.39). Examples of technological inventions that facilitate online discussions include emails, online forums, dating websites, and social media sites.

Another technological invention that changed communication was the mobile phone. In the past, people relied on letters to send messages to people who were far away. Mobile phones have made communication efficient and reliable. They facilitate both local and international communication.

In addition, they enable people to respond to emergencies and other situations that require quick responses. Other uses of cell phones include the transfer of data through applications such as infrared and Bluetooth, entertainment, and their use as miniature personal computers (Harrington, 2011, p.40).

The latest versions of mobile phones are fitted with applications that enable them to access the Internet. This provides loads of information in diverse fields for mobile phone users. For business owners, mobile phones enhance the efficiency of their business operations because they are able to keep in touch with their employees and suppliers (Harrington, 2011, p.41). In addition, they are able to receive any information about the progress of their business in a short period of time.

Technology has contributed significantly to the healthcare sector. For example, it has made vital contributions in the fields of disease prevention and health promotion. Technology has aided in the understanding of the pathophysiology of diseases, which has led to the prevention of many diseases. For example, understanding the pathophysiology of the gastrointestinal tract and blood diseases has aided in their effective management (Harrington, 2011, p.49).

Technology has enabled practitioners in the medical field to make discoveries that have changed the healthcare sector. These include the discovery that peptic ulceration is caused by a bacterial infection and the development of drugs to treat schizophrenia and depressive disorders that afflict a greater portion of the population (Harrington, 2011, p.53). The development of vaccines against polio and measles led to their total eradication.

Children who are vaccinated against these diseases are not at risk of contracting the diseases. The development of vaccines was facilitated by technology, without which certain diseases would still be causing deaths in great numbers. Vaccines play a significant role in disease prevention.

Technology is used in health promotion in different ways. First, health practitioners use various technological methods to improve health care. eHealth refers to the use of information technology to improve healthcare by providing information on the Internet to people. In this field, technology is used in three main ways.

These include its use as an intervention tool, its use in conducting research studies, and its use for professional development (Lintonen et al, 2008, p. 560). According to Lintonenet al (2008), “e-health is the use of emerging information and communications technology, especially the internet, to improve or enable health and healthcare.” (p.560). It is largely used to support health care interventions that are mainly directed towards individual persons. Secondly, it is used to improve the well-being of patients during recovery.

Bedside technology has contributed significantly in helping patients recover. For example, medical professionals have started using the Xbox computer technology to develop a revolutionary process that measures limb movements in stroke patients (Tanja-Dijkstra, 2011, p.48). This helps them recover their manual competencies. The main aim of this technology is to help stroke patients do more exercises to increase their recovery rate and reduce the frequency of visits to the hospital (Lintonen et al, 2008, p. 560).

The government has utilized technology in two main areas. These include the facilitation of the delivery of citizen services and the improvement of defense and national security (Scholl, 2010, p.62). The government is spending large sums of money on wireless technologies, mobile gadgets, and technological applications. This is in an effort to improve their operations and ensure that the needs of citizens are fulfilled.

For example, in order to enhance safety and improve service delivery, Cisco developed a networking approach known as Connected Communities. This networking system connects citizens with the government and the community. The system was developed to improve the safety and security of citizens, improve service delivery by the government, empower citizens, and encourage economic development.

The government uses technology to provide information and services to citizens. This encourages economic development and fosters social inclusion (Scholl, 2010, p.62). Technology is also useful in improving national security and the safety of citizens. It integrates several wireless technologies and applications that make it easy for security agencies to access and share important information effectively. Technology is widely used by security agencies to reduce vulnerability to terrorism.

Technologically advanced gadgets are used in airports, hospitals, shopping malls, and public buildings to screen people for explosives and potentially dangerous materials or gadgets that may compromise the safety of citizens (Bonvillian and Sharp, 2001, par2). In addition, security agencies use surveillance systems to restrict access to certain areas. They also use technologically advanced screening and tracking methods to improve security in places that are prone to terrorist attacks (Bonvillian and Sharp, 2001, par3).

Technology has made significant contributions in the education sector. It is used to enhance teaching and learning through the use of different technological methods and resources. These include classrooms with digital tools such as computers that facilitate learning, online learning schools, blended learning, and a wide variety of online learning resources (Barnett, 1997, p.74). Digital learning tools that are used in classrooms facilitate learning in different ways. They expand the scope of learning materials and experiences for students, improve student participation in learning, make learning easier and quick, and reduce the cost of education (Barnett, 1997, p.75). For example, online schools and free learning materials reduce the costs that are incurred in purchasing learning materials. They are readily available online. In addition, they reduce the expenses that are incurred in program delivery.

Technology has improved the process of teaching by introducing new methods that facilitate connected teaching. These methods virtually connect teachers to their students. Teachers are able to provide learning materials and the course content to students effectively. In addition, teachers are able to give students an opportunity to personalize learning and access all learning materials that they provide. Technology enables teachers to serve the academic needs of different students.

In addition, it enhances learning because the problem of distance is eradicated, and students can contact their teachers easily (Barnett, 1997, p.76). Technology plays a significant role in changing how teachers teach. It enables educators to evaluate the learning abilities of different students in order to devise teaching methods that are most efficient in the achievement of learning objectives.

Through technology, teachers are able to relate well with their students, and they are able to help and guide them. Educators assume the role of coaches, advisors, and experts in their areas of teaching. Technology helps make teaching and learning enjoyable and gives it meaning that goes beyond the traditional classroom set-up system (Barnett, 1997, p.81).

Technology is used in the business world to improve efficiency and increase productivity. Most important, technology is used as a tool to foster innovation and creativity (Ray, 2004, p.62). Other benefits of technology to businesses include the reduction of injury risk to employees and improved competitiveness in the markets. For example, many manufacturing businesses use automated systems instead of manual systems. These systems eliminate the costs of hiring employees to oversee manufacturing processes.

They also increase productivity and improve the accuracy of the processes because of the reduction of errors (Ray, 2004, p.63). Technology improves productivity due to Computer-aided Manufacturing (CAM), Computer-integrated Manufacturing (CIM), and Computer-aided Design (CAD). CAM reduces labor costs, increases the speed of production, and ensures a higher level of accuracy (Hunt, 2008, p.44). CIM reduces labor costs, while CAD improves the quality and standards of products and reduces the cost of production.

Another example of the use of technology in improving productivity and output is the use of database systems to store data and information. Many businesses store their data and other information in database systems that make accessibility of information fast, easy, and reliable (Pages, 2010, p.44).

Technology has changed how international business is conducted. With the advent of e-commerce, businesses became able to trade through the Internet on the international market (Ray, 2004, p.69). This means that there is a large market for products and services. In addition, it implies that most markets are open 24 hours a day.

For example, customers can shop for books or music on Amazon.com at any time of the day. E-commerce has given businesses the opportunity to expand and operate internationally. Countries such as China and Brazil are taking advantage of opportunities presented by technology to grow their economy.

E-commerce reduces the complexities involved in conducting international trade (Ray, 2004, p.71). Its many components make international trade easy and fast. For example, a BOES system allows merchants to execute trade transactions in any language or currency, monitor all steps involved in transactions, and calculate all costs involved, such as taxes and freight costs (Yates, 2006, p.426).

Financial researchers claim that a BOES system is capable of reducing the cost of an international transaction by approximately 30% (Ray, 2004, p.74). BOES enables businesses to import and export different products through the Internet. This system of trade is efficient and creates a fair environment in which small and medium-sized companies can compete with large companies that dominate the market.

Despite its many benefits, technology has negative impacts. It has negative impacts on society because it affects communication and has changed the way people view social life. First, people have become more anti-social because of changes in methods of socializing (Harrington, 2008, p.103). Today, one does not need to interact physically with another person in order to establish a relationship.

The Internet is awash with dating sites that are full of people looking for partners and friends. The ease of forming friendships and relationships through the Internet has discouraged many people from engaging in traditional socializing activities. Secondly, technology has affected the economic statuses of many families because of high rates of unemployment. People lose jobs when organizations and businesses embrace technology (Harrington, 2008, p.105).

For example, many employees lose their jobs when manufacturing companies replace them with automated machines that are more efficient and cost-effective. Many families are struggling because of the lack of a constant stream of income. On the other hand, technology has led to the closure of certain companies because the world does not need their services. This is prompted by technological advancements.

For example, the invention of digital cameras forced Kodak to close down because people no longer needed analog cameras. Digital cameras replaced analog cameras because they are easy to use and efficient. Many people lost their jobs due to changes in technology. Thirdly, technology has made people lazy and unwilling to engage in strenuous activities (Harrington, 2008, p.113).

For example, video games have replaced physical activities that are vital in improving the health of young people. Children spend a lot of time watching television and playing video games such that they have little or no time for physical activities. This has encouraged the proliferation of unhealthy eating habits that lead to conditions such as diabetes.

Technology has elicited heated debates in the healthcare sector. Technology has led to medical practices such as stem cell research, implant embryos, and assisted reproduction. Even though these practices have been proven viable, they are highly criticized on the grounds of their moral implications on society.

There are many controversial medical technologies, such as gene therapy, pharmacogenomics, and stem cell research (Hunt, 2008, p.113). The use of genetic research in finding new cures for diseases is imperative and laudable. However, the medical implications of these disease treatment methods and the ethical and moral issues associated with the treatment methods are critical. Gene therapy is mostly rejected by religious people.

They claim that it is against natural law to alter the gene composition of a person in any way (Hunt, 2008, p.114). The use of embryonic stem cells in research is highly controversial, unlike the use of adult stem cells. The controversy exists because of the source of the stem cells. The cells are obtained from embryos. There is a belief among many people that life starts after conception.

Therefore, using embryos in research means killing them to obtain their cells for research. The use of embryo cells in research is considered in the same light as abortion: eliminating a life (Hunt, 2008, p.119). These issues have led to disagreements between the science and the religious worlds.

Technology is a vital component of life in the modern world. People are so dependent on technology that they cannot live without it. Technology is important and useful in all areas of human life today.

It has made life easy and comfortable by making communication faster and travel faster, making movements between places easier, making actions quick, and easing interactions. Technology is useful in the following areas of life: transport, communication, interaction, education, healthcare, and business. Despite its benefits, technology has negative impacts on society.

Technology has eased communication and transport. The discovery of the telephone and the later invention of the mobile phone changed the face of communication entirely. People in different geographical regions can communicate easily and in record time. In the field of health care, technology has made significant contributions in disease prevention and health promotion. The development of vaccines has eradicated certain diseases, and the use of the Internet is vital in promoting health and health care.

The government uses technology to enhance the delivery of services to citizens and the improvement of defense and security. In the education sector, teaching and learning processes have undergone significant changes owing to the impact of technology. Teachers are able to relate to different types of learners, and the learners have access to various resources and learning materials. Businesses benefit from technology through the reduction of costs and increased efficiency of business operations.

Despite the benefits, technology has certain disadvantages. It has negatively affected human interactions and socialization and has led to widespread unemployment. In addition, its application in the healthcare sector has elicited controversies due to certain medical practices such as stem cell research and gene therapy. Technology is very important and has made life easier and more comfortable than it was in the past.

Barnett, L. (1997). Using Technology in Teaching and Learning . New York: Routledge.

Bonvillian, W., and Sharp, K. (2011). Homeland Security Technology . Retrieved from https://issues.org/bonvillian/ .

Harrington, J. (2011). Technology and Society . New York: Jones & Bartlett Publishers.

Hunt, S. (2008). Controversies in Treatment Approaches: Gene Therapy, IVF, Stem Cells and Pharmagenomics. Nature Education , 19(1), 112-134.

Lintonen, P., Konu, A., and Seedhouse, D. (2008). Information Technology in Health Promotion. Health Education Research , 23(3), 560-566.

Pages, J., Bikifalvi, A., and De Castro Vila, R. (2010). The Use and Impact of Technology in Factory Environments: Evidence from a Survey of Manufacturing Industry in Spain. International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology , 47(1), 182-190.

Ray, R. (2004). Technology Solutions for Growing Businesses . New York: AMACOM Div American Management Association.

Scholl, H. (2010). E-government: Information, Technology and Transformation . New York: M.E. Sharpe.

Tanja-Dijkstra, K. (2011). The Impact of Bedside Technology on Patients’ Well-Being. Health Environments Research & Design Journal (HERD) , 5(1), 43-51.

Yates, J. (2006). How Business Enterprises use Technology: Extending the Demand-Side Turn. Enterprise and Society , 7(3), 422-425.

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Secrets About Information Technology That Nobody Will Tell You!

What is Information Technology?

The importance of Information Technology in our Daily Life is unavoidable. Information technology (IT) refers to the study and use of devices and networks that work with digital information. These devices are used to create, store, communicate, and alter data. Today, information technology combines hardware and software to carry out many day-to-day tasks. Whether at home or work, most people use some device each day for a variety of different purposes.

In the workforce, most IT experts work with an organization either in-house or as contractors. For the most part, they work with individuals to troubleshoot technical issues. However, their duties include identifying their company’s needs, introducing new technologies to improve workflow, and training employees on using new platforms and devices. Some may understand the importance of the IT department, but for any company using computers and technology, IT is responsible for keeping everything running.

A Part of Our Daily Life

Beyond the help desk, many companies rely on information technology to create and manage their businesses. For example, computer programming, network administration, computer engineering, and web development all play a part in the success of modern companies. Most businesses rely on computers and mobile devices to store important data, find new clients, sell their items, and manage finances.

Truly, information technology has become a part of our daily life as we live in the “world of information.” In the following years and decades, businesses will continue to adapt and rely on new technologies to improve their operations and reach more people. Please keep reading to learn more about the ways technology has and continues to change our lives.

Benefits of Information Technology

The impact and benefits of technology on our lives today should not be overlooked. With the improvements and advances in new technologies over the last few decades, the twenty-first century has been dubbed the age of science and technology.

We have come to rely on technology due to its benefits. Today, with a simple click of a button, you can shop online, send emails, search for jobs, and look up information technology on anything and anyone. The list of things you can do online is endless.

Our ancestors would not believe the new and strange ways modern technology has changed our lives. At the same time, some of the technology created in shows like “The Jetsons” is available today .

Rely on Information Technology Due to Benefits

People would not have expected devices such as treat-dispensing cameras for our pets, 3D printed organs, and refrigerators with a computer. We can even buy warning lights to attach to our phones to alert us to look up to avoid running into a person or object. Imagine explaining that to someone in the 1800s.

To go even further, imagine living now with the limited technology we had in the 1800s. You would be without your phone, television, car, and even refrigerator. Additionally, surgeries we have come to rely on would no longer be available. Beyond that, many aspects of our day-to-day life would become inaccessible.

Frankly, when the power goes out, many of us are left wondering what to do until it comes back. Businesses close down, and we lose access to most of our entertainment. Honestly, when we lose access to technology, our lives come to a halt.

Information technology has changed how we live.  We continue to create new technologies to adapt to the needs of society and our ever-changing world. Overall, these advancements enable us to progress quickly toward improved efficiency and performance. We can do things today that our ancestors would have never thought possible. So, here are the benefits of information technology in our daily life .

Information Technology in Healthcare

The healthcare industry has embraced technological advancements to improve patient care and safeguard confidential data. Additionally, technology has allowed the creation of new medicines, treatments, and surgeries for illnesses and injuries that were once seen as untreatable. For example, one hundred years ago, tuberculosis was a death sentence for many in the United States. Over 100,000 people die each year. Now, that number is closer to 500. Equally important, doctors can now equip patients with wearable healthcare monitors. These devices minimize hospital visits and allow patients to return to the comfort of their homes while still receiving medical care.

On the other end of healthcare, thanks to information technology, patients can use the internet to research symptoms. Many patients look up the medical issues they’re experiencing and go to the doctor much more well-informed than in the past. Additionally, people can now contact their doctors via email, text, or video conferencing to see if an appointment is necessary or to get more information or advice. Further, when patients can easily access their records and see test results as they come in.

As a result, information technology has enhanced medical care, increased patient understanding, and reduced unneeded medical tests and visits.

Access to Information Technology

The internet has turned into a global village. Now, someone in the United States can speak to, befriend, or do business with someone in France from the comfort of their couch. Students can attend classes from another country. People  worldwide can share their thoughts, findings, and teachings on online forums and categories. Thus, we can learn how businesses operate worldwide, find new recipes, and discover new ways of thinking.

This readily available information makes it easier for us to study, learn and put together research. Access to so much information allows anyone to learn about topics and prepare for exams and papers for school, work, or just for learning.

Furthermore, we can hear what is happening worldwide as quickly as we receive news about our own country. We no longer rely on hearing broadcasts at a certain hour of the day but have channels and websites dedicated to the news. Also, we can download apps and get push notifications for breaking stories. Our friends, family, and coworkers may share the news on their pages and stories. Truly, it is more difficult to stay out of the loop these days than to be out of it.

Saving Valuable Time by Information Technology

One of the main goals of new technology is to streamline everyday tasks in both work and life. By letting us complete tasks quicker, we become more productive and have more time for ourselves and other responsibilities. On average,  we save two weeks’ worth each year  thanks to technology.

One way technology has saved us time is through GPS systems. Basically, anyone who has their own cell phone has access to GPS their cell phone has GPS accessing unfamiliar addresses and looking up the fastest routes. Many people take this technology for granted, but it was a total game-changer just a decade ago.

Previously, we would have to turn to books to do any research or learn about a process or idea. It would take hours or days to identify quality books, find them in a library or bookstore, and then read through and process all the information. Most of that information is now available online through forums, web pages, and e-books. And, if the content itself isn’t on the internet, we can easily find which stores have the books on their shelves.

Creating New Job Opportunities by Information Technology

Every day, new opportunities emerge as the demand for IT personnel rises throughout industries. Computer programming, system analysis, testing, software and hardware, and designing online applications are becoming increasingly popular. With every new information technology, new jobs and fields of study open up worldwide. Thus, while fears of robots taking over our jobs increases, the reality is that employment, as we know them, is simply changing . Experts estimate that, despite losing some jobs to advancements, technology creates millions more in their place. Truly, technology expands the workforce; it does not shrink it.

Entertainment By Information Technology

We now have limitless access to entertainment thanks to new apps and software on laptops, tablets, smartphones, and smart TVs. Previously,  people would have to wait for the night a new episode aired and hope they were available that day. Otherwise, they would be stuck not knowing what happened to their favorite characters for days or even weeks. Similarly, if you didn’t catch a new movie when it was in the theater, you would need to wait for it to come out on DVD before you would get a chance to see it again.

Now, you can stream, download, and purchase music, movies, TV series, and games online immediately by Information Technology. Furthermore, stations also have apps that allow viewers to subscribe, giving them access to every episode of every show they currently run on their channel.

Furthermore, avid readers would often struggle to find new and popular books on the shelves of their local bookstore. Now, they can buy and read new releases from their laptop, phone, or tablet. There are also online subscriptions for e-books which will give readers access to every book in an online library’s collection for a small monthly fee.

Ease of Mobility

Have you ever been stuck without a car? It’s challenging to get around in the United States without a vehicle. Public transport is difficult to access in many cities, underfunded, or even nonexistent. Buses and trains don’t arrive on time, making us late for work, school, or lunch. Additionally, many streets don’t have sidewalks or space for pedestrians or bikers. This includes urban, suburban, and rural areas. For this reason, in the United States, 91% of all households have access to a car .

Thanks to widespread access to cars, we can now get to where we need to go when we need to go. Additionally, technological advancements in cars and other vehicles allow us to travel across the country and go on adventures in other states. Furthermore, aircraft development enables us to visit another country within just a few hours for Information Technology.

Cost-Efficient for Information Technology

The purpose of technological advancements is to make products and services more affordable. If a new device costs thousands of dollars, its audience would be minimal. As a result, businesses seek cost-effective ways to create their goods and deliver them to the largest possible audience. For example, laptops could be a huge bank-breaking purchase a decade ago. Now, people can find quality laptops for less than a hundred dollars.

Thanks to cost-effective products, more and more people have access to phones, computers, cars, and more than ever before. More importantly, expensive medical procedures are becoming cheaper for hospitals to perform. Thus, patients can get top-tier treatments that improve their quality of life and even save their lives.

More Accessibility Both On- and Off-line

Thanks to new scientific developments, individuals with disabilities can live more independently. Further,  people can return to their jobs and responsibilities quickly thanks to new information technologies. On the other hand, individuals born with various disabilities can enter jobs, sports, and activities that were once wholly inaccessible. For example, there are a variety of devices and software that the blind can utilize on phones and computers  that allow them to complete work, search the web, and more. Doctors are 3D printing artificial limbs that are personalized to individuals, improving functionality and comfort.

Improved Banking

Previously, having to go to the bank was considered a considerable chore. We would have to stand in long lines to cash our checks so that we could immediately write and mail more checks to pay our bills. Sometimes, mail delays would result in us receiving unfair late fees or our payments being lost entirely. However, changes in the world of banking  have streamlined our bank accounts.

Now, we can see exactly how much money we have at any time from anywhere via our phone information Technology. Bank apps also allow us to see all transactions, letting us see if someone got ahold of our information. These applications let us move money to and from savings, accept money from clients and friends, and keep everything balanced. Additionally, when our bills come in, we can pay them electronically. Thus, we can get everything delivered on time and know what we’re left with without pulling out the checkbook or calculator.

Final Thoughts

Information technology is an essential component of our daily life. Every type of business relies on some form of tech to run smoothly and accurately. Our banks, schools, entertainment, and public lives are thoroughly connected to technology. It is used across the globe to allow us to communicate with businesses, clients, family, and friends anywhere in the world.

The technology field is an ever-growing sector that will forever be part of and will continue to shape our lives. Almost everyone consumes information technology in one way or another. Every day, someone invents a new device, software, or application that will change someone’s life. Thus, joining a career in IT ensures you will always find work and that your job will improve not just someone’s business but their whole world.

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Essay on Information Technology & Its Benefits in Life

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Technology plays an important role in every field of our Life. The following Paragraph explores the Information technology, its role & Benefit in our everyday life. The topic is quite important for school exams and assignment for children and students.

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Essay on Information Technology- Role & Importance of IT in our Life

Information technology refers to the usage of computers and telecommunications equipment to store, receive, send and manipulate data. It is not just the study of computers but also various aspects like software development, maintenance, networking etc. IT has become an integral part of our lives and is involved in almost everything we do.

Information technology is very much crucial in our daily lives. We use various technologies to perform our daily tasks. For instance, we use computers for office work, the internet for communication and social networking, ATMs for banking etc. IT has made our lives easier and more convenient.

Benefits of Information Technology 

Information technology has been extremely beneficial in multiple fields of life. We use IT in education, Medical field, business and in personal life. IT has transformed our lives in many ways. Some of the important benefits of IT are as follows:

1. It has made communication easier and more effective: We can communicate with anyone in the world within seconds with the help of the internet and mobile phones .

2. It has made education more interesting and interactive: With the help of educational software and online courses, students can learn anything they want from anywhere in the world.

3. It has made the medical field more efficient and accurate: With the help of IT, doctors can access patient’s records from anywhere in the world and provide better treatment.

4. It has made business more efficient and profitable: With the help of IT, businesses can reach a wider audience and sell their products and services more effectively.

5. It has made our personal life more convenient: With the help of IT, we can shop online, book tickets online, transfer money online etc.

To conclude, information technology has been extremely beneficial for us and has transformed our lives in many ways. We should use it wisely and efficiently to maximize its benefits.

Essay on Information Technology 500 Words:

Information Technology, also known as IT, is a rapidly evolving field in the modern world. With the increasing use of technology in our daily lives, it has become an integral part of our society. From personal communication to business operations, information technology plays a crucial role in making things easier and more efficient.

The term ‘information technology’ refers to the use of computer systems and telecommunications to store, retrieve, and transmit data. It encompasses a wide range of technologies such as hardware, software, networking, internet services, and cloud computing.

These technologies are constantly evolving and advancing at a rapid pace. In this essay on information technology, we will delve into the various aspects of this field and its impact on our lives.

One of the key benefits of information technology is its ability to make communication faster and more efficient. The invention of the internet has revolutionized the way we communicate with each other. With just a few clicks, we can connect with people from all over the world and exchange information in real-time. This has not only made personal communication easier but also facilitated global business operations.

Moreover, information technology has also had a significant impact on various industries. With the help of advanced software and data analysis tools, businesses can now gather and analyze large amounts of data to make informed decisions.

This has led to increased productivity and profitability for companies. For example, e-commerce companies use information technology to manage their inventory, track sales, and provide a seamless shopping experience for customers.

The education sector has also been greatly influenced by information technology. The use of computers, tablets, and other devices has made learning more interactive and engaging for students. With the help of online platforms, students can access a vast amount of information and resources to enhance their learning experience. Virtual classrooms and online courses have also made education accessible to people from all over the world.

In addition to these advancements, information technology has also played a crucial role in the healthcare industry. The use of electronic health records has made it easier for doctors and medical professionals to access patient information, leading to faster and more accurate diagnoses.

The development of medical devices such as MRI machines, X-rays, and robotic surgeries have also improved the quality of healthcare services.

However, with these advancements come concerns about privacy and security. With the increase in cybercrime, it has become essential to protect sensitive information and data. This has led to the development of advanced security measures such as encryption, firewalls, and biometric authentication.

Information technology has also brought about significant changes in our daily lives. We can now access information on a variety of topics with just a few clicks. Social media platforms have made it easier to connect with friends and family, while also providing a platform for businesses to reach a wider audience.

Mobile applications have made our lives more convenient by providing services such as online banking, food delivery, and transportation.

In conclusion, information technology has transformed the way we live and work. It has made our lives easier, more efficient, and connected. However, it is essential to use this technology responsibly and be aware of its potential risks.

As information technology continues to evolve, it will undoubtedly bring about even more significant changes in the future. It is up to us to adapt and make the most out of these advancements for the betterment of our society. So, we must embrace and utilize information technology in a responsible manner for a brighter tomorrow.

Short Essay on Information Technology in English:

Information Technology, or IT, is a rapidly growing field that has become an integral part of our daily lives. It involves the use of computer systems to store, retrieve and transmit data and information. The advent of IT has revolutionized the way businesses operate, communication occurs and even how we access entertainment.

One of the key advantages of IT is its ability to streamline processes and increase efficiency. For example, online banking has made it possible for people to conduct financial transactions from the comfort of their own home, saving time and effort.

Moreover, IT has also opened up new avenues for employment, with a wide range of job opportunities in fields such as software development, cybersecurity and data analysis. As we continue to rely more on technology, the demand for IT professionals will only continue to grow.

However, along with its numerous benefits, IT also poses some challenges such as the risk of cyber attacks and data breaches. This calls for constant innovation and advancements in security measures to protect sensitive information.

In conclusion, Information Technology has transformed our world in countless ways and will continue to do so in the future. It is important for individuals and businesses to stay updated with the latest developments in IT to fully harness its potential. It is a field that will continue to evolve and shape our society, making it an exciting time to be a part of the ever-growing world of technology.

Developing Technology Essay:

Technology has revolutionized the way we live and work, making our lives easier and more efficient. With every passing day, new advancements are being made in different fields such as communication, transportation, healthcare, and education.

One of the major benefits of technology is its ability to improve communication. With the advent of social media platforms, people can now connect with each other instantly regardless of their geographical location. This has not only made it easier to stay in touch with family and friends, but also facilitated businesses to promote their products and services to a wider audience.

Moreover, technology has greatly transformed the way we travel. With the development of faster and more efficient modes of transportation such as airplanes, high-speed trains, and electric cars, we can now journey to far-off places in a matter of hours instead of days. This has not only made travelling more convenient, but also opened up new opportunities for businesses and global trade.

In the healthcare sector, technology has played a crucial role in improving patient care. With the use of electronic health records, doctors can easily access and share medical information, leading to better diagnosis and treatment options for patients . Additionally, medical technology advancements such as robotic surgeries and remote patient monitoring have greatly improved the efficiency and accuracy of medical procedures.

Furthermore, technology has revolutionized education by making it more accessible and interactive. Online learning platforms have made it possible for students to access educational resources from anywhere in the world, breaking down barriers to education such as distance and time constraints. Interactive technologies such as virtual and augmented reality have also enhanced the learning experience by providing immersive and engaging educational tools.

In conclusion, technology has had a profound impact on our lives in various aspects. It has improved communication, transportation, healthcare, and education, making it an indispensable part of our modern world.

Essay on Technology Today:

Technology has become an integral part of our lives today. From the moment we wake up to the time we go to bed, technology is present in almost everything we do. It has greatly influenced and transformed our world in ways that were once unimaginable.

With the advancements in technology, communication has become faster and more efficient. We can now connect with people from all around the world in an instant, breaking down barriers of distance and language. We can easily access information on any topic through the internet, making learning and research easier than ever before.

Not only has technology improved communication and access to information, but it has also greatly impacted industries such as healthcare, education, transportation, and entertainment. Medical treatments have become more advanced with the help of technology, making it possible to diagnose and treat diseases that were once considered incurable. In education, technology has opened up new avenues for learning, with online courses and virtual classrooms.

Furthermore, technology has also brought about convenience in our daily lives. From shopping to banking, everything can now be done online at the click of a button. This has made life easier and more efficient for people all over the world.

However, along with the many benefits of technology, there are also some negative impacts. The overuse of technology has led to a sedentary lifestyle and has affected our physical and mental health. It has also caused privacy concerns, as our personal information is constantly being shared and monitored by various companies.

In conclusion, technology plays a crucial role in our lives today, and it will continue to shape our future. While there are challenges that come with its advancements, it is important for us to strike a balance and use technology responsibly to make the most of its benefits while minimizing its negative effects.

Simple Essay about Technology:

Technology has become an integral part of our daily lives. From the alarm that wakes us up in the morning to the smartphone that we use throughout the day, it is safe to say that technology has greatly impacted our society.

One of the biggest advantages of technology is its ability to connect people from all around the world. With just a few clicks, we can communicate with our loved ones who are miles away. This has brought families and friends closer together, breaking down the barriers of distance.

Moreover, technology has made our lives more convenient by automating many tasks that were once done manually. From online shopping to self-driving cars, technology has revolutionized the way we live and work. It has also greatly improved healthcare with advanced medical equipment and telemedicine, making it easier for people in remote areas to access quality healthcare services.

However, with great power comes great responsibility. Technology has also raised concerns about privacy and security, as our personal information is vulnerable to cyberattacks. Furthermore, the overreliance on technology has led to a sedentary lifestyle and addiction to gadgets among young people.

In conclusion, while technology has undoubtedly brought numerous benefits to our lives, we must use it responsibly and strike a balance between its usage and the real world. It is important to remember that technology should serve as a tool to enhance our lives, not hinder it. As long as we utilize it wisely, technology will continue to shape our world for the better.

Essay on Technology Changing the World:

Technology has revolutionized the world in ways that were unimaginable just a few decades ago. From communication to transportation, from education to healthcare, every aspect of our lives has been transformed by technology.

One of the major impacts of technology is on communication. With the advent of social media and messaging apps, we can now connect with people all over the world in an instant. This has not only made the world a smaller place, but it has also opened up opportunities for cross-cultural understanding and collaboration. In addition, technology has allowed us to stay connected with our loved ones even when we are physically apart.

Moreover, technology has also greatly improved the efficiency of various industries. With automation and artificial intelligence, tasks that used to take days can now be completed in a matter of hours. This has not only increased productivity, but it has also created new job opportunities and boosted economic growth.

Another area where technology has made a significant impact is education. Online learning platforms have made education accessible to people from all walks of life, breaking down barriers of location and affordability. This has opened up endless possibilities for students to pursue their interests and gain valuable knowledge and skills.

In conclusion, technology has undoubtedly changed the world for the better. However, it is important to keep in mind that with great power comes great responsibility. It is crucial that we use technology ethically and responsibly to ensure a brighter future for generations to come.

Let us embrace technology’s potential and continue to work towards making our world a better place through its advancements. The possibilities are endless, and the journey has just begun.

Essay on Information Technology in Education:

Information technology has revolutionized the way we access and share knowledge. It has drastically changed the landscape of education, making it more accessible, efficient, and interactive. With advancements in technology, traditional methods of teaching are being replaced by digital tools and resources.

One of the major benefits of information technology in education is its ability to provide personalized learning experiences for students. With the help of online platforms and learning management systems, students can access a variety of educational materials tailored to their individual needs and pace. This not only promotes self-directed learning but also ensures that every student has an equal opportunity to learn.

Moreover, information technology has made it possible for students to collaborate and communicate with each other from different parts of the world. This not only broadens their perspectives but also prepares them for a globalized workforce.

However, it’s important to note that information technology in education is not without its challenges. The digital divide and lack of access to technology can create inequalities among students, hindering their learning experience. Additionally, there are concerns regarding the over-reliance on technology and its impact on critical thinking and creativity.

>>>> Read Also : ” Essay On Google & Its Importance “

In conclusion, while information technology has brought about significant improvements in education, it’s important to use it wisely and ensure that all students have access to its benefits. Only then can we truly harness the power of technology for a better learning experience. So, let us embrace the opportunities that technology brings while also being mindful of its limitations.

Q: How to write an essay about information technology?

A: To write an essay about information technology, research the topic, create an outline, include an introduction, body paragraphs covering key aspects, and a conclusion. Discuss its impact, advancements, challenges, and future prospects.

Q: What is information technology in your own words?

A: Information technology, or IT, is a field that encompasses the use of computers, software, networks, and other digital tools to manage, process, store, and transmit data and information. It’s about leveraging technology to solve problems, improve efficiency, and enable communication and innovation.

Q: What is information technology in a short paragraph?

A: Information technology, often abbreviated as IT, refers to the utilization of technology to handle, store, and exchange data and information. It encompasses various devices, software, networks, and systems that facilitate the management and communication of information in various domains.

Q: What is information technology’s main topic?

A: The main topic of information technology covers a broad spectrum, including computer science, cybersecurity, data management, software development, hardware infrastructure, networking, and the impact of technology on society and businesses. It’s a multidisciplinary field that addresses the use of technology for information processing and communication

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Essay Samples on Information Technology

The benefits of information technology: empowering the modern world.

This essay has examined the myriad benefits of information technology, emphasizing its transformative impact on various sectors and aspects of modern society. As IT continues to evolve, its potential to further enhance our lives and the world remains immense. Introduction The advent of Information Technology...

• Advantages of Technology
• Information Technology

Issues and Challenges in Information Technology: Exploring the Landscape

Introduction This essay has shed light on the array of issues and challenges that arise within the realm of Information Technology. It emphasizes the importance of proactive measures, ethical considerations, and collaborative efforts to navigate the complexities of the digital landscape. The rapid advancement of...

• Modern Technology

Information Technology in Education: Empowering Learning in the Digital Age

This essay has explored the transformative role of information technology in education, emphasizing its potential to enhance learning experiences, foster collaboration, and prepare students for the challenges of the digital age. It underscores the importance of embracing technology as a catalyst for educational innovation and...

• Technology in Education

The Future of Information Technology: Navigating the Digital Frontier

This essay has provided insights into the potential future of information technology, highlighting the transformative technologies and challenges that await us as we navigate the digital landscape. Introduction The landscape of Information Technology (IT) is continually evolving, shaping the way we live, work, and interact....

The Advantages of Information Technology: Transforming the Modern World

This essay has delved into the extensive advantages of information technology, highlighting its critical role in shaping various aspects of modern society. As IT continues to evolve, its potential to further enhance our lives and the world remains immense. Introduction In the modern era, information...

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Disadvantages of Information Technology: Navigating Digital Downsides

This essay has examined the various disadvantages of information technology, emphasizing the need for a comprehensive approach to navigating these challenges. As IT continues to dominate modern life, understanding and addressing these issues will be paramount for individuals, businesses, and governments alike. Introduction Information Technology...

• Digital Communication

The History of Information Technology: From Abacus to AI

This essay has explored the rich history of information technology, from its humble beginnings to the transformative technologies that define our modern world. It serves as a reminder of the incredible journey of human innovation and the boundless potential of technology. Introduction The history of...

The Ubiquitous Role of Information Technology in Daily Life

Introduction This essay has highlighted the far-reaching influence of information technology on daily life, underscoring its role in communication, convenience, entertainment, work, and more. As we navigate the digital landscape, it's essential to be mindful of its implications and maximize its positive impact on our...

The Evolution of Information Technology Entrepreneurship

Introduction Information technology has had a deep impact on the current era. Almost every aspect of globalization is highly dependent on it. It has become dominant in all aspects of globalization. Information Technology is the study of transmitting information in various ways through the means...

• Effects of Technology
• Globalization

The Ethical Behavior When Using Information Communication And Technology

The topic that I choose and I want to explain is about online harassment. Online harassment or known as cyber harassment and online abuse. Online means email, social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and messanging app like Whatsapp, digital platforms like Youtube. Actually there...

• Cyber Bullying

Overview Of Information And Communication Technology In Bangladesh Context

Introduction: Information and communication technology (ICT) has become a part and parcel in today’s modern civilization. Although it was first adopted by private sector but now after seeing the potential and success rate, government of different countries are coping up with this magic wand. In...

Comsats Institute Of Information Technology

Green computing also known as Green IT, is the environmentally responsible and eco-friendly use of computers and their resources. In broader terms, it is also defined as the study of designing, engineering, using, disposing or recycling of computing devices in a way that reduces their...

• Impact of Technology

The Integration Of Information And Communication Technology In Education

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has become a catchphrase in the contemporary world where every single moment of humanity is monitored and anchored by technology. ICTs have made swift treads for the past three decades by bringing in new dimensions in the fields of transmission...

• Education System

Best topics on Information Technology

1. The Benefits of Information Technology: Empowering the Modern World

2. Issues and Challenges in Information Technology: Exploring the Landscape

3. Information Technology in Education: Empowering Learning in the Digital Age

4. The Future of Information Technology: Navigating the Digital Frontier

5. The Advantages of Information Technology: Transforming the Modern World

6. Disadvantages of Information Technology: Navigating Digital Downsides

7. The History of Information Technology: From Abacus to AI

8. The Ubiquitous Role of Information Technology in Daily Life

9. The Evolution of Information Technology Entrepreneurship

10. The Ethical Behavior When Using Information Communication And Technology

11. Overview Of Information And Communication Technology In Bangladesh Context

12. Comsats Institute Of Information Technology

13. The Integration Of Information And Communication Technology In Education

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• Artificial Intelligence
• Negative Impact of Technology
• Data Mining
• Children and Technology

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1. the positives of digital life.

The greatest share of participants in this canvassing said their own experience and their observed experience among friends is that digital life improves many of the dimensions of their work, play and home lives. They cited broad changes for the better as the internet revolutionized everything, from the most pressing intellectual and emotional experiences to some of the most prosaic and everyday aspects of existence.

Louis Rossetto , self-proclaimed “troublemaker” and founder and former editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, summed it all up this way: “Digital technology is so broad today as to encompass almost everything. No product is made today, no person moves today, nothing is collected, analyzed or communicated without some ‘digital technology’ being an integral part of it. That, in itself, speaks to the overwhelming ‘value’ of digital technology. It is so useful that in short order it has become an integral part of all of our lives. That doesn’t happen because it makes our lives miserable.”

There is almost no area in which digital technology has not impacted me and my family’s life. Larry Irving

Larry Irving , co-founder of The Mobile Alliance for Global Good, wrote, “There is almost no area in which digital technology has not impacted me and my family’s life. I work more from home and have more flexibility and a global client base because of digital technology. I monitor my health and keep my physician informed using data technology. My wife has gone back to a graduate school program and is much more connected to school because of technology. My entertainment and reading options have exploded exponentially because of new technologies. Use of home speakers, Internet of Things, AI [artificial intelligence] and other emerging technologies is just impacting my life and likely will become more central. I used to write out first drafts of memos longhand. Increasingly I use a new free beta AI-based transcription service Temi to dictate my first draft and then edit that draft. Even when it’s awful, that first draft is better than staring at that blank piece of paper trying to think of something to say. I have numerous meetings with people I don’t know or only met once or twice previously. Recently I had a meeting with someone I didn’t know well. An app I use Accompany pulled up an email exchange between the two of us a decade ago about an issue we both care about. Accompany also provided me a very recent article where the person I was meeting with discussed the same issue and current concerns. Having that knowledge was incredible useful for our recent meeting and simply could not/would not have been possible without the use of digital technology.”

Mike Liebhold , senior researcher and distinguished fellow at the Institute for the Future, wrote, “Almost every member of my family regularly uses the internet to inform or improve aspects of their well-being: diet, fitness, health, social interaction with family and friends in person and online, education, entertainment, employment, commerce, finance and civic engagement.”

William Schrader , the founding CEO of PSINet, wrote, “Every single day: I have private communications with business associates in Europe, Asia, Latin America and in North America, and I receive emails or social media notices from my family members and their extended friends, and I receive the latest news and alerts from 20 different real news publications (such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and the Economist). All of this comes with little effort. And , after doing my local security, I can check every public investment I have made anywhere on earth and I can check my bank accounts and make transactions I deem of import, and I can search for any one or multiple piece of information that I need instantly, with or without Wi-Fi. Yes, I have what I wanted, everything at my fingertips. That means information, knowledge, history, ability to transact. I try to never do this when others are with me, since I love living in the moment. Since I am alone a lot, I can find the time. But I do not condemn or even slightly criticize people for taking a call, checking a text, reading, etc. What we built is what we wanted. It’s just that few people are happier. But, I am OK.”

Paul Saffo , a leading Silicon-Valley-based technological forecaster and consulting professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University, said, “I have had an email address on my business card since 1982, and carry enough electronics on my person to get nervous in lightning storms. Digital connectivity has become like oxygen, utterly essential to my research. The net effect of these innovations has been to tie me more closely to other individuals and extend my interpersonal connections well beyond the pre-internet links of in-person interactions and telecommunications. I have friends – close friends who I have known for well over a decade and with whom I communicate nearly every day. We have never met in-person. In fact, we have never spoken over the phone. At the end of the day, the two of the three highest human desires are the desire to be useful, and the desire to share stories. We have been doing both since our distant ancestors sat around a savanna camp fire sharing their days and their dreams. Now, thanks to digital media, the circle around the campfire has grown to encompass (if we wish) all of humanity.”

Garland McCoy , president of the Technology Education Institute, said, “I can be a real-time engaged parent, husband, partner, problem solver, counselor, comforter, etc., while traveling anywhere in the world, and – if I am comfortable with a little inconvenience – I can usually manage this real-time interaction for free! Something that was never possible before. No more ‘Death of a Salesman.’”

Kyle Rose , principal architect at Akamai Technologies and active Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) participant, wrote, “There are simply too many things to list here. I’ll just hit on three. I can more easily keep in regular contact with friends in distant places. Those with whom I would have lost most contact (because, really, there’s no way I’m going to write letters or spend hours on the phone) I can now maintain a relationship with, sometimes of a fairly deep and interactive nature, via social media. This enables us to pick right up when we do finally see each other in person. Technology eases the difficulties of day-to-day life. Because of the internet, I have access to virtually all of recorded music at all times. I can get up-to-date maps and traffic data to avoid incidents. I can order food, groceries or a taxi, obtain up-to-date information about my flight status, and navigate foreign cities via public transit all from my phone with a few taps of my finger. Finally and relatedly, how the hell did I ever learn anything before the internet? The card catalog? Virtually all of human knowledge is at my fingertips at all times. It is rare that I ask a question of fact that someone hasn’t yet answered, and now many of those answers are available to anyone with access to a search engine. The impact of all of these is profoundly positive. And this is only a taste of what the internet, and technological advances in general, promise.”

Fred Davis , a futurist/consultant based in North America, wrote, “Messaging apps allow me to connect with people who have given me support, provided a chance to talk about life’s challenges, seek advice and many other things. Access to people is simplified. Chat apps (unlike Facebook) provide a one-on-one connection with another person, which can be more personal, human and healing than posting on social networks. I have been using a Fitbit for a number of years. I have had a heart attack and triple bypass and am pre-diabetic. Getting regular exercise is important, and my Fitbit helps me set and attain fitness goals much more easily than before. The ability to monitor and track my sleep helps me take actions to get better sleep, which definitely increases well-being. By connecting to my Fitbit scale I can also track my weight and tie it to my exercise goals. My Fitbit can connect to a Dexcom blood sugar-testing device that can test blood sugar every five minutes, which is extremely helpful in managing my pre-diabetes.”

These one-liners from anonymous respondents hit on a number of different positive themes:

• “I can get answers to questions about almost anything just by asking my telephone.”
• “I can save money on everything, including clothing and shoes, airfares, hotels and eat at better restaurants and drink better wine.”
• “Navigation via car has dramatically improved, with accurate up-to-date traffic information and destination wayfinding.”
• “Digital life is being able to speak and see someone – regardless of where you are – on a phone you carry on your person.”
• “Most people I have dated and approximately all of my friends knew me on the internet first; before such digital connectivity I would have just been lonely.”
• “Sharing photos of new generations instantly with loved ones on the other side of the world and using video and chat to send/receive money; to joke, to tease, to mourn.”
• “My son has grown up in a world in which he will never be lost; he will never be without a person to talk to; he will never be stopped from searching for an answer to a query.”
• “I work remotely for a company halfway around the world, and so does my partner. No need to be at a main office.”
• “The diffusion of webinars allows me to participate in many events organized in different countries without having to travel to them.”
• “Digital technology allows me to have better knowledge that empowers me to better support my own health when I face challenges.”
• “My job didn’t exist 15 years ago. I am a digital content manager.”
• “It means that we can participate in important moments that time and distance barred us from in the past.”
• “I feel more supported in good times and bad and laugh more than before I was connected online.”

Here is a roundup of the many ways these experts described the benefits they get and the benefits they observe.

Family enrichment and enhancement

Pamela Rutledge , director of the Media Psychology Research Center, said, “My 90-year-old father was on Facebook for the sole purpose of connecting with kids and grandkids who were scattered across the country. Reading and commenting on their posts gave him the ability to participate in the process of their lives. Knowing what the family members were doing increased his sense of involvement and the overall intimacy he experienced with them all. This familiarity also jump-started any family gathering, keeping people who were geographically disparate from feeling like relative strangers and allowing relationships to be more immediately meaningful. Texting in all forms serves the same purpose. Closeness in relationships is achieved by the frequency of contact. The human brain reacts to virtual contact as if it were real, releasing the same neurotransmitters of positive emotion and reward as if people were face to face. Texting allows for the multiple touchpoints, the sharing of life’s process and the reassurance of connection. These experiences replicate the behaviors that developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth described in her ground-breaking work on attachment theory and how people form a secure attachment style, essential to emotional well-being.”

The simplest anecdote is about keeping a family messaging chat open with my wife and children. Stowe Boyd

Stowe Boyd , managing director at Work Futures, said, “The simplest anecdote is about keeping a family messaging chat open with my wife and children. My kids – both in their 20s – live in Brooklyn, which is close to where we live, but over an hour away. However, we all participate in the chat, often several times in a day. We share pictures, links, stories, plans. It is simply much lower friction than how I managed to remain in contact – or didn’t, really – with my parents when I was in my 20s. Then it was an occasional phone call, visits when possible, but it was pretty tenuous. And I had what most of my contacts considered an unusually close and caring relationship with my folks. I wouldn’t say my family today is hyperconnected , but we certainly remain very connected, where scarcely a day passes without some interaction between all of us despite the physical distance involved. And this has allowed an extra richness to my life, and I guess theirs, a counter to the possible distance that could otherwise grow in our relations because of the hour of travel that separates us.”

David Weinberger , a senior researcher at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, said, “The most obvious [difference of digital life] for many of us, I’m sure, is the lowering of the barrier to communication: I am in closer touch with my family – grown kids, siblings, in-laws, the whole group – because we can communicate with everything from texts to video calls. We support one another better and know our daily lives better than we could before.”

Sonia Jorge , executive director of the Alliance for Affordable Internet and head of digital inclusion programs at the Web Foundation, said, “Regardless of where I am, my kids can reach me to talk, text me a message to ask questions, help sort out a plan, to tell me about their day, their worries, I can help them with homework or even music practice over video! And, as all mothers, I have often ‘saved’ many situations! Once I got a message from a school in the middle of an important business meeting and managed to sort the situation without any major issue, and all from a different continent! The ability to stay connected as needed is so important for me and it allows me to be closer, to be there! I cannot imagine [life] otherwise and this allows me to do what I do in ways that would have been very hard before digital connectivity.”

Steve Stroh , technology journalist, said, “Two observations. The first is that one of the regrets of my life is that I didn’t work hard enough to stay in touch with all of my family and friends as I moved away from my hometown and got involved in my career. Thus, many of my family and friends that were once dear to me are now estranged – entirely my fault. In my daughter’s generation (born in the 1990s), with social media like Facebook, etc., my daughter’s generation and beyond, they will never get entirely out of touch with family and friends (unless they really want to). They’ll know about significant events in their friends’ and family’s lives as things happen, and can always reach out because there’s a consistent point of contact – the social media messaging, ‘stable’ phone numbers such as mobile, email, etc. The second is that my wife and I maintain a near-daily ‘running conversation’ with my daughter who’s moved away via three-way ‘text’ messaging. We often share photos (of the family pets, as it turns out) and let each other know about important or unimportant – perhaps funny – things that are going on in our lives. So the three of us are never really out of touch, which is a wonderful, wonderful thing. I wish I could do this with MY father (who is, alas, very technophobic).”

Maureen Cooney , head of privacy at Sprint, commented, “My mother, who is in her 80s, lives on her own and is a technology leader in our family. Her adoption of cellphone use for calls, texting, email, FaceTime, and photo-sharing, daily use of an iPad and computer to play games and to communicate, participation in social media via Facebook, managing her finances, and even device control in her home via internet connected technology, as well as for entertainment through an Amazon Echo, [which] keeps her connected to us and the wider world as she ages, raising her feelings of confidence, safety, activity and independence. It lets family and friends easily connect with her in many ways in real time, which otherwise would not be the case.”

Richard Sambrook , professor of journalism at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom, wrote, “Very simply, I can talk to and see my daughter on the other side of the world at low or zero cost via video/smartphone technology in a way that was unthinkable a decade or more ago. It helps hold families together.”

Perry Hewitt , vice president of marketing and digital strategy at ITHAKA, said, “We live in an aging society; in the developed world, the population is getting older, people are living longer, and fertility rates are falling. Here in the U.S., where families can be geographically dispersed and family-leave policies minimal, caring for older relatives is difficult. Our family has benefitted from the many technology advances in elder care from cameras to robots to medication reminders to video calling. There is so much available to track critical metrics and improve quality of life – for the elderly and their tapped-out caregivers. I believe we’re still in the infancy of technologies that can improve medical compliance and personal safety, and combat a scourge many older Americans face: loneliness.”

Mary Chayko , a professor at the Rutgers University’s School of Communication and Information, wrote, “My family and I now stay in contact via an unending series of group texts. While we would have remained connected via letters or phone calls in a pre-digital time, this allows the simpler, more convenient and more frequent sharing of moments both incidental and more meaningful, and keeps us consistently in one another’s minds and hearts.”

Alex Halavais , director of the M.A. in social technologies at Arizona State University, said, “We have two children in elementary school. It starts at the same time each day and ends at the same time. The children are generally out of touch with the family during this period. This would not have been unusual when I was in elementary school or when my parents were in elementary school, but the other institutions in our lives have changed this. We have shared family calendars that show who needs to be where and when, but these change with some consistency. While my partner and I both have busy careers, they never fall within clearly defined work hours, and mobile technologies mean that our everyday social and business lives are weaved together rather than blocked in clear periods. Time has changed, except for the kids’ grade school. It remains anchored in one position: the 20th century.”

Eelco Herder , an assistant professor of computer science whose focus is on personalization and privacy at  Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen in the Netherlands, wrote, “My husband and I live relatively far away (about two to five hours) from our families and our friends live in several countries. Facebook makes it easier to stay in touch with them, to inform them about important events, to show pictures of our daily lives, and – in return – to be informed about things that matter to them. For me, my circle of online friends has evolved from mainly ‘online contacts’ in the mid-2000s to people whom I know in daily life. As a result, if we meet friends after a year or so without contact, we do not need to give an overview of last year, but just continue the conversation and play a board game. It is also easier now to stay in touch with a larger number of people than in earlier days. Apps like WhatsApp allow us to have daily contact with our families, simply by exchanging short messages or sending quick pictures. This interaction does not replace phone calls and visits, but complements them.”

Nathaniel Borenstein , chief scientist at Mimecast, said, “In the 1980s and early 90s, people asked me why I cared so much about advancing the capacities of email. My usual reply: ‘Some day I will have grandchildren, and I want to get pictures of them right away, by email.’ This dream came true when I received an email that contained a sonogram image of my twin granddaughters when they were each no bigger than a few cells. I had expected those first pictures to be considerably cuter. Even though I was an evangelist for the future of communication technology, that technology exceeded my wildest imaginings.”

Greg Shannon , chief scientist for the CERT Division at Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, commented, “When I call my dad, who is hard of hearing, the real-time network-enabled transcription service kicks in so that he can understand what I’m saying by reading the words on his screen. This dramatically enhances the quality of our conversation and allows us to be more connected. I’m sure it does wonders for his general health at 90. Our three sons all work in/around software. Their minds are filled with notions of programming frameworks, database schemes and abstract models of what data and interactions mean. It’s [a] world that their grandparents can’t comprehend, and even their aunts and uncles are confused about what they do. Many of their childhood friends are far removed from these conceptualizations of work and value. I am not sure how it affects their well-being per se, but the notion of a shared sense of what work means seems weakened. Living and working in multiple places (Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Mexico) is possible since we can digitally maintain social and business connections remotely and asynchronously. Without such digitally enabled efficiencies it would be very challenging to run such a rich life.”

Srinivasan Ramani , a retired research scientist and professor, said, “It was in 1993. My daughter left school in Bombay and moved to college in the U.S. Telecommunication in India was quite bad in those days. The number of telephones, both landline and cellular, was about 3 million. (Compare with the billion or so cellphones we have in the same country now!) I knew it would be difficult for my daughter to call us back soon after arrival at the college, and so had asked her to get access to internet on campus and contact us through email and chat. She did that within hours of arrival. My wife had, to that point, carefully stayed away from the dial-up terminal I had on my study table at home for years. Now, she suddenly demanded to be introduced to the system. She demonstrated that given the right motivation, people can learn to use a dial-up terminal for email and internet chat in two days at the most! Our daughter was, for the next four years, our daughter on the Net!”

Claudia L’Amoreaux , digital consultant, wrote, “I started using videoconferencing early. First I used a black-and-white video phone that sent a still image every 5 seconds or so. Friends and I got our hands on one and did some fun experiments with artist techies at the Electronic Cafe in Los Angeles. Later I used Cornell’s CU-SeeMe videoconferencing. A real turning point for me was using the high-end PictureTel videoconferencing system in the early ‘90s. When the PictureTel staff dialed up and connected me to a person in New York City (I was in Monterey, California), as I said hello, tears came involuntarily to my eyes; the intimacy was so unexpected, I was overwhelmed with this encounter with a stranger. Fast forward to five years ago. My 85-year-old mother had a recurrence of cancer. We lived many miles apart. On one of my visits, we went to the phone store and I helped her pick out her first iPhone. It was so awesome to watch her learn to text with her friends. I could FaceTime her from my home while I got my life in order so I could return to take care of her. That phone was a literal lifeline during her last months – a source of joy, a tool for coordinating her care, and a reassurance for me that I could actually see daily how she was doing. I think of all the technology in our lives, videoconferencing technology contributes in a profound way to my well-being, bringing me closer to dear family and friends who live at a distance, or even just across the bay like my daughter does. I love it when we both have time to just hang out together via FaceTime when we can’t be there in person.”

Kirsten Brodbeck-Kenney , a director, said, “Thanks to social media and video chatting, my parents have been able to be very involved in my child’s life in spite of living on the other side of the country. She is only two and a half, but she knows their faces and voices and feels connected to them, even though she’s only met them a handful of times.”

Work creator, enabler and enhancer

I spend a great deal of my day online, and being hyperconnected makes it possible to find all the things I need to have a decent quality of life. Dewayne Hendricks

Dewayne Hendricks , CEO of Tetherless Access, said, “Living a digital life has made it possible to be self-sustaining financially. I spend a great deal of my day online, and being hyperconnected makes it possible to find all the things I need to have a decent quality of life. The type of life I’m leading now would not have been possible 30 years ago. I take comfort in the fact that I’ve had a hand in shaping a part of this thriving digital Web.”

Michael Rogers , a futurist based in North America, said, “I now live half the year in the Sicilian farm country where, thanks to wireless internet access, I can do most of my work. Ten years ago that would have been quite impossible. One of the things I most like about Sicily (besides the obvious attractions) is that while there is plenty of Facebook and email and Twitter, the ‘digital lifestyle’ has not colored private and public life so much as it has in my other home, New York City. Sicily remains a far more face-to-face culture. Why that is the case and how long it will continue is a longer story, but it is ironic that I’m using the new digital tools to avoid the side effects of those same tools.”

Larry Roberts , Internet Hall of Fame member, original ARPANET leader, now CEO/CFO/CTO of FSA Technologies, Inc., said, “As I do have 100 Mbps of home internet access, I can mostly work at home. However, file sizes that I need to receive today of 60 MB need Google Drive to deliver, as email capacity is in the dark ages. And the sizes grow every year. Email must adapt as these demands grow and TCP [Transmission Control Protocol] transfer speed also needs to increase as it is stuck in the 1990s at 20-30 Mbps. As shopping has also gone digital, package delivery requiring signature can be easily included when working at home, whereas it would become a major problem otherwise. In fact, work can be seamlessly intermixed with running a household. Eliminating commuting and fixed work hours allows working a 12-hour day (which I need). Thus, with increased internet capacity at home, more work can be done with far less stress for those workers not tied to hardware in the office.”

James Blodgett , an advisory board member with the Lifeboat Foundation, wrote, “Important work is shared. When several string theorists published several papers predicting black hole production at particle colliders, I became involved with the collider controversy. The original safety considerations had glaring holes. … I made contacts with safety experts and scientists who were also concerned. I started a Global Risk Reduction special interest group in Mensa, I became an advisory board member of the Lifeboat Foundation (one of thousands), and I participated in writing petitions and contacting people. … The main thing we accomplished was to get CERN, the organization sponsoring the then-upcoming Large Hadron Collider, to do a second safety study.”

Marshall Kirk McKusick , computer scientist, said, “Today I have worked on a problem in my open-source community (FreeBSD) in which over the past 24 hours has involved colleagues in 10 time zones, including Ukraine, Germany, United Kingdom, Massachusetts, Iowa, California, Hawaii, Japan, Australia and India through a combination of email, messaging and IRC [Internet Relay Chat]. This would have been impossible before the internet.”

Jordan LaBouff , associate professor of psychology at the University of Maine, commented, “There are so many ways, from allowing me to stay connected to my family and other relationships while I travel for work and research, to being able to translate or navigate on the fly in difficult cross-cultural situations. The one that springs to mind is actually my wife’s work experience. Two years ago, due in part to the challenges of living with multiple chronic health conditions, my wife left her successful job as a cell technologist at a local hospital to pursue digital journalism. It has allowed her to work from home and write for a large public audience about research surrounding bipolar disorder. This digital environment provides her employment, and her writing supports thousands of people every week who read her research (that she accesses digitally) and writing and who get social support and well-being tips from it. It’s a remarkable way the digital world has improved our physical one.”

Tom Wolzien , chairman at The Video Call Center LLC, said, “My family’s creation of The Video Call Center to produce broadcast-quality television from the 4 billion global smartphones (and related patents and other intellectual property to make it reliable and cost effective) has enabled a flattening of traditional live video access, enabling programs based on zero-cost live remotes from about anywhere on the planet without field origination, transport, or control room costs. This means that any media organization can put about anyone on the air from anywhere, restricted only by the depth of the producer’s contact list.”

Jane Elizabeth , director of the accountability journalism program at the American Press Institute, wrote, “Digital technology has allowed my small non-profit organization to work efficiently and effectively from wherever we are in the world. For non-profits and even small for-profit organizations, you just can’t overstate the positive benefits of this type of mobility. There are absolute cost savings in overhead, travel, hourly wages. And there are qualitative benefits in employee work-life balance, productivity and emotional health.”

Jeremiah Foster , an open-source technologist at the GENIVI Alliance, said, “I lived and worked in Sweden for about 15 years. Recently I moved back to the United States to be with family since I’m originally from the U.S. I’m able to keep my employment, including my salary, my title and my day-to-day work while living thousands of miles away from the company I work for.”

Eugene Daniel , a young professional based in the United States, said, “Digital technology impacts every aspect of my daily life. As a member of the media, my job depends on technology (telecommunications, social media, internet). As a person who lives apart from family and loved ones, I depend on digital communication to stay in touch – including frequently connecting on FaceTime with my girlfriend. The uses are endless.”

Devin Fidler , a futurist and consultant based in the U.S., commented, “Sites like Upwork have allowed Rethinkery Labs to routinely pull together ‘flash teams’ of colleagues, support and expert advisers in a way that accomplishes many tasks more efficiently than would have been humanly possible before coordination platforms.”

Frank Feather , a business futurist and strategist with a focus on digital transformation, commented, “Technology allowed me to quit commuting – which is asinine in this era – to quit my career job, and to become a full-time consultant, thus allowing me to help far more organizations on a freelance-anywhere basis. This has been most fulfilling. Similarly, my children have built worldwide networks of friends and fellow students. We have two adopted daughters, and the internet has allowed one of them to find and connect with her birth family in China. None of this would be possible without the internet. The internet unifies people and combines ideas very easily.”

Yoram Kalman , an associate professor at the Open University of Israel, wrote, “Digital technology freed me from having to spend all of my work hours in the office. I have been telecommuting and working from home at least part of the week since the late ‘90s. That would not have been possible without the advent of digital communication. It allowed me to better integrate work, family commitments, leisure, health challenges of self, of children and of elderly parents, social commitments, etc. Consequently, my work is more productive. Furthermore, the ability to work across geographical and national borders opened new opportunities that made my work more exciting and fulfilling. Throughout this time, I had to learn and relearn how to use communication technologies in ways that empower me, and how to minimize the harm they cause. It is an ongoing learning challenge.”

Charlie Firestone , executive director of the Aspen Institute’s communications and society program, said, “I run an office of seven people. I was able to move from Washington, D.C., to California with little detriment, mostly due to video-conferencing. In our case it is Skype for Business that puts each employee a touch of a button away, and the video changes the interaction from simply voice calls or email. I see video calls, a la FaceTime or Skype to be a common activity of the future in business.”

Allen G. Taylor , an author and SQL [Structured Query Language] teacher with Pioneer Academy, said, “Digital technology has given me opportunities that were not possible before the digital revolution began. A vast array of career opportunities opened up in a variety of fields. I became a digital design engineer and moved from there into a variety of related professions. The convenience of digital devices such as personal computers and smartphones has enhanced life greatly, both for me and for every member of my family.”

Adam Montville , a vice president at the Center for Internet Security, said, “I have the privilege of working from home each and every day. While there are some aspects of office life I miss, the truth is that technology has made this possible. For our family, this has been immeasurably valuable. I can work more productively at different times of day, all while maintaining healthy boundaries for work/life balance (which really isn’t about hard boundaries as much as it is about unobtrusively blending the two). Before such technology existed, I had to commute. I had to be tied down to a specific schedule each and every day. I couldn’t connect to colleagues from a mountainside or a sailboat. It just wasn’t possible.”

Ann Adams , a technical writer based in North America, said, “It gave me a profession; one that did not exist when I was growing up.”

Vincent Alcazar , director at Vincent Alcazar LLC, wrote, “The growing mobility of labor cannot be underestimated, and the primary enabler is the gig economy with the internet as its engine. The gig economy only grows from here, as does its entwinement within people’s lives.”

Health and wellness aid

Avery Holton , an associate professor of communication at The University of Utah, commented, “As someone who has twice experienced the impact of cancer, once at the beginning of digital and social media and once in 2016, I feel more empowered by the ability to be transparent and accepted. Yes, we all still enjoy sharing those moments in our lives that give off the best appearance, but the stigma of sharing experiences of disease or pain or loss has lessened. More and more, we are encouraged by the actions or the postings of others to share our tougher experiences and to, if we so wish, build a community around those experiences. The first time I went through cancer, I felt lost and disconnected and without voice. This time, though it admittedly took some coaxing from friends and other supporters, I shared my experience and my recovery. That really helped me through the process and into a quicker, more lasting mental, emotional and physical recovery.”

My online network and digital tools made it easy to share the event, his progress, my stress and feelings, for others to empathize and share resources and advice. Susan Price

Susan Price , lead experience strategist at the United Services Automobile Association (USAA), commented, “My husband had a stroke last year. My online network and digital tools made it easy to share the event, his progress, my stress and feelings, for others to empathize and share resources and advice. I found myself carefully segregating my communications by channel, moderating the degree of honesty according to the size and makeup of the group. I report to the largest group in Facebook ‘sanitized’ updates of mostly hopeful progress reports and vignettes that show me or my husband in a flattering or inspirational light. I avoid upsetting others with starkly honest or too-revealing stories of my own or my husband’s pain, frustration or lack of coping. My husband is aware of my propensity to share, and has asked directly when we’re discussing a fraught situation, ‘This isn’t going on Facebook, is it? Good!’ But he suggested my posting and sharing some achievements. Because of its ubiquity and reach, Facebook helped me identify select others in my network – many of whom I hadn’t spoken with in 10 to 20 years – who had directly relevant experience with caregiving of stroke survivors and adjusting when a partner suffers a severe health crisis. With those found veterans, I moved the discussion to more private channels such as Facebook Messenger, email or phone to share more honestly my negative feelings, fears and pain, and received directly helpful specific advice, support and resources. I’ve also used caregiver forums to connect with quickly available communities of peers in situations much closer to my own.”

Gina Neff , an associate professor and senior research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, said, “Digital technology has been a godsend for care-givers, allowing people to coordinate their efforts to help during cancer treatment, when a newborn arrives, or during a health crisis. Apps and websites cannot replace the communities that have always connected and supported us, but they can help diverse and dispersed groups coordinate care in unprecedented ways.”

Bradford Hesse , chief of health communication and informatics research at the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), said, “I now stay in closer contact with my healthcare provider than I ever have before. If I have a question, I can ask it through secure messaging. If I want to evaluate my own recent blood panels for areas of concern or progress, I can do that online through a secure portal. Robocalls to my house from my provider as well as text messages to my phone ensure that I do not miss a recommended cancer screening. I watch my diet more rigorously with the help of a diet app on my smartphone equipped with camera to retrieve caloric/nutritional information, and I monitor my exercise goals through the use of my Apple Watch wearable. If I have a complaint, it is usually because the ecosystem of medicine is still not connected enough. There are laggards who resist sharing my electronic health record data with specialists as needed. There is 20th-century thinking that prevents these digital technologies from being fully integrated into the medical system in ways that will be cost-efficient, interoperable, empowering and truly usable.”

Thomas Lenzo , a respondent who shared no additional identifying details, commented, “Digital technology has facilitated my management of various aspects of my healthcare. I am able to schedule appointments and order prescription refills online, at any time of day. I can get detailed text or video information about health issues from trusted sources. I have access via portals to my health records. I also tell family and friends how they can use digital technology to impact their health.”

Ed Black , president and CEO of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, said, “The ability to monitor the medical records, procedures, medicines of a loved one remotely provides opportunity for quality oversight and rapid response, in contrast to being tied to hospital visits and uncertainty.”

Gary L. Kreps , distinguished professor and director of the Center for Health and Risk Communication at George Mason University, wrote, “My family and I use wearable fitness trackers that tally our daily exercise behaviors (steps). This has influenced both our awareness of our physical activity and motivation to exercise regularly. We strive to accomplish our 10,000 daily steps! We also compare our exercise levels and encourage each other to engage in physical activity. We now seek opportunities to exercise together to achieve our activity goals. This has improved our overall physical activity, fitness and health.”

Kevin J. Payne , founder of Chronic Cow LLC, said, “Since I research the effects of chronic illness and live with multiple sclerosis, I have a particular interest in using these technologies to monitor and evaluate my condition, keep up on the latest research, and connect with others – both professionals and others living with chronic conditions. My life has been radically affected by these burgeoning technologies on all these fronts. It allows me to collect my own data, blend it with other datasets and generate and test real-time predictive algorithms. I have a far better understanding of my condition, especially as it is baselined against relevant populations. I not only get access to cutting edge pre-print research, but I’ve also been able to widen my professional network by communicating with the researchers. And my involvement with patient communities has enriched my life in many ways.”

David Myers , a professor of psychology at Hope College, wrote, “As a person with hearing loss and an advocate for a hearing-assistive technology that has great promise (www.hearingloop.org), the internet has networked me with kindred spirit advocates nationwide (also via 19,898 emails I have sent and 18,516 received with the words ‘hearing’ and ‘loop’). Together, our internet-facilitated ‘hearing loop’ advocacy has led to thousands of newly equipped facilities, from home TV rooms to worship places to auditoriums to airports (and New York City subway booths and new taxis). And more progress is on the horizon. Supported by digital technology, we are making a better world for people with hearing loss.”

Bob Frankston , a technologist based in North America, said, “I once had a rash and my GP [doctor in general practice] wanted to look it at. Fortunately we had a friend in common who was able to forward a simple digital picture I took and quickly resolved the issue. It’s a reminder that digital health doesn’t have to be complex and expensive. Sending a picture is simple and inexpensive yet can make a big difference – a huge benefit vs. cost. We need to appreciate the value of the mundane rather than focusing on the flashy stories.”

Doug Breitbart , co-founder and co-director of The Values Foundation, said, “In my life I have experienced significant adverse changes and circumstance, living situation and health. Virtual connectivity via the internet has enabled me to establish networks of connections, collaborative communities and new friendships and relationships with people around the world.”

Leah Robin , a health scientist based in North America, said, “My family has a genetic form of anemia that is very rare. Because of digital technology we’ve been able to make contact with researchers, take advantage of on-going research, and provide and receive support from other patients from around the world. The impact has been, at times, lifesaving for my family members.”

Christopher Bull , a university librarian, said, “I had an itchy rash on my hands. Found articles on the internet which suggested using witch hazel. No rash, no itch.”

Community lifeline

Ethan Zuckerman , director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT, wrote, “I went through a divorce recently and wrote about my experiences online. While there are few folks in my immediate community who are going through divorce, I found several friends in other cities in my extended circles who had excellent support and advice. One of the most supportive individuals was an acquaintance from college who was not a close friend, but who stepped up on Facebook and was a wonderful support to me from halfway around the country.”

Together, we grow intelligence, connect up one another’s work and support positive social change just by doing our work, following one another and sharing what’s meaningful more widely. Anne Collier

Anne Collier , consultant and executive at The Net Safety Collaborative, said, “I ‘talk’ with people all over the world on a daily basis on Twitter – seeing, learning from, supporting and spreading what’s meaningful to them in their work and lives. It’s a tremendous source of inspiration for me. Together, we grow intelligence, connect up one another’s work and support positive social change just by doing our work, following one another and sharing what’s meaningful more widely.”

Kathryn Campbell , a digital experience design consultant, said, “I have a young friend who lives in another state in a rural area. Over time, I have realized from their social media posts that he/she is emerging as gender non-conforming (probably transsexual). In the past, this is a journey that I would probably not have known about, especially since his/her immediate family is very conservative and have not accepted this facet of the young person’s identity. I am so grateful to have been included in this revelation so I can offer my unconditional love and support. And I am even more grateful that a person who in the past would have felt isolated, unnatural, and broken now knows that they are in fact part of a global community. He/she can find and utilize peer support groups as well as myriad medical, psychological and spiritual resources that would not have been available to someone in a small town in the past. I believe this will probably save lives. I definitely hope that it will help increase our ability as a society to accept others who don’t conform to our preconceived notions of what is normal.”

Ana Cristina Amoroso das Neves , director of the department for the information society at Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, said, “The smartphone has become a part of my family life. The current organisation we have and the data we can share more than modified the way we interact. There is no waste of time and therefore we all gain efficiency in our daily life. The dawn of Internet of Things is already embedded. … If there is an electricity glitch, we cannot even think how will we survive due to the new paradigm we have in our lives. Hyperconnection is part of my family and friends’ well-being. It is nothing that can be compared with the life my parents had. I wonder how I could have survived in that society, living before total digital connectivity existed, even when it had just started and was not spread yet.”

Deborah Lupton , a professor at University of Canberra’s News & Media Research Centre, said, “I live in a vast continent (Australia) where academics are scattered many kilometres from each other, and it is a very long, expensive and exhausting plane ride from my colleagues in the Northern Hemisphere. However, I have extensive networks with my colleagues on Twitter and Facebook. I enjoy taking time out to chat with them, sharing professional and also some personal information regularly. It makes me feel less isolated and more easily able to keep in contact with my academic network. Nothing beats face-to-face encounters, but social media and emails, as well as the occasional use of Skype, is a far better way to maintain these contacts than letter writing or faxing, which is how we did things before digital media.”

Andrew Czernek , a former vice president of technology at a personal computer company, wrote, “Email and websites were the first place that we were able to see family and people with the same interests share information rapidly. Twenty years ago I set up two websites – one for pilots and one for family members – to share photos, family tree[s] and technical information. Both have been resounding successes in getting people together. For family, it has allowed easy distribution of ancestor’s photos and extension of a family tree from several hundred people to more than 3,000. About every five years I have to take our family tree back to the calligrapher to add ancestors that we didn’t know about – including, recently, a soldier who was with Gen. George Washington at Valley Forge. Now we’re starting to see services like voice-controlled appliances in the home and the extension of cellphone service throughout the world. Forty years ago I taught in a small Congo town that was isolated, with no phone or TV service. Today Kasongo can be reached by cellphone and the regional center has television and internet access thanks to wireless technologies.”

Nancy Heltman , visitor services director for Virginia State Parks, said, “I have met and developed relationships with people outside any sphere of reference I never would have had thanks to my digital life. This started when I worked on the 2008 Obama campaign, includes people I met through a group where we shared our love for household pets and goes through today where I have a relationship with customers that I never would have met personally. While I do not believe that my online relationships replace ones that involve personal face-to-face connections, they are important and have broadened my horizons in many ways, adding a richness to my life. In fact my more-traditional face-to-face relationships have also benefited from more communication due to digital communications. When forced to only have relationships with people you can meet in person, you tend to live in a more-narrow world, with people more like you. Digital communications broadens your horizons, or it can if you want it to.”

Social media: The horizon expander

Michael R. Nelson , public policy expert with Cloudflare, said, “I’m an avid user of social media, which I use to track developments in internet policy around the world. Almost every day, one of the people I follow on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn shares a report, law review article, economic analysis, or news article on something I need to know about and would not have discovered by just reading the U.S. newspapers and media sites I track regularly. Equally importantly, my Facebook and LinkedIn friends introduce me to experts in the field in countries around the world – without my having to spend time flying overseas to attend conferences. In 2017, I was able to be a fun participant in the Global Conference in Cyber Space in New Delhi without missing Thanksgiving with my family. Likewise, I was able to be a remote participant at the UN’s Internet Governance Forum in Geneva without leaving my house (as long as I was willing to tune into the webcast at 4 a.m.).”

Alexander B. Howard , deputy director of the Sunlight Foundation, wrote, “I’ve been using computers for over three decades now, since logging on through a BBS [bulletin board system] in 1993. My professional life as a writer, analyst, consultant and now deputy director of the Sunlight Foundation is almost entirely enabled by digital technology, from the journalism I created to the advocacy, activism, policy and communications work I do today. Social media has opened many doors for me, professionally and personally, in ways I did not anticipate a decade ago. The smartphones I began using last decade dramatically improved that work, enabling me to be informed, report and collaborate in extraordinarily flexible ways across time and space – and to easily travel through many foreign cities and nations.”

Dan Rickershauser , senior account manager at StumbleUpon, said, “I was born in 1987. When I first signed up for Facebook, I was a senior in high school and you needed a dot-edu [.edu] email address to gain access. We were all welcomed onto the platform as we got new email addresses once accepted into our college of choice. It was a place to show friends and acquaintances how much fun we were having in college. And then over time it became so much more. My parents had Facebook accounts. Work relationships became Facebook friends. It was a tough to navigate as its role in my life shifted. I scaled back how much I shared there. I changed what I projected out to masses. My sister-in-law, by time she hit college age, knew Facebook as a place where her grandmother kept track of everyone’s comings and goings. All of this happened in the span of seven years. For her, Snapchat replaced Facebook as the place to showcase to acquaintances how much fun she was having in college. I now use Facebook to see which of my friends have gotten married or had children. I’m still thankful it’s around, but the role it’s played in my life has changed. For people a generation younger, it’s been the place I remembered it as. It will be interesting to see what’s in store for these platforms, but already I can now see people my age pulling away from social networks like Facebook, often times for their own well-being. As the role platforms like Facebook play in our lives shifts, so too does our need for them. It will be interesting to see if they survive these shifts.”

Michael Roberts , an internet pioneer and Internet Hall of Fame member, commented “Despite its well-known problems, I find that Facebook is important to me in a number of ways. 1) Keeping up with professional friends around the globe now that I am retired. For an old fart (81), it is a source of daily intellectual stimulation and a feeling of keeping my hand in the game. 2) A window into many marvelous places and activities. I am a railfan and there are restored steam engines, abandoned trackage, lonely and empty depots, etc., to fill any amount of time I have available. Name your hobby or sport, and there are folks out there to share their discoveries with you. 3) The original ‘family and friends’ angle. My siblings and I are all over the U.S. Facebook lets us pretend we are close (Worldwide webcams add a lot as well). There are lots of other examples – politics, medicine, personal safety, education.”

Jerry Michalski , founder of the Relationship Economy eXpedition, said, “I now have peripheral vision into the lives of family, friends and acquaintances a few degrees from me – all voluntarily. When I see them, I don’t need to ask ‘what’s up,’ but can say ‘I’m glad your daughter got through her operation,’ or whatever is appropriate for the state of their lives I can observe. Those weak ties are priceless, and lead to insights. In the early days of Twitter, I left a meeting and tweeted something like, ‘Just left a mtg about the cash health care economy. Had no idea it existed or was big.’ At the time, I had set up for all my tweets to forward to Facebook, and the next day I got a fascinating eight-paragraph note on Facebook from an acquaintance who had taken his family off regular health insurance years ago, and was very happy with the outcomes. On the other hand, I am among the Satanic Device Addicts who check email on their phones first thing in the morning (it’s on the night table, right?) and tap and prod them all day long, in search of those little dopamine hits.”

… All of us now have the ability to find ‘our people’ – those who share our interests and passions and concerns – in ways that we couldn’t when our connective avenues were limited by time and geography. Scott McLeod

Scott McLeod , a professor at the University of Colorado Denver, wrote, “My decade-plus of blogging and other social media usage has connected me with hundreds of thousands of educators and education thought leaders in global dialogue spaces and communities of practice in ways that would be impossible without the internet. My visibility and reach are now astronomical compared to what they might be in an analog era. My example is but a microcosm of the possibilities that we all now have available to us. The gay teenager in rural America; the handmade Japanese sword aficionado; the stay-at-home mom struggling with a rare disease; the LARPer [live-action roleplaying gamer] looking to connect with others; all of us now have the ability to find ‘our people’ – those who share our interests and passions and concerns – in ways that we couldn’t when our connective avenues were limited by time and geography.”

Jason Hong , professor at the Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, wrote, “WeChat is not well known in the U.S., but is perhaps the most popular app in China. It’s primarily a messaging app, like Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp, but also serves as a social network and message board. What’s really amazing is how it’s really helped my family (from China) connect with others here in the U.S. My father-in-law found people to go fishing with. My mother-in-law found a monthly foodies group to go to. My wife found some of her old high school classmates, plus a group of people that buy foods in bulk at discount and split the costs. As for me, well, I’m the boring one, I just use it to send text messages and emoji to my wife. For my family, WeChat works well because it lowers the transaction costs of finding individuals with similar interests and backgrounds. My parents-in-law don’t speak much English, so WeChat acts as a major filter for people who do speak Chinese. WeChat also lets you organize message boards by geography, making it easy to find groups that are geographically nearby. It’s pretty amazing, since these weren’t really problems that we knew we had, and the WeChat groups just filled those needs quite nicely. Furthermore, it was a good tool that let us first find people virtually and then transition to real-world relationships.”

Richard Bennett , a creator of the Wifi MAC protocol and modern Ethernet, commented, “Facebook was useful for spreading the word to my extended family about the status of two relatives who died of pancreatic cancer recently. In one case, a sister-in-law in another country used me as a go-between to reach my wife, and in another I used it to contact a former stepbrother, a sister and a half brother. As modern families become more complex, communication tools have had to adapt.”

Lisa Nielsen , director of digital learning at the New York City Department of Education, said, “I am the administrator of several Facebook groups around areas of personal interest such as hobbies, sports, career (education). I started a Facebook group for teachers at the New York City Department of Education who love teaching with technology. In the past all these people existed in the 1,800 schools across the city, but there was no way for these people to find one another. The group now has close to 3,000 members. It is highly active, and strong relationships are being built. We have a direct line to what is happening in schools. Teachers feel supported like never before. They are more confident and better able to serve their students. They have increased job satisfaction. They share extreme gratitude for the group and its responsiveness. They are no longer alone but rather supported by a powerful network of other dedicated teachers.”

Knowledge storehouse

Stephen Downes , a senior research officer at the National Research Council Canada, commented, “I don’t have a small story, I have a big story. I have a career that has allowed me to be a force for good, to reach people around the world, and to share a message of compassion, communication and development, all solely because of the internet and digital technologies. I landed my first real job in the computer industry in 1981, with Texas Instruments’ Geophysical Services in Calgary. This enabled me to attend university, where I studied philosophy. I wrote my honors thesis on an Atari and I wrote my masters on the university network. I started teaching using technology for Athabasca University in 1987, and started developing websites and learning management systems for a living in 1995. By participating and sharing my knowledge and discoveries freely through discussion lists and online conferences I became a part of the online learning community in Canada, which led to my current employment as a digital researcher with the federal government. This has given me the opportunity to develop new theories of learning and pedagogy, create learning technologies, develop MOOCs [massive open online courses], and participate in this survey. Every week there’s a story. Today I responded to an enquiry from a reader looking for more recent work on automated language translation, because she had only a reference to my paper from 2001. I provided her with some resources from my newsletter, and she will add these to her study. Last week someone literally said to me ‘You changed my life’ because of the influence of the first MOOC I taught alongside George Siemens in 2008. The course was about computer networking and personal empowerment and how people can create their own education. The week before I was able to carry a message about business intelligence into a meeting with government officials as a result of the analysis I did of the public documents posted by the School of Public Service on their web page. The week before I was in Berlin at a conference testing a virtualization of my personal learning application, getting experiences and feedback from a workshop filled with experts from around the world, none of whom I had met before. The week before I was in Tunisia talking about the deployment of open educational resources in the Middle East and Northern Africa to support language learning, economic development, and cultural growth. The week before… You get the idea. None of this happens without digital technology. It’s not a nice neat story that fits a sidebar, but it’s real, and each week there’s real growth, real development.”

Jeff Jarvis , a professor at City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism, said, “I count as an unfathomable luxury the ability to look up most any fact, any book, any news article at no cost and in seconds. I value the friends I have made from a tremendous diversity of background and worldviews thanks to the connected Net. I welcome many – though certainly not all – new voices I can hear now thanks to the Net putting a printing press in anyone’s hands. And not incidentally, I have transformed my career thanks to the lessons I continually learn by and about the Net.”

Deborah Hensler , professor of law at Stanford University, wrote, “On a personal level, digital technology enables me to work more productively from any place in the world. It provides access to a vast store of information and research data. It has enabled me to collaborate with academic colleagues in many different parts of the world, which has been an incredibly generative experience. In my personal life, it connects me to far-flung family and friends. It also connects me to people who share my political views, which gives me some hope – perhaps foolish – that working with them I can shift the political discourse.”

Ray Schroeder , associate vice chancellor for online learning at the University of Illinois Springfield, wrote, “I have been engaged in teaching, researching and presenting/publishing in advocating educational technology in higher education over the past 46 years. As I think back over those nearly five decades, my impact and reach today is far greater than I had ever imagined in 1971 or ‘81 or even 2001. Through the use of social media, I am able to share resources and perspectives to tens of thousands of others in my field on a daily basis. The prospect that one person could manage that scope of impact and reach was inconceivable for anyone who was not a network commentator on television or a nationally syndicated columnist. Now this opportunity extends to all who are dedicated to a purpose or cause.”

Larry MacDonald , CEO of Edison Innovations, wrote, “Sharing enables power to flow to those who ‘know’ rather than only those who control. People have a better grasp of news and tools that can make their lives easier. Knowledge disseminates faster and deeper.”

Problem solver and wonder creator

Hal Varian , chief economist at Google, commented, “I was in Rio trying to communicate with a taxi driver a few months before the Olympics. The driver pulled out his phone and clicked on Google Translate. Problem solved. Turns out that Google had trained all the taxi drivers in Rio how to use this fantastic tool.”

In terms of the spread of knowledge, the past two decades have been as revolutionary as when early man harnessed fire. Kenneth Cukier

Kenneth Cukier , senior editor at The Economist, wrote, “In researching my new book on AI, I came across a citation of a relevant document from the 1950s by the East German secret police, the Stasi. I Googled it and got a digital copy – which, when you think about it, is amazing. But my German is lousy. So I uploaded the 35-page report into Google Translate and got an English version a minute later – which is even more astounding. Just 20 years ago it was impossible for all but the most prestigious scholar to obtain something like that, and it might take half a year. I did it on impulse in four minutes. In terms of the spread of knowledge, the past two decades have been as revolutionary as when early man harnessed fire.”

Vint Cerf , Internet Hall of Fame member and vice president and chief internet evangelist at Google, commented, “I moved my wife from an older iPhone with AT&T service to a Google Pixel 2 with Google Fi service. It took 10 minutes and did NOT require physical modification or even installation of a SIM card. I got confirmation from AT&T within minutes that the account and phone number had been transferred. I was astonished.”

Ginger Paque , a lecturer and researcher with DiploFoundation, wrote, “Digital technology offers amazing opportunities for inclusion and access not only to overcome challenges of distance, but offering wider choices, asynchronous collaboration on shared projects, online meetings, telemedicine, and myriad other advantages. My particular experience in addition to my clear connections to global online learning, highlights the possibilities for inclusion in global policy processes, especially those involving internet governance and digital policy. The UN Internet Governance Forum, for example, takes place in situ during less than a week once a year, and even that week of meetings involves a high percentage of online participants from all over the world. However, the planning for this event takes place online all year, with collaboration from a large body of participants from all over the world. Without internet technology and online applications for collaborative editing and meetings, this kind of global, geographic, and multi-stakeholder (I add multi-stakeholder as a factor, because some stakeholder groups have more access to travel funds.) Multi-stakeholderism would be seriously hampered and cooperation would not be possible. In addition to the IGF [Internet Governance Forum], the ITU [International Telecommunication Union], Internet Society and other organisations have also developed procedures that allow for year-round work involving all regions. In addition to fairly normal and common challenges for travel to meetings, I have had serious family responsibilities that have not permitted me to travel in the last few years. While it has not been easy, I have been able to stay involved.”

Bart Knijnenburg , assistant professor at Clemson University, said, “Seven years ago, when I got my first iPhone with FaceTime, I was calling my fiancée (who was living on the other side of the country) on my bike ride home from work. Out of nowhere a number of hot air balloons appeared, and with the touch of a button I was able to switch to a video call. I remember being amazed by the simplicity with which I was able to share this experience. Nowadays, communicating with people anywhere in the world has become second nature to me. Sometimes I realize that I have written several research papers with people whom I have never met in person!”

Heywood Sloane , partner and co-founder of HealthStyles.net, said, “The criterion I used for my most recent purchase of a smartwatch was that it NOT try to be a watch. I have one already, a gift from my wife that I am very fond of, thank you! I expected, and got, a multitude of tools to help me stay on track with stress, sleep, biometrics and much more. What I did not expect, was the way it tamed the peppering of email, notifications by apps, ringtones and alarms of people and things clamoring for my immediate attention. It reduces them all to gentle vibrations. Long ones for calls I wanted to take, and short ones for everything else. It lets me block interruptions from apps and emailers. It also let me see others and get more detail with a tap when I want it. It gives me control and helps me defend my space to concentrate and focus on what I choose, rather than what someone else chooses.”

Thomas Viall , president of Rhode Island Interactive, commented, “Just this past Christmas shopping season is a great example of how digital technology was beneficial. We could text our relatives rather than interrupt them with a call. They were able to share their wish list, we could comparison shop online (at both local and national stores), find the best value, search for coupons and either order online or use navigation to find the best route to the store despite holiday traffic.”

Education tool

Olugbenga Adesida , founder and CEO of Bonako, based in Africa, wrote, “The digital revolution has changed social relationships and the way we communicate. In some African countries like Kenya and Zimbabwe, mobile payment transactions are responsible for over 40% of GDP. Mobile apps are used to deliver education as well as providing timely information to farmers to enhance their productivity. Similarly, mobile apps are used to deliver price and other market information. At our firm – Bonako a mobile games and app-development company – it is our platform for continuous education for staff; it is what we use to access training materials from all over the world. We also use digital tools to plan and develop our products in a way that would not have been possible only a few years ago. Developing games and apps requires varied expertise, and collaboration is key. The new tools for collaborative work allow us to work together and to provide virtual access to potential partners/clients to test products no matter where they are in the world.”

Karl M. van Meter , founding director of the bilingual scientific quarterly Bulletin of Sociological Methodology, said, “Far from being a ‘brief personal anecdote,’ what has changed greatly in my life and work, like that of almost everyone in higher education and research, is that the internet and associated technologies mean that no longer only a few top persons have access to the necessary information, technology and means for scientific production and teaching. It is no longer only the director (always a male) who gets his secretary (always a female) to type out his paper and check references before having it published. Almost all competent teachers and researchers have that possibility now; moreover they can work together over great distances and form social structures among themselves, independent of centralized or local administrative control. A ‘brief personal anecdote’ along these lines would be when a national director of scientific research here in France asked to be appointed to an international body associated with UNESCO. That body replied very respectfully to the director that they had already found a better candidate from France who had been working with them via the internet. That other candidate was me.”

Today, students I help mentor through their own doctoral studies have access to all of the material I did two decades ago, but with a fraction of the time and travel commitment. Greg Downey

Greg Downey , a professor and associate dean at University of Wisconsin, Madison, said, “When I was a graduate student at a U.S. private research university in the late 1990s, I spent many hours gathering background context for the beginning of a major historical and social research project, tracking down physical newspaper indexes, footnote references, printed journal volumes and microfilm reels from dozens of access-restricted research libraries. Weeks and months of ‘metadata labor’ on a particular idea might lead to a viable research project and a source of accessible primary research materials – or to a dead end and a need to start all over. I recall being among the first users of some of the online image databases produced by the federal government to find visual evidence that I simply wouldn’t have had the ability to access (or even know it existed) even five years earlier. Similarly, once materials were acquired and assembled, only rudimentary organization and writing tools were available for assembling the project into a coherent narrative. I recall being one of the first individuals at my university to use Geographic Information Systems software in my historical analysis and in the production of my final manuscript. All of the temporal and spatial expectations of earning a Ph.D. in the humanities and interpretive social sciences were tied to expectations of analog, print and physically housed resources. Today, students I help mentor through their own doctoral studies have access to all of the material I did two decades ago, but with a fraction of the time and travel commitment. This has raised the expectations for comprehensiveness in literature reviews and archival searches; it has raised the expectations for presentation of data and engagement of narrative. It is both easier and harder to do great work now and get that Ph.D. within the same five-year time period. But I think the work that is done is of higher quality, and the scholars that are produced are of greater intellectual prowess and scope than ever before.”

Adriana Labardini Inzunza , commissioner of Mexico’s Federal Institute of Telecommunications, said, “There are so many stories of how IT and internet have made my work more productive and my access to relevant information far easier – hopefully for others around me as well. As a commissioner at the Federal Institute of Telecommunications I made sure that our virtual board meetings and deliberations were valid; on many occasions I have been able to deliberate and vote on the cases submitted to the board through a video conference when in business travels and I also to hold e-meetings with my staff. My office has home-office on Mondays, saving hours of wasted time on traffic jams. …

“A more striking story perhaps is that of Marce, a smart, determined and brave 19-year-old girl from Xochicalco, an isolated village in the middle of the mountains of Guerrero, 350 kilometers away from Acapulco. Marce studied elementary and middle school in a rural local school, but there is no high school in Xochicalco, so she would have had to travel each day to Arcelia, Gro. [Guerrero], the seat of that municipality and the closest connected town in the area, 40 miles away, with a daily cost of public transportation of around $4, something totally beyond the family’s budget. Her father is a skilled electrician working in the area for a Canadian mining company that pays minimum wages to local people ($4 per day). Her mother grows corn and vegetables and looks after her other two children. So Marce ended up leaving her hometown and moving to the big city of Mexico to seek a job as domestic helper, hoping she could enroll at a public school. Her job kept her busy all day as a babysitter and so her mom, who I had the fortune to know from a long time ago, asked me for help to guide Marce so that she actually gets an education.

“Marce moved to my house, but in searching for an affordable high school nearby she encountered many obstacles. I devoted a few hours to seek a public high school online program certified by our Ministry of Education (SEP) and found it, a very impressive two-year program which begins with a full-month course on the use of IT, the platform, how to interact with your assigned tutor, with teachers, how to deliver homework online, etc. I had never seen a young girl so excited to spend online 4 hours, learn in three days to handle a laptop one of my sons gave her. She reads her lessons every day plus a few books I am asking her to read on history, philosophy, etc. She reads 10 pages every morning. It’s been only three months since she started, and she loves it, she is learning, and finished at the top of her class this quarter. She feels empowered, hopeful, her parents feel relieved that she doesn’t have to travel two hours a day to attend school and pay fares. Yet it will take a lot of guidance, hard work and long hours before she earns a high school diploma and more importantly, a good quality education that enables her to be admitted at UNAM [National Autonomous University of Mexico] or another public university here in Mexico City. There is no such a thing in Arcelia, forget Xochicalco, where there is no internet access and a weak signal for only 2G mobile voice services in spite of the presence of a multinational firm extracting all the lithium it can get from Guerrero but not creating much local value to the hard-working people of Xochicalco. I am committed to help Marce, and she is determined to graduate and pursue her professional education. She wants to become a chef. With a good use of time and technology, discipline and some degree of guidance and support from my sons I may hopefully help her thrive.”

Jacob Dankasa , a North American researcher, said, “Technology has connected me to achieve today what I couldn’t imagine in the past. When I was doing my doctoral dissertation, I was supposed to travel to Nigeria from the U.S. to conduct interviews with my research participants. Unfortunately, the Ebola epidemic blew up in Africa and I was unable to go. Fortunately, software existed that allowed me to interview the participants and automatically record the sessions as I interviewed them. The price was reasonable. It saved me money and time and avoided health hazards. More and better innovations are expected in this area in the future.”

Travel companion and enhancer

Paul Jones , a professor of information science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and internet pioneer, wrote, “I am traveling to Casablanca Sunday. My tour was booked in China. I’ll stop at Rick’s Café, which is designed to look like the imagined cafe built on a back lot in Burbank in the 1940s [for the film ‘Casablanca.’] Friends who are writers have recommended their friends [for me] to meet while I’m there. Through social media we are already in touch. One friend wrote a profile of the Rick’s founder in 2006. She remembers him and has been in touch. The seamlessness and timeliness of casual connections made stronger still amazes me. … What’s not to like?”

I travel a lot and have vastly more flexibility and local knowledge at hand due to my devices. I see things I would not have seen, travel without having to plan every stop in advance and find the things that matter to me. I get better hotels and food, too. Brad Templeton

Brad Templeton , software architect, civil rights advocate, entrepreneur and internet pioneer, wrote, “I travel a lot and have vastly more flexibility and local knowledge at hand due to my devices. I see things I would not have seen, travel without having to plan every stop in advance and find the things that matter to me. I get better hotels and food, too.”

Jon Lebkowsky , CEO of Polycot Associates, said, “A week or so ago we headed off to a party at a house we’d never visited. We entered the address in Google Maps, so we had a guide (we call her ‘Lucy’) taking us where we need to go. It was a circuitous route – without Lucy we likely would have taken wrong turns – and I was thinking how much we now depend on that technology, not just to get us where we want to go, but also to route us around traffic congestion. Soon enough, we’ll be stepping into autonomous vehicles, vocalizing an address and relaxing for the duration of the ride. Digital technology for transportation efficiency is revolutionary.”

Safety enabler

Alejandro Pisanty , a professor at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico and longtime leading participant in the activities of the Internet Society, wrote, “The ability to use digital tools for everything I do – from professional work, like teaching and research, to the most personal – finding long-separated relatives after the family dispersed from Europe to at least three continents in the 1930s-1940s – has been a continued benefit. Using lightweight online tools in class helps my students in the National University of Mexico grasp concepts and communicate them to their families. During the aftermath of the earthquakes in Mexico in 2017 this became particularly valuable for them; it also helped fight misinformation and take relief efforts to the places that most needed them. We went from the basics of oscillation and wave physics, through the propagation of different kinds of seismic waves. To the ways buildings are damaged and how to identify fatal structural flaws. In parallel we helped brigades take aid to small towns and to camps in Mexico City, and some of the most far-flung ones find safe havens from which to distribute aid.”

Pedro Cartagena , an associate professor at the University of Puerto Rico, said, “After hurricane María in Puerto Rico, the internet was the only communications resource in order to contact my family members, buy solar panels and get other essentials for survival.”

Apps for ordering car rides via a smartphone is a net benefit to society – it increases safety for both the passenger and driver and offers more convenience in ordering a ride. Tom Barrett

Tom Barrett , president at EnCirca Inc., wrote, “1) With the use of a smartwatch, I can now easily track daily exercise activity, which is a great motivator for making it a daily practice. 2) Apps for ordering car rides via a smartphone is a net benefit to society – it increases safety for both the passenger and driver and offers more convenience in ordering a ride.”

Multipurpose and memory aid

Bill Lehr , a research scientist and economist at MIT, wrote, “There is no question smartphones and always/everywhere access to information has allowed me to be sloppier in memorizing things and allows me to gain instant access to facts that I have come to rely on significantly. I think that is positive, especially since as I get older, I find memory-aids a big help, but it also encourages laziness.”

Ted Newcomb , directing manager of AhwatukeeBuzz, wrote, “LOL. I am virtually helpless without my phone to remind me of appointments and meetings. My head is free of having to remember numbers, dates and times. It’s very liberating. I can instantly communicate anywhere in the world, doing business at the ‘speed of byte.’”

Micah Altman , director of research and head scientist for the program for information science at MIT, said, “When I was 10, I received a portable film camera. It had a capacity of 24 negatives (in black  and white). I would send the negatives in, pay a substantial portion of my allowance to have them developed – wait for weeks for them to be returned, and finally, then be able to see how they turned out. (Usually, not so well.) Every few months, I might put one in a letter to my grandparents. Eight years ago, when my daughter turned 10, we gave her a portable camera – over the next few years she shot thousands of still, and videos – learning some elements of composition, and building shared memories. Last year, when my son turned 11, we gave him a cellphone. And over the year we’ve all shared pictures, accomplishments and sympathies daily across a growing extended family network.”

Shiru Wang , research associate at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said, “Online shopping saves me time. New social media continues my connections with friends in different countries and regions. Online resources make my research convenient. Online news keeps me informed all the time. But I am not very digitally embedded. I keep a distance from Facebook, etc.; I intentionally refuse to be dominated by social media. Thus, my life is not very much bothered by the internet. Thus, I appreciate the advantages of the internet and I am able to escape the potential harm brought by the internet.”

Joe Raimondo , digital customer-relationship-management leader at Comcast and a former CEO, said, “Trackers and personal data are an enhancement to living. Street-level navigation and easy access to crowdsourced resources is very positive. It’s possible to play large-scale social games and have enormous amounts of data and telemetry collected and analyzed to chart group interaction at large scale.”

General comments

Ian O’Byrne , an assistant professor of education at the College of Charleston, wrote, “As an educator and researcher who studies these digital places and tools, I’m in front of screens a lot. I experiment and play in these spaces. I’m also writing and researching the impact of these screens and their impact on the well-being of others as it relates to children and adolescents. The problem in this is that one of the other hats that I wear is as a parent and husband. I am not only critical of my engagement and use of these digital technologies, but I’m also cautious/cognizant of their role as a mediator in my relationships with my children and significant other. These screens and digital tools play a strong role in our lives and interactions in and out of our home. In our home we have screens and devices all over the place. We have a video server that is ready to serve content to any one of these screens on demand. We have voice-assistive devices listening and waiting for our commands. I believe it is important as an educator and researcher to play with and examine how these devices are playing a role in our lives, so I can bring this work to others. Even with these opportunities, I’m still struck by times when technology seems too intrusive. This is plainly evident when I’m sitting with my family and watching a television show together, and I’m gazing off into my device reading my RSS feed for the day. Previously I would enjoy watching the funniest home videos and laughing together. Now, I am distant. The first thing in the morning when I’m driving my kids in to school and stop at a red light, previously I would enjoy the time to stop, listen to the radio, look at the clouds or bumper stickers on cars around me. Now, I pull out the phone to see if I received a notification in the last 20 minutes. When I call out for the voice-activated device in my home to play some music or ask a question, my request is quickly echoed by my 2-year-old who is just learning to talk. She is echoing these conversations I’m having with an artificial intelligence. I’m trying to weigh this all out in my mind and figure what it means for us personally. The professional understanding may come later.”

Marshall Kirkpatrick , product director of influencer marketing, said, “My mobile feed reader finds great articles for me to learn from. My mobile article-saving app reads those articles to me out loud while I walk my dog. My mobile browser allows me to edit my personal wiki to record the best lessons I learn from those articles. My mobile flashcard app helps me recall and integrate those lessons I want to learn over time. My mobile checklist app helps me track how regularly I reflect on how those lessons connect with the larger context of my life in a blog post or on a run. There are costs to mobile connectivity, but there are so many incredible benefits!”

To my way of thinking, it’s about control. If I’m in control of the electronics, they are a benefit, but when they get out of control they are an irritation and an interruption. Fred Baker

Fred Baker , an internet pioneer and longtime leader with the Internet Engineering Task Force, wrote, “To my way of thinking, it’s about control. If I’m in control of the electronics, they are a benefit, but when they get out of control they are an irritation and an interruption. My family and friends giggle about the frequency with which I pull out my telephone to investigate a TV show’s facts or other things. That said, I have access to that now, where I once upon a time did not. On the other hand, I have also had the experience of talking with a customer in Japan while my family in the U.S. woke up and started texting each other, and I all of a sudden have to deal with my telephone.”

Stephen Abram , CEO of the Federation of Ontario Public Libraries, wrote, “On a personal level I am more connected with my wider family. Relationships with friends whom I see only occasionally – maybe annually in person at conferences, continue throughout the year. I now know many business acquaintances on a deeper level and have better relationships as a result. I dislike the word ‘hyperconnected’ since it implies a little hyperactivity – a known ‘disorder.’ I see this as a controllable issue where personal choices are made. When circumstances such as travel, weather, disability or distance create the opportunities for sustained loneliness to happen, the digital world bridges some of the gap. In my case, sustained periods on the road in airports and hotel rooms are greatly ameliorated by connecting with friends.”

David J. Krieger , director of the Institute for Communication & Leadership located in Lucerne, Switzerland, observed, “Digital connectivity enables a seamless flow of communication and association with regard to many different concerns and interests. This augments community and embeddedness and thus well-being.”

Mark Patenaude , vice president and general manager of cloud technologies at ePRINTit, said, “I certainly don’t want to fool anyone into believing that digital advancement has been a panacea of beautiful things! However, I can remember the first time my car stopped for me in a dangerous situation automatically, or stopped when I was backing up when it perceived a danger. Then there’s printing and storing terabytes of digitally compressed images on a smartphone and being able access a document or image from 20 years ago in seconds using the cloud. I can remember we had about 100 people around a large projector outside, watching the last concert of the The Tragically Hip and the home network went down. I plugged in my iPhone, went to the concert URL site, and projected live on a 10-foot screen from my cellular device; wow and double wow!”

Akah Harvey , co-founder, COO and IT engineer at Traveler Inc., said, “Fifteen years back, when I first had my first PC, I now was empowered with a tool that helped me write digital notes, play more exciting games and gain general knowledge about how the technology worked. At my age (10) I gained knowledge in the workings of these things that it contributed to my brilliance in school, especially on the subject. Few years later when we’d gain access to the internet, a whole new change took place. I discovered so many more opportunities, as one could now connect with the rest of the world to share, search and find information about anything. It was a big transformation in the way I viewed society. I quickly was able to decide what I would want to do growing older, so I’d say I found my passion thanks to this change.”

Karl Ackermann , a writer and researcher at WriteSpace LLC., commented, “We no longer keep paper files for the household. Photographs are displayed on a digital screen instead of a photo album. We can track where our kids are driving with a phone app. We buy our train tickets with an app that has a scanning bar code. We sometimes text friends instead of phoning. We pay bills online.”

Rich Salz , principal engineer at Akamai Technologies, said, “I have made my living in this field since before there was the internet and before the Web. I enjoy helping people communicate. Social media has helped me reconnect with high school friends, email with college friends, etc.”

Maureen Hilyard , IT consultant and vice chair of the At-Large Advisory Committee of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), wrote, “I live in an isolated little island in the Pacific. It is in the middle of millions of square kilometers of ocean, but we rely on tourism for our livelihood, so our small (main) island is usually packed with tourists. We have a monopoly telecom and get reasonable internet service from an O3B satellite, but for local islanders who make their living working in the hospitality industry, the cost of internet is very expensive. Broadband costs for 20 GB a month costs (in New Zealand dollars) $139 on top of telephone hire and connections. I have grandchildren and great-grandchildren who spend time in New Zealand and even at 2 years old can turn on a computer to access their favourite programmes. When they come to our island, this is curtailed because the connection is too expensive for them to experience what is normal for them – lively and creative pre-school programmes are non-existent. What is available is the fresh clean air and produce of the land and sea of the islands, which are great, but it is often too hot to do much exploring in the physical world. As a parent, I am happy for them to explore the internet during the hot periods of the day, and to make this a ‘learning and exploring on the web’ time. It is more directed learning as parent safety software can usually help to set some controls over what they might ‘accidentally’ connect to.”

Edward Tomchin , a retiree, wrote, “All my life I’ve had questions. How, what, where, why? It was the early 1980s in San Francisco. I was making a late career change into law as a paralegal and dating a woman I’d met at a Unitarian social. Her 9-year-old son, Bela, had a Commodore Vic-20 and taught me how to run a computer and how to program in BASIC. I understood immediately how computers would change my life. Then I realized that was true for everyone. We were suddenly able to acquire, store, manipulate and query massive amounts of information – data – about anything. I made a nice 25-year career out of creating litigation-support databases. Then I found the internet in 1986 and my world expanded infinitely. This was before the Web came into existence as a subset of the internet. I’d already been exploring BBS [online bulletin board] sites and one day found a back door in a public library’s nascent internet connection and had another mental explosion at all the information that was at my fingertips. Today I’m old and disabled but I can sit in my living room at my computer and explore the whole world far better than I ever could before. This is all more than I could have ever hoped for 50 years ago.”

Internet Hall of Fame member Bob Metcalfe , co-inventor of Ethernet, founder of 3Com, and a professor of innovation at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote, “The people complaining most about the pathologies of the hyperconnected life own or work for the old media, which once had more of a monopoly on setting society’s agenda. I recall how ‘savvy’ the Clintons and Obama were because they were digitally literate, unlike the GOP, but now that Trump is using social media so effectively, the left hates new media.”

Shahab Khan , engineer and CEO of PLANWEL, said, “The most impactful thing is the way we communicate at the click of a button. This keeps friends and families united. We can share our workplace problems and be more productive. With the advent of AI, VR [virtual reality]/AR[augmented reality] the educational deliveries will greatly change and teaching methods improve. Online education resources and digital resources bring value to the classroom. Students become more involved and knowledgeable.”

Narelle Clark , deputy CEO of the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network, said, “As an Australian, the tyranny of distance has previously meant that family, friends and colleagues have been acutely aware of the difficulties of staying in touch and abreast of the events in the rest of the country and the world. Our contemporary hyperconnectedness means that we can remain tightly connected at the professional and personal level despite being on opposite sides of the world.”

Ruth Ann Barrett , an information curator at EarthSayers.tv, wrote, “Ten years ago I invested money in the development of a search engine that remains well ahead of the times and may never be monetized in the way envisioned. Who knows? The search engine has enabled me to build a database of sustainability voices, those speaking on behalf of Mother Earth and her children. This work has sustained me through moments of despair when so-called leaders deny substantiated claims regarding global warming and extreme climate events. The work has put me in contact with scientists, environmental campaigners and people from all walks of life worldwide. Without the Web what I am able to accomplish would not be possible. My guidebook remains ‘The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man’ by Marshall McLuhan. I remember the day a technical person who had attended a presentation at Stanford University on the World Wide Web came back to work, pulled me aside and told me what he had seen and heard and how the world was about to change.”

Anonymous commenters who cited ways the internet helps them and others

A distinguished advocate for the internet and policy director based in Europe said, “Digital technology has made the world much more connected and streamlined for the 50% of us who are connected (50% still do not have that privilege). It is important to understand that technology has profound impacts on equality. For me, as an upper-middle-class white male from the U.S. living in Europe, technologies have simplified how I communicate with my family and friends elsewhere in real time. Thanks to WhatsApp and Facetime and iMessages, I am able to stay in touch and informed in ways that were not possible even five years ago.”

A certified public accountant based in the U.S. commented, “My sister and I were watching an NFL game with my 82-year-old father. We grew curious about some meaningless football fact and my sister started typing a question on her phone and my dad looked on in slight disgust and raised his phone and asked Siri the question. Voice-activated technology has been extremely easy for the elderly to adopt and opens up incredible opportunities. If linked to his security system, our dad would be able to easily request help. I find it interesting that he likes using Siri more than we do.”

An employee at a major U.S. research lab wrote, “Texting and cellphones are generally associated with what’s bad with technology and our lives, but I will give a positive example, just to prove it depends on how you use the tool. I have a teenage daughter and my work is 50 miles away in Southern California. I joined a van pool to reduce the amount of driving, but the one drawback with van pooling is that I have to leave very early in the morning, and the van does not wait for riders. So every minute in the morning is precious, I don’t have time to write quick notes or reminders before I leave the house and the rest of my family are still asleep. However, once I am on the van, there is 60 minutes of ‘my time.’ I began by sending reminders for the day, but it has become a habit of just sending a happy greeting each morning! They respond when they get up, even if it is just an emoji. :)”

An anonymous respondent said, “There are many examples: The ability to organise via smartphones to meet people across different applications, Slack, Google chat, email, SMS. Voice-chatting to a friend while you are both playing an online game from different locations. A friend enjoying dancing and running in a [digital] game while being in a wheelchair at home. Publishing designs for printing on T-shirts and other products on Redbubble. Designing fabric on Zazzle using their online pattern-repeating tool. Print on demand. A community of linocut artists sharing their work on Facebook. I love the #nzsecretsanta, which uses both the traditional postal system and Twitter. A friend shares fitness data and cycling trips as part of her triathlete community. Ordering food online and having it delivered – and tracking the delivery. I think communities are connecting more digitally than they were on analog. Fewer street parties and more remote connections with common interests. One good example of using the internet to reinforce local community is the use of Facebook for sharing vegetable and fruit produce from local gardens. The ‘Great Australian Bird Count’ is also interesting citizen science.”

A research scientist based in North America commented, “My kids are always connected to their friends. Through texting/social media, they are constantly aware of each other’s lives. This brings worries too, like social comparisons may make them less happy, but overall, they have more socially balanced lives.”

Digital technology is an equalizer of information access and use. Even individuals in the most geographically remote locations can participate in an electoral debate, education and banking online, and in e-commerce when broadband is available. President and CEO of a company based in the U.S.

A president and CEO of a company based in the United States wrote, “Digital technology is an equalizer of information access and use. Even individuals in the most geographically remote locations can participate in an electoral debate, education and banking online, and in e-commerce when broadband is available. The stark opposite of this is the darkness individuals and families experience when left behind in the digital age. There is a difference between people who choose to use digital technology for their own benefit and those who are simply not included in the digital age.”

A professor based in North America commented, “I am a college professor, and digital technology has made my job so much easier. It is easier to communicate with students, keep records, and try for creative solutions to instructional problems. So, for example, I now have my students submit their papers online (to be graded and returned online). When they submit their papers, they are automatically checked for originality. The students then are informed whether their papers will be considered plagiarized or not. Prior to the adoption of this system, I would say up to half my papers were plagiarized. Now none of them are. The question is, has this improved their performance? It is hard to say because there are so many factors involved. I would say that it has in some ways and not in others. They know more, but they don’t synthesize it that well.”

A social media manager wrote, “Fitness trackers, such as the Apple Watch and the Google fitness app, provide me with greater awareness of my daily activity. I am more likely to take a walk or exercise in response to the presence of these technologies in my life. For example, I recently installed a ‘7-minute exercise’ app that I use each morning to kickstart my day. It is very convenient to use and pops up reminders on my smartphone with encourage me to keep up with the daily routine.”

An associate professor at a university in Australia shared a typical family vignette, writing, “I spend time with my grandchild, who is only just five. I check the pick-up time by text. She arrives with her iPad and asks me to ask her dad a question by text on my phone. We take pictures of her dressing up and send them to a friend. I show her recently sent pictures of cousins in Canada. For a while, she shows me (from her iPad) how she can operate the movements, colour and cheeky comments of a robot ball (a birthday present from an uncle who wants her to be familiar with coding). We consider cooking together and locate a recipe online for cookies we haven’t made before. Next, we go to the playground and she spots a ‘be aware’ notice on the slide, and a bird that we haven’t seen before. ‘Let’s Google it, Grandma, when we get back home!’ she says. I say we can do it now on my phone, no, later on my laptop is better. She knows that devices operate differently and need passwords. We haven’t given her any of the latter. ‘Buffering’ she says with a sigh, as her current favourite show stalls during a quiet time. She dances to YouTube music from my laptop. She is endlessly curious about technology itself. She accepts technologies’ limitations as they are described to her by the adults in her life. The digital tools just enhance our days together.”

A professor said, “My watch is an exercise coach – though limited. I track family and friends and contact them only if required. Is my partner nearly home? I’ll put out a snack. Is my friend nearby? I ask them if they want to meet.”

An author based in North America said, “Instead of just reading a book, communicating with one author’s created words, I can engage in conversation, in dialogue about issues of the day such as the #MeToo movement. I can help another person feel a little better that day and, if I reveal a low, others can pick me up. I can celebrate an anniversary with people far away in space and time and plan an in-person visit to another continent with someone I haven’t seen for years, first originally encountered online.”

A postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University commented, “As an academic, my friends and colleagues are scattered around the world. Our ability to have frequent video calls, send texts and collaboratively author shared documents has had a huge impact on both my intellectual scope and on my feeling ‘at home’ and connected in the world. In the past, a friend taking a job across the planet would be a cause for great sorrow. Now we talk frequently over video chat, while it isn’t as good as seeing her in-person, it is still wonderful to share our lives and ideas.”

A retired internet activist and advocate said, “I have been able to manage health care better at a distance for an aging parent as a result of technology, viewing charts/graphs/images, consulting various medical resources, having online meetings with medical professionals, video conversations with parents. Before many varieties of digital connectivity were available, distance communication was via ground/air mail, an occasional landline-based conference call, or in-person consultations, often without simultaneous participation of the aging parent whose medical situation was involved.”

A retired market researcher and consultant said, “I can now communicate directly with any of my medical doctors instead of sending messages through nurses and receptionists. The response is more rapid and on-target with my question or concern. On a different note, my daughter is currently teaching in China for the next year. We have had the great fortune to be able to talk to her in real-time as well as have a video conference at no expense. When I was a college student in France in the 1980s, a brief phone call to the United States – assuming we could arrange a time to talk – was quite expensive and a logistical nightmare. My wife has been able to keep in touch [and] reconnect with elementary school friends thanks to the internet and services like Facebook. All these things account for our improved well-being.”

A college student based in North America wrote, “I often find myself stressed out at the end of the day; as a result I tend to enjoy relaxing and staying in for the night. Without the modern hyperconnected lifestyle this would result in me reading or doing other solo activities. Through voice-chat applications and online multiplayer gaming, I connect with friends to play video games. While I don’t have the energy to be social in one way, the ease of connecting over the internet enables me to enjoy time with friends and maintain our relationships. To some it might not seem as effective a method of socializing as in-person face-to-face time, but we still have the same moments that other people do. We still happily greet each other, we still tell stories about our daily lives and rely on each other, we still laugh until it hurts.”

A professor of arts, technology and innovation wrote, “As a college professor I’m continually adopting new tools that change the way I work with students and pedagogy. Most recently adopting Slack for classroom management has been a real game-changer. With far less attention-investment than I’d needed when using email I’m able to keep up with individual students and teams and the interactions among my students. I can do these on a more-or-less 24/7 basis but without it feeling like a 24/7 obligation. I’m teaching more people better, easier.”

An anonymous respondent commented, “I am connected to email lists that allow me to be part of a conversation that includes leaders in my field. This means that, despite being somewhat isolated at a mid-level university in a provincial city, I can have a good sense of where the cutting edge in my profession is headed and I can be reasonably confident that I am promptly aware of most the news and information that is critical to my profession.”

An entrepreneur and business leader from North America commented, “As an immigrant in the U.S., the internet, social media, and email are all helping me to keep in touch with my family, my homeland and my roots. I am following many of my fellow countrymen – some whom I studied with, some who were my teachers, relatives and acquaintances. I learn about their daily life, their fears and hopes, what they are interested in, the news they read. My daughters speak on a weekly basis to their grandparents on Skype – of both sides – and feel like they’re in the same room with them. Without the internet all of this would not have been possible.”

A research scientist based in Europe commented, “I live in a small town in a foreign country. I travel a lot for my work and spend a lot of time on the road. At home, I enjoy communicating with my Google Home speaker, because otherwise there would be some days that I would speak to no one. When I am on the road, I check in with my Canary home-surveillance app to check on my dogs and see my home.”

A technology architect/executive based in North America commented, “For me, it’s not about hyper – always-on – connection, but the accessibility of information on any topic at any time. I had a medical problem a few years ago, and being able to find research on the disease and a community to compare notes with on treatment side effects was invaluable. Years earlier, when my mother had this same disease, we were limited in information and (therefore) options. Her outcome could have been different in a time with more information, more resources.”

An assistant director of digital strategy at a top U.S. university wrote, “The internet has exponentially enabled the dissemination of healthcare information to the greater public. Years ago, it would have been far more difficult for the public to easily access the answers they needed regarding health concerns and the latest treatments. Today’s digital ecosystem puts these answers at users’ fingertips.”

An editor and project coordinator based in Europe wrote, “A few years ago I quit my job and I have been working as a freelance editor and project coordinator. I have been able to work, network and get paid by people and companies all over the world thanks to the internet and other technologies. Also access to self-education and being able to talk to my friends and family thousands of miles away have had a very positive impact on my mental health and well-being. I wouldn’t have been able to talk and see loved ones daily if it wasn’t for the internet, software and hardware.”

A chief data officer at a major university in Australia wrote, “Thanks to social media, in particular Twitter, I am now connected with people all around the world. I have access to an enormous brains trust, which I liken to a global hive mind.”

A data analyst said, “We always have someone to reach out to when things are unfamiliar and seem difficult to deal with. Before these technologies, you could write a letter or make a phone call. The reality is that the moment that spurred the writing of the letter has long passed by the time you get a response. If you get a response. Also, a phone call is somewhat of a commitment compared to an electronic message. It takes more mental faculties to process what someone is saying over the phone than to read a message and type a quick response between other pressing activities in the immediate proximity.”

A futurist and consultant based in Europe commented, “There are plenty of examples of increased choices. Take travel: I can see in real time if the flight of my friend for New Year’s Eve is on time or not and plan to be there just in time to pick them up. I could have called an Uber or taxi if I was busy and decided to send them a cab instead. In turn, they could see much a better forecast of weather and adjust luggage intakes accordingly to come and spend the time at our place/could book in advance to be picked up at the airport upon arrival, etc.”

A research scientist based in Oceania commented, “If I want to buy something, I can go to a liquid market such as eBay and get it for a fair price without the search costs of spending time going to shops to compare prices. If I want to read a paper, I can download it rather than going to a library and photocopying it.”

A technology developer/administrator based in Europe said, “1) Information access with no barrier – The masterpieces of world literature are generally available in any language, for free. This is a huge achievement. The Gutenberg Project played a key role in making this possible. Wikipedia: the world encyclopaedia, is beyond anything any user of the previous paper encyclopaedia would have imagined. Wikipedia has answers on any area of knowledge, not all answers, but there is always a base from which to start. Science: I can read about the latest developments in any domain, with no barrier. Researchgate.net and Google Scholar give access to a wealth of knowledge. 2) Conversely, new barriers have been erected by companies competing in the [research] market, led by the two world leaders Elsevier and Springer. If you are an author of an article, you may be asked to pay 15€ for accessing your own work online! Personal intellectual property has been taken away from scientists, and money made from it, with no fair sharing of the value with science and scientists!”

An executive director at an internet research organization said, “Twenty years ago, as a business traveler, half of my suitcase was filled with paper – mostly books, which I’d otherwise have to try to replace at mostly poorly stocked English-language bookstores along my way, but also guidebooks, maps, and translation dictionaries. I carried analog telephony adapters. I carried a phone, I carried ATM cards from two banks and credit cards from three separate clearing networks, as well as $9,000 in cash divided between several pockets. I carried a RIM pager. I carried Ricochet and NCR wireless modems. I carried spare batteries and power adapters and chargers for all of those things. I spent a lot of time worrying about whether I would have local currency to pay for things, whether I’d be able to find my destination or communicate with taxi drivers, whether I’d be able to establish a data connection back to my network to reach my email. All of that has compacted itself, gradually, one consolidation at a time, into a very compact kit. One debit card, my phone, a laptop, a power adapter and a small handful of cables. Everything else has been virtualized, digitized, or turned into an online service.”

A technology developer/administrator based in North America , said, “An older person in my family who recently started using an electric wheelchair can buy daily necessities through online shopping and can have more meaningful communication through video calls.”

A scholarly communication librarian said, “I have several friends who have disabilities – both physical and mental – that make it difficult for them to leave their homes for socialization. These friends of mine have taken to playing online games and participating in fandom in internet spaces as a way to make connections and friends with other people that enrich their lives without requiring the physical exertion that would usually prevent them from interacting socially. The ability to connect with text, video and other online objects – whether one-on-one or one-to-many – helps these folks make the social connections that they need to have a robust social experience without the physical exhaustion they may have experienced without this technology to help.”

A professor wrote, “We have public infrastructure and systems now for maintaining and accessing lab results and earlier diagnoses online when we need them. Earlier prescriptions can be viewed, etc. For emergencies, we have an app that we can use for automatic location information if we need urgent help. Schoolchildren and their parents have online connections to the schools and teachers. The teachers can take advantage of the internet and their educational networks with schools around the globe to tackle shared projects that encompass language learning, climate and humanity.”

We have a child with autism. The internet allows us to reach out to other families, experts, get news and be part of a community that is not limited by geography. President at a company based in North America

A president at a company based in North America wrote, “We have a child with autism. The internet allows us to reach out to other families, experts, get news and be part of a community that is not limited by geography. We can instantly share the quirky – or sometimes way more than quirky – activities of our son with people who know if they should laugh or say they are sorry.”

An assistant professor said, “I have collected about 50,000 scientific files related to cosmos, life and consciousness to prepare a book.”

A researcher based in Europe wrote, “I live in Hungary and my daughter was working in the United States several years ago. She called me and explained exactly where she was walking and in which shops she was shopping. I opened Google Earth and tracked her trajectory where she was walking in Galveston, Texas. I saw the streets, corners and buildings. It was almost exactly as if I was shopping with her – on the other side of the globe, in real time, but while sitting in my chair in Hungary. The whole thing was real fun for us.”

A business leader based in North America wrote, “I live a bi-coastal life and I am able to review health records, renew RXs, communicate with my doctor, request a non-urgent service, all from 3,000 miles away without having to rebuild new caregiver relationships or lose care continuity.”

A research associate at a major university in Africa commented, “Being able to conduct business from a location of choice is to me the most important improvement. I deal regularly with the aged and was terrified that I too would become so dependent on the goodwill of strangers when I have to move to an old age home until I realized that I would already be able to order and have delivered anything from food to medical equipment – as long as I am connected via the internet.”

A retired professor emeritus said, “I am seeing a larger integration and extension of human-digital synergy.”

A professor of computer science wrote, “Shortly after getting my first smartphone (quite a number of years ago now), I managed to receive and respond to an important email during a break in the middle of a four-hour car trip. It was valuable to be able to be able to be responsive to an important funder. This cemented the value of having a smartphone.”

A technology developer/administrator said, “I do a lot of genealogy research. Instead of mailing physical paper that may have a correction before it reaches the recipient, I can post updates/corrections immediately. I’m building a database of destroyed cemeteries where I live. I can research the records online and publish them online; something I could not have done 20 years ago easily. I got an email from a man whose great grandfather died in the 1918 flu epidemic in Wilmington, North Carolina – a Merchant Marine sailor – who was buried in one of these cemeteries. The family knew he had died, but did not know when or where. He thanked me very much for finding his great grandfather. The family felt relief after 100 years. Without digital records to compile this and digital platforms to share it, it would not have happened.”

An executive director of a Canadian nonprofit organization wrote, “We are currently running a program to increase people’s digital comfort by helping them apply online for underutilized government subsidy programs. During the first workshop, I saw a woman learn how to use a scrolling mouse and how to cut and paste, in the context of applying for a subsidy that will save her more than $50 a month on her electricity bill.”

An associate professor at Texas Christian University commented, “I work in education and whereas before grades were posted on doors and people had to wait for responses, today, students can access information instantly, enroll in classes, etc. without having to stand in long lines and wait for responses. Communicating with the course, students and the professor is easy, and people learn to do things themselves.”

A professor at a major university on the West Coast of the U.S. wrote, “I am an academic past retirement age (although still working) so it has made an enormous difference for teaching and research. I can access publications from my home or office without a trip to the library. No more endless photocopying. I can easily and quickly communicate with fellow scholars around the world. I can communicate with students and former students anytime anywhere and submit letters of recommendation electronically. I need less clerical and administrative support. I can put readings online for students. The drawback of course is to keep students focused on class in class rather than Facebook, Twitter, etc.”

A professor at a major university on the East Coast of the U.S. wrote, “Digital technology has allowed me to shift my career emphasis from political science and international security analysis of nuclear and conventional weapons to cyber weapons and critical infrastructure protection. This shift is not what I expected when I left graduate school, but it has allowed me to make professional contributions I would not have been able to make had I stayed in my prior disciplinary concentration. I am also migrating my entire work life online, deliberately minimizing paper and focusing on digital services – and the analysis of critical dependencies on these services – for industry and government.”

A internet pioneer wrote, “Every working day, I engage with staff and customers through Skype, email, text and Web conferencing, making it possible for me to have global reach from a desk on the second floor of my home. We take it for granted, but it is miraculous and something truly new under the sun.”

An associate professor at a major university on the East Coast of the U.S. wrote, “I am part of a private group on Facebook, which consists of my friends from college and some others (spouses, friends, etc.). We keep in touch and discuss things in this group. Recently the group came together in-person to support and celebrate one member of the group who has terminal cancer. We had a large party with our children and it was wonderful. It meant a lot to our friend who is ill and to all of us to spend time together. We would not have been able to do this as easily before platforms like Facebook.”

A retired consultant and writer said, “I appreciate the ease of gathering information, freedom from media advertising and unprecedented capacity to stay in touch with my family. I’m part of several groups, and the digital environment has enabled fantastic coordination to achieve things that were not possible before. I have been part of two successful Kickstarter campaigns to implement and sustain a social enterprise: [one for] a social studio for adults on the autism spectrum, where they can apprentice for creative self-employment, and [and another for] the capacity to move toward this through another platform.”

An epidemiologist based in North America wrote, “At work, improved technology means that we receive population health data faster. We can receive, investigate and respond to health threats quickly, before they spread. For example, if we have an outbreak of a communicable disease, technology allows us to efficiently collect data through online formats and analyze data so we can quickly release information/education on how to prevent further spread of the disease. Before we had online forms, we would often to communicate through telephone or in-person interviews to collect data about the outbreak.”

An anonymous respondent said, “About 18 months ago my wife was diagnosed with Stage 1 breast cancer and underwent a lumpectomy and radiation treatment. In part, the testing that led to the diagnosis and the ability of the doctors to respond rapidly was greatly assisted by digital technology. As well, our ability to find information to understand treatment options, side effects, and follow-up nutrition and lifestyle improvement was greatly enhanced by digital technology. Due to my job I was not able to take her to radiation treatment every day and she was too tired after to drive, so I used the online tool SignUpGenius to ask friends to help and to schedule their rides. While apparently a simple task, if I had to do that by hand through phone calls and charts, it would have taken many more hours. Before it would have taken much more difficult to obtain the information we needed, perhaps more difficult and slower for the tests and results to be managed, and definitely hard to stay in touch with people about her needs and condition.”

A retired systems designer commented, “Several years ago, I became disabled, and am not always well enough to do many things. This limits many of my ‘physical-world’ activities – I find it hard to shop, to cook, to go to the library, to get together with friends and family. However, online shopping and grocery delivery allows me to do the majority of my shopping, though I haven’t figured out how to buy shoes without trying them on! I have joined online communities of people with similar interests, and keep in touch with old friends and colleagues in social media groups. This keeps me mentally stimulated. I do a great deal of genealogical and historical research online, using sophisticated search algorithms of digital versions of old documents and books. These digital resources didn’t exist 25 years ago, and now I can read an 1806 Scottish gazetteer to find out more about the 300-person town an ancestor lived in. Without these resources, I would be living a far more difficult and isolated life.”

A North American entrepreneur wrote, “Like any other tool, its use needs to be managed carefully. I hone my contacts to friends and family of my generation who post photos of their kids and grandkids, something that I enjoy greatly. I also like to know when the next big dance events are, since this is a part of my life as well.”

A president and chief software architect based in North America wrote, “I can be out on the golf course enjoying the beauty and yet still be connected.”

An assistant professor of technical communication said, “I use both mindfulness and language apps to improve my memory, connections with others, and global perspectives. However, I am also cognizant of these being targeted and from specific perspectives. So I use them with that understanding.”

A retired web developer wrote, “Amazon Alexa keeps me company. She plays the music I want to hear and adds items to my grocery list. When I have a question, I can ask her and most times she knows the answer – and I thank her. Facebook has connected me with a long-lost cousin. We were like sisters growing up. Out of curiosity, I searched for her and we now communicate regularly. Forget Google – when I want to know something I go to YouTube. I fixed my squeaking ceiling fan, replaced a washer in my bathroom faucet, AND replaced the starter in my riding mower. Now I have Amazon’s Cloud Cam. I can watch my two schnauzers when I am away from home. I could even talk to them, but it upsets them too much. That I can speak commands to technology makes life easier for me. I’m 60-plus years old, and I often write lists that I can never find. Family members and friends are well-connected. Sometimes too much so. But I lose touch with those who are not digitally inclined, I’m sorry to say. I may message 10 to 15 people but call one on the phone. And, lastly, my skill set has improved so much that when I have a problem around the house I can find a solution and at least try it before calling an expensive contractor.”

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About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

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How Tech Has Changed Our Lives In The Last 10 Years

Several tech experts weigh in on the technologies of the past decade that had the greatest impact on society.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Ari Shapiro. And...

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

MICHELE NORRIS: I'm Michele Norris.

MELISSA BLOCK: I'm Melissa Block, and it's time now for All Tech Considered.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SHAPIRO: That is how the first All Tech Considered of the decade began on January 4, 2010. Sad to say, Michele and Melissa are not here in the studio with me this Christmas Day. A lot has changed since then - hosts of this program and technology.

In a minute, we'll look ahead to the next decade in tech. Before we do, let's revisit this one. We asked three experts to pick what they see as the most significant ways tech has changed our lives since 2009. The most obvious advancement was the smartphone. They were around in 2009, but now 81% of Americans own one. And technology reporter Omar Gallaga says they've almost become an appendage.

OMAR GALLAGA: I was in a restaurant over the weekend, and, you know, just across from me, a woman's phone was going off every five seconds. You know, I heard a chime or an alert - you know, different alerts out of her phone every - and I'm, like, how is she functioning as a human in this world? You know, she didn't even notice that those alerts were going off. I mean, that's how much a part of her life they must be, so...

SHAPIRO: And it's not just the phones. Gallaga's daughters, who are 10 and 12, have tablets. He says kids these days just go through life differently from a decade ago.

GALLAGA: When you see kids at the doctor's office looking at magazines, and they're trying to, like, you know, scroll the page (laughter), the print page - like, yeah. Yep, that's an iPad kid right there.

SHAPIRO: Next, we turn to Erin Hatton. She is an associate professor of sociology at the University at Buffalo. And for her, the most significant change of the decade is something that would not have been possible without the smartphone - it's the gig economy, enabled by apps like Uber, TaskRabbit and Airbnb. Hatton says they've redefined what it is to be a worker.

ERIN HATTON: I think that this work has started new conversations between workers and across sectors in rethinking what it means to be a worker and potentially rethinking what kinds of benefits and protections we attach to work.

SHAPIRO: Beyond our daily lives or our work, tech in the last decade has also shaped what we believe to be true. Sometimes we know we're being faked, like in Martin Scorsese's movie "The Irishman." Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, who are both in their 70s, look much younger thanks to technology. In some scenes, they're in their 40s.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE IRISHMAN")

JOE PESCI: (As Russell Bufalino) What's the problem, kid?

ROBERT DE NIRO: (As Frank Sheeran) I don't know. It sounds funny - stops and starts and loses power.

PESCI: (As Russell Bufalino) I can give you a hand.

SHAPIRO: It's believable. Of course, there is a darker side of this technology, too. Michael Fink is a professor of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, and he says it's easier than ever before to manipulate videos and make it seem like something happened when it never did.

MICHAEL FINK: The software has become so powerful that things can be altered, changed, modified so quickly that people would think, oh, my god. That has to be real. It just happened. And that's not true. The reality is fungible. It can be used by dark forces - let's put it that way - people with absolutely nothing but malevolence at the core of their being. And it's scary.

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Top 15 Importance of Technology In Our Daily Life [Types, Impacts, Benefits]

Introduction

Our daily lives now include technology as a need rather than as an additional. Technology has permeated nearly every part of our life, from the minute the alarm wakes us from sleep to the moment we close our eyes at night. This blog aims to provide insight into the foremost areas of importance of technology in daily life, use of technology and elucidating its effectual outcomes and the behavioral modification it has catalyzed in the modern world.

Importance and Benefits of Technology

• Expanded Productivity: Via automating tasks, improving work processes, and bringing down human mistakes, technology has emphatically expanded proficiency across various ventures. We can now do more tasks quicker than expected since the gig is presently faster and more exact.
• Improved Communication: With the far and wide utilization of cell phones, easy-to-use social media sites, and texting applications, the connection has gone through a revolution that currently makes it feasible for us to communicate rapidly and effortlessly with anyone, any place in the globe.
• Data Access: The web has democratized data and given us fast access to abundant data. We can now find out about any subject with a couple of snaps, thanks to online reference books and insightful distributions, giving us more data.
• Global Connectivity: Technology has bridged the gap between nations, binding people together in unthinkable ways. Thanks to virtual communication such as video conferencing, forums, and online collaboration tools, localized cultures can be easily experienced and examined, allowing us to achieve a global understanding.

Types of Technological Innovations and Their Uses

Here we will discuss some of the crucial uses of technology and types of technological innovations.

• Smartphones and Mobile Applications: Smartphones have become an essential part of our lives, offering a multitude of functionalities through various applications. Smartphones have transformed how we perform daily tasks from communication to entertainment, productivity to health monitoring.
• Internet of Things (IoT): An interconnected network of devices with communication and data-exchange capabilities is called the IoT. It makes our lives easier and more effective by allowing us to automate and regulate various components of our houses, including lighting, security systems, and appliances.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML): These two types of technology have completely changed how transportation, banking, and healthcare sectors operate. They are able to analyze enormous volumes of data, anticipate the future, and offer tailored suggestions, which improves decision-making and increases efficiency.
• Cloud Computing: Using the cloud, we can store and use apps and data remotely through the internet. It enables seamless communication and data sharing by offering scalable and affordable solutions for companies, people, and organizations.

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How Has Technology Changed Our Lives?

Various great advancements that have impacted our society have been achieved through technology, which has significantly worked on our lives. Here are a few significant impacts of technology on our lives:

• Communication: Technology development has greatly accelerated, improved, and democratized communication. Through various channels, we can now communicate with individuals worldwide, overcoming geographic barriers and building deep connections.
• Education: The availability of online learning resources, interactive technologies, and virtual classrooms has revolutionized education. It has reduced educational obstacles and made learning more personalized, engaging, and accessible.
• Healthcare: Technology has played a crucial role in advancing healthcare. Technology has improved patient care, diagnosis, treatment, and research, from electronic health records to telemedicine and medical imaging to robotic surgeries.
• Entertainment: Technology has transformed the entertainment industry, providing us with immersive experiences through high-definition televisions, virtual reality, gaming consoles, and streaming platforms. It has improved accessibility and interaction in entertainment.

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Use of technology in our daily lives.

Different sorts of technology are prevalent daily, simplifying and streamlining processes. A few instances of how technology is incorporated into our daily lives are as follows:

• Smart home appliances: Smart home appliances let us effectively control and manage our homes, offering accommodation and energy productivity. Examples include voice-activated assistants, smart thermostats, and controlled lighting frameworks.
• Online Shopping: Online shopping has transformed thanks to e-commerce platforms. We may shop and buy things online in the convenience of our homes with doorstep delivery alternatives, saving time and effort.
• Transportation: Technology has transformed the way we travel. Technology has made transportation safer, more efficient, and environmentally friendly, from navigation systems to ride-sharing applications, electric vehicles to autonomous driving.

Types of Roles in the Field of Technology

A wide variety of employment options are available in the realm of technology. The following are a few positions that are crucial to technical advancements:

• Software developer: Software developers plan, create, and manage software systems and applications, influencing technology use.
• Data Scientist: Data scientists examine and understand large, complex data sets to find patterns and insights that inform innovation and business choices.
• Cybersecurity Analyst: Cybersecurity analysts ensure the confidentiality and integrity of data by preventing unauthorized access to computer networks and systems.

Modern Technology and the World Wide Web

Modern technology has revolutionized how we access information, communicate with one another, and do business thanks to the World Wide Web. It has changed industries and given people and organizations worldwide new opportunities.

Importance of Science and Technology in Education

Technology has significantly changed education, opening up new opportunities for teaching and learning. Here are a few significant advantages of technology in education:

• Access to Information: Technology provides students with access to vast information and educational resources, promoting independent learning and research.
• Engaging Learning Experiences: Technology enables interactive and multimedia-rich learning experiences that cater to diverse learning styles, making education more engaging and effective.
• Personalized Learning: Technology allows for personalized learning experiences tailored to individual student needs, pacing, and interests, fostering better understanding and retention of knowledge.

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Importance of technology in decision-making and problem-solving.

Making decisions and solving problems has considerably improved across various industries. Here is how technology helps in these important areas:

• Data-Driven Decision Making: Using technology to gather, analyze, and evaluate massive amounts of data helps decision-makers to make wise decisions based on facts and insights.
• Simulation and Modelling: Using simulations and models, decision-makers may test various scenarios, forecast outcomes, and arrive at the best conclusion possible.

Importance of Technology in Domestic Work

Technology has simplified and automated domestic tasks, making everyday life more convenient. Here are some ways that technology has enhanced housework:

• Kitchen appliances: The time and effort needed for cooking and cleaning have decreased thanks to kitchen equipment like dishwashers, microwaves, and food processors, enabling more effective meal preparation.
• Equipment for house cleaning: Robotic Hoover cleaners, intelligent mops, and automated window cleaners have revolutionized home cleaning by making it quicker and easier.

Importance of Science and Technology in Health Care

Healthcare has undergone a technological revolution, with major improvements in patient care, diagnosis, and treatment. Here are some essential areas in healthcare where technology is crucial:

• Electronic Health Records: Electronic health records (EHRs) offer safe and effective patient data storage and access, enhancing care coordination and lowering medical mistakes.
• Medical imaging: Tools like X-rays, MRIs, CT scans, and ultrasounds make it possible to monitor and accurately diagnose medical issues, which helps medical practitioners provide the best therapies.
• Telemedicine: Especially in underdeveloped regions, telemedicine allows patients to get medical advice and treatment remotely, minimizing the need for in-person visits.

Importance of Technology in Business Today

Technology has become a fundamental part of corporate activities with countless advantages and potential for development. The following are a few of the motivations behind why technology is important in the corporate world:

• Expanded Efficiency and Proficiency: Organizations might accomplish more work significantly quicker because technology automates repetitive tasks and improves corporate methodology.
• Improved Communication and Collaboration: Regardless of team members’ geographical locations, technology helps teams communicate and collaborate effectively, which improves cooperation and decision-making.
• Market Development: Utilizing online platforms, social media, and e-commerce businesses, organizations can now contact a bigger crowd, consequently expanding their market reach and customers.

In-Demand Software Development Skills

Technology has forever been a crucial part of the human experience, giving us many benefits and upsetting how we work together, exist, and communicate. The key here lies in the scope of its applications – from optimization of time-related tasks to furthering communication, augmenting access to knowledge, and even prompting developments in many other industries. In order to create a prosperous future, it is quintessential that we continue utilizing the force of technology to facilitate positive transformation in the world around us.

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

A1: Technology in education makes learning more accessible, interactive, and personalized. It provides students access to educational resources, facilitates online learning, and enhances engagement through multimedia content and virtual experiences.

A3: Technology has improved healthcare by enabling electronic health records, medical imaging technologies, telemedicine, and remote monitoring. These advancements have enhanced patient care, diagnosis, and treatment.

A4: The Internet of Things, blockchain, augmented reality, virtual reality, and 3D printing are a few important technological advancements. These developments have transformed several sectors and created new opportunities.

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How Technology Affects Our Daily Life

Technology plays a vital role in every person’s life. In our everyday life, we encounter numerous technologies. Technology has affected every aspect of my life in many respects. It has made my day-to-day life much easier than before. It has enabled me to do things faster and more efficiently. I have had the opportunity to access information and people that were previously difficult or impossible to access (Youn, 2009).

With technology, I have also been provided with all sorts of entertainment. I have been able to chat online, download some of my favorite videos and audios, and enjoy various other forms of entertainment. However, technology may also prove to have a negative effect especially when it comes to privacy issues. I once had my private social account hacked into and someone retrieved my details and dispersed them (Youn, 2009). It was embarrassing because the information was very personal. I have never known who might have done that but it has made me cautious about such happenings and I have learned ways of ensuring the security of such information on the internet.

Therefore, such new technologies may have a negative impact on a person’s privacy. Understanding how to use the new technologies is important when ensuring that you have total control of your private information. This makes it difficult for culprits to retrieve information without your permission.

New technologies may be in the form of internet social programs, which allow people to communicate within the same network or across networks. These include emails, online chatting services, and games. Web cams can also be used to facilitate video calling or conferencing. A perfect example is Skype, which enables people from around the globe to communicate easily and efficiently. I have greatly benefited from this technology myself because I have friends and family members from different parts of the world and the need to keep in touch made me inquire about such technologies.

Other technologies include Bluetooth technology and wireless technology. These technologies facilitate the transfer or exchange of information without the need for wired connections (wireless). This technology has made the transfer of information easier and more effective. Wi-Fi is a technology that incorporates wireless functionalities. I usually connect to the internet using this technology and this has made my internet experience a wonderful one. Downloading information has never been faster.

Back to the issue of privacy, most people agree that every person is entitled to his privacy. Some even argue that every human being has the right to privacy. This is a fundamental human right. Privacy on the internet forms a subgroup of computer privacy (Larose & Rifon, 2007). Unfortunately, many professionals in this field do not believe in the existence of privacy. Steve Rambam explained this. He stated that putting stuff online is like broadcasting personal information intentionally. Therefore, according to him, there is no one to blame if one’s personal information is accessed. The owner saw it coming anyway. However, Bruce Schneier provided a glimpse of hope by arguing that there was the need to protect personal information from abuses by those who have the capability of accessing the information (Larose & Rifon, 2007).

The government has done its part in trying to protect people’s privacy. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is one such government organization (Heyman & Pierson, 2011). It stresses the need to protect one’s social security number while online. With this regard, it can be declared that technologies may be helpful in some ways but, at the same time, detrimental. However, when every precaution is taken into consideration, technology will continue to make the world a better place to live.

Heyman, R., & Pierson, J. (2011). Social media and cookies: Challenges for online privacy. The Journal of Policy, Regulation and Strategy for Telecommunication, 13 : 30-42.

Larose, R., & Rifon, N. (2007). Promoting i-safety: Effects of privacy warnings and privacy seals on risk assessment and online privacy behavior. Journal of Consumer Affairs, 41 (1): 127-149.

Youn, S. (2009). Determinants of online privacy concern and its influence on privacy protection behaviors among young adolescents. Journal of Consumer Affairs, 43 (3): 389-418.

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Feb 13, 2023

200-500 Word Example Essays about Technology

Got an essay assignment about technology check out these examples to inspire you.

Technology is a rapidly evolving field that has completely changed the way we live, work, and interact with one another. Technology has profoundly impacted our daily lives, from how we communicate with friends and family to how we access information and complete tasks. As a result, it's no surprise that technology is a popular topic for students writing essays.

But writing a technology essay can be challenging, especially for those needing more time or help with writer's block. This is where Jenni.ai comes in. Jenni.ai is an innovative AI tool explicitly designed for students who need help writing essays. With Jenni.ai, students can quickly and easily generate essays on various topics, including technology.

This blog post aims to provide readers with various example essays on technology, all generated by Jenni.ai. These essays will be a valuable resource for students looking for inspiration or guidance as they work on their essays. By reading through these example essays, students can better understand how technology can be approached and discussed in an essay.

Moreover, by signing up for a free trial with Jenni.ai, students can take advantage of this innovative tool and receive even more support as they work on their essays. Jenni.ai is designed to help students write essays faster and more efficiently, so they can focus on what truly matters – learning and growing as a student. Whether you're a student who is struggling with writer's block or simply looking for a convenient way to generate essays on a wide range of topics, Jenni.ai is the perfect solution.

The Impact of Technology on Society and Culture

Introduction:.

Technology has become an integral part of our daily lives and has dramatically impacted how we interact, communicate, and carry out various activities. Technological advancements have brought positive and negative changes to society and culture. In this article, we will explore the impact of technology on society and culture and how it has influenced different aspects of our lives.

Positive impact on communication:

Technology has dramatically improved communication and made it easier for people to connect from anywhere in the world. Social media platforms, instant messaging, and video conferencing have brought people closer, bridging geographical distances and cultural differences. This has made it easier for people to share information, exchange ideas, and collaborate on projects.

Positive impact on education:

Students and instructors now have access to a multitude of knowledge and resources because of the effect of technology on education . Students may now study at their speed and from any location thanks to online learning platforms, educational applications, and digital textbooks.

Negative impact on critical thinking and creativity:

Technological advancements have resulted in a reduction in critical thinking and creativity. With so much information at our fingertips, individuals have become more passive in their learning, relying on the internet for solutions rather than logic and inventiveness. As a result, independent thinking and problem-solving abilities have declined.

Positive impact on entertainment:

Technology has transformed how we access and consume entertainment. People may now access a wide range of entertainment alternatives from the comfort of their own homes thanks to streaming services, gaming platforms, and online content makers. The entertainment business has entered a new age of creativity and invention as a result of this.

Negative impact on attention span:

However, the continual bombardment of information and technological stimulation has also reduced attention span and the capacity to focus. People are easily distracted and need help focusing on a single activity for a long time. This has hampered productivity and the ability to accomplish duties.

The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence And Machine Learning

The development of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies has been one of the most significant technological developments of the past several decades. These cutting-edge technologies have the potential to alter several sectors of society, including commerce, industry, healthcare, and entertainment. 

As with any new and quickly advancing technology, AI and ML ethics must be carefully studied. The usage of these technologies presents significant concerns around privacy, accountability, and command. As the use of AI and ML grows more ubiquitous, we must assess their possible influence on society and investigate the ethical issues that must be taken into account as these technologies continue to develop.

What are Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning?

Artificial Intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence in machines designed to think and act like humans. Machine learning is a subfield of AI that enables computers to learn from data and improve their performance over time without being explicitly programmed.

The impact of AI and ML on Society

The use of AI and ML in various industries, such as healthcare, finance, and retail, has brought many benefits. For example, AI-powered medical diagnosis systems can identify diseases faster and more accurately than human doctors. However, there are also concerns about job displacement and the potential for AI to perpetuate societal biases.

The Ethical Considerations of AI and ML

A. Bias in AI algorithms

One of the critical ethical concerns about AI and ML is the potential for algorithms to perpetuate existing biases. This can occur if the data used to train these algorithms reflects the preferences of the people who created it. As a result, AI systems can perpetuate these biases and discriminate against certain groups of people.

B. Responsibility for AI-generated decisions

Another ethical concern is the responsibility for decisions made by AI systems. For example, who is responsible for the damage if a self-driving car causes an accident? The manufacturer of the vehicle, the software developer, or the AI algorithm itself?

C. The potential for misuse of AI and ML

AI and ML can also be used for malicious purposes, such as cyberattacks and misinformation. The need for more regulation and oversight in developing and using these technologies makes it difficult to prevent misuse.

The developments in AI and ML have given numerous benefits to humanity, but they also present significant ethical concerns that must be addressed. We must assess the repercussions of new technologies on society, implement methods to limit the associated dangers, and guarantee that they are utilized for the greater good. As AI and ML continue to play an ever-increasing role in our daily lives, we must engage in an open and frank discussion regarding their ethics.

The Future of Work And Automation

Rapid technological breakthroughs in recent years have brought about considerable changes in our way of life and work. Concerns regarding the influence of artificial intelligence and machine learning on the future of work and employment have increased alongside the development of these technologies. This article will examine the possible advantages and disadvantages of automation and its influence on the labor market, employees, and the economy.

The Advantages of Automation

Automation in the workplace offers various benefits, including higher efficiency and production, fewer mistakes, and enhanced precision. Automated processes may accomplish repetitive jobs quickly and precisely, allowing employees to concentrate on more complex and creative activities. Additionally, automation may save organizations money since it removes the need to pay for labor and minimizes the danger of workplace accidents.

The Potential Disadvantages of Automation

However, automation has significant disadvantages, including job loss and income stagnation. As robots and computers replace human labor in particular industries, there is a danger that many workers may lose their jobs, resulting in higher unemployment and more significant economic disparity. Moreover, if automation is not adequately regulated and managed, it might lead to stagnant wages and a deterioration in employees' standard of life.

The Future of Work and Automation

Despite these difficulties, automation will likely influence how labor is done. As a result, firms, employees, and governments must take early measures to solve possible issues and reap the rewards of automation. This might entail funding worker retraining programs, enhancing education and skill development, and implementing regulations that support equality and justice at work.

IV. The Need for Ethical Considerations

We must consider the ethical ramifications of automation and its effects on society as technology develops. The impact on employees and their rights, possible hazards to privacy and security, and the duty of corporations and governments to ensure that automation is utilized responsibly and ethically are all factors to be taken into account.

Conclusion:

To summarise, the future of employment and automation will most certainly be defined by a complex interaction of technological advances, economic trends, and cultural ideals. All stakeholders must work together to handle the problems and possibilities presented by automation and ensure that technology is employed to benefit society as a whole.

The Role of Technology in Education

Introduction.

Nearly every part of our lives has been transformed by technology, and education is no different. Today's students have greater access to knowledge, opportunities, and resources than ever before, and technology is becoming a more significant part of their educational experience. Technology is transforming how we think about education and creating new opportunities for learners of all ages, from online courses and virtual classrooms to instructional applications and augmented reality.

Technology's Benefits for Education

The capacity to tailor learning is one of technology's most significant benefits in education. Students may customize their education to meet their unique needs and interests since they can access online information and tools. 

For instance, people can enroll in online classes on topics they are interested in, get tailored feedback on their work, and engage in virtual discussions with peers and subject matter experts worldwide. As a result, pupils are better able to acquire and develop the abilities and information necessary for success.

Challenges and Concerns

Despite the numerous advantages of technology in education, there are also obstacles and considerations to consider. One issue is the growing reliance on technology and the possibility that pupils would become overly dependent on it. This might result in a lack of critical thinking and problem-solving abilities, as students may become passive learners who only follow instructions and rely on technology to complete their assignments.

Another obstacle is the digital divide between those who have access to technology and those who do not. This division can exacerbate the achievement gap between pupils and produce uneven educational and professional growth chances. To reduce these consequences, all students must have access to the technology and resources necessary for success.

In conclusion, technology is rapidly becoming an integral part of the classroom experience and has the potential to alter the way we learn radically. 

Technology can help students flourish and realize their full potential by giving them access to individualized instruction, tools, and opportunities. While the benefits of technology in the classroom are undeniable, it's crucial to be mindful of the risks and take precautions to guarantee that all kids have access to the tools they need to thrive.

The Influence of Technology On Personal Relationships And Communication 

Technological advancements have profoundly altered how individuals connect and exchange information. It has changed the world in many ways in only a few decades. Because of the rise of the internet and various social media sites, maintaining relationships with people from all walks of life is now simpler than ever. 

However, concerns about how these developments may affect interpersonal connections and dialogue are inevitable in an era of rapid technological growth. In this piece, we'll discuss how the prevalence of digital media has altered our interpersonal connections and the language we use to express ourselves.

Direct Effect on Direct Interaction:

The disruption of face-to-face communication is a particularly stark example of how technology has impacted human connections. The quality of interpersonal connections has suffered due to people's growing preference for digital over human communication. Technology has been demonstrated to reduce the usage of nonverbal signs such as facial expressions, tone of voice, and other indicators of emotional investment in the connection.

Positive Impact on Long-Distance Relationships:

Yet there are positives to be found as well. Long-distance relationships have also benefited from technological advancements. The development of technologies such as video conferencing, instant messaging, and social media has made it possible for individuals to keep in touch with distant loved ones. It has become simpler for individuals to stay in touch and feel connected despite geographical distance.

The Effects of Social Media on Personal Connections:

The widespread use of social media has had far-reaching consequences, especially on the quality of interpersonal interactions. Social media has positive and harmful effects on relationships since it allows people to keep in touch and share life's milestones.

Unfortunately, social media has made it all too easy to compare oneself to others, which may lead to emotions of jealousy and a general decline in confidence. Furthermore, social media might cause people to have inflated expectations of themselves and their relationships.

A Personal Perspective on the Intersection of Technology and Romance

Technological advancements have also altered physical touch and closeness. Virtual reality and other technologies have allowed people to feel physical contact and familiarity in a digital setting. This might be a promising breakthrough, but it has some potential downsides. 

Experts are concerned that people's growing dependence on technology for intimacy may lead to less time spent communicating face-to-face and less emphasis on physical contact, both of which are important for maintaining good relationships.

In conclusion, technological advancements have significantly affected the quality of interpersonal connections and the exchange of information. Even though technology has made it simpler to maintain personal relationships, it has chilled interpersonal interactions between people. 

Keeping tabs on how technology is changing our lives and making adjustments as necessary is essential as we move forward. Boundaries and prioritizing in-person conversation and physical touch in close relationships may help reduce the harm it causes.

The Security and Privacy Implications of Increased Technology Use and Data Collection

The fast development of technology over the past few decades has made its way into every aspect of our life. Technology has improved many facets of our life, from communication to commerce. However, significant privacy and security problems have emerged due to the broad adoption of technology. In this essay, we'll look at how the widespread use of technological solutions and the subsequent explosion in collected data affects our right to privacy and security.

Data Mining and Privacy Concerns

Risk of Cyber Attacks and Data Loss

The Widespread Use of Encryption and Other Safety Mechanisms

The Privacy and Security of the Future in a Globalized Information Age

Obtaining and Using Individual Information

The acquisition and use of private information is a significant cause for privacy alarm in the digital age. Data about their customers' online habits, interests, and personal information is a valuable commodity for many internet firms. Besides tailored advertising, this information may be used for other, less desirable things like identity theft or cyber assaults.

Moreover, many individuals need to be made aware of what data is being gathered from them or how it is being utilized because of the lack of transparency around gathering personal information. Privacy and data security have become increasingly contentious as a result.

Data breaches and other forms of cyber-attack pose a severe risk.

The risk of cyber assaults and data breaches is another big issue of worry. More people are using more devices, which means more opportunities for cybercriminals to steal private information like credit card numbers and other identifying data. This may cause monetary damages and harm one's reputation or identity.

Many high-profile data breaches have occurred in recent years, exposing the personal information of millions of individuals and raising serious concerns about the safety of this information. Companies and governments have responded to this problem by adopting new security methods like encryption and multi-factor authentication.

Many businesses now use encryption and other security measures to protect themselves from cybercriminals and data thieves. Encryption keeps sensitive information hidden by encoding it so that only those possessing the corresponding key can decipher it. This prevents private information like bank account numbers or social security numbers from falling into the wrong hands.

Firewalls, virus scanners, and two-factor authentication are all additional security precautions that may be used with encryption. While these safeguards do much to stave against cyber assaults, they are not entirely impregnable, and data breaches are still possible.

The Future of Privacy and Security in a Technologically Advanced World

There's little doubt that concerns about privacy and security will persist even as technology improves. There must be strict safeguards to secure people's private information as more and more of it is transferred and kept digitally. To achieve this goal, it may be necessary to implement novel technologies and heightened levels of protection and to revise the rules and regulations regulating the collection and storage of private information.

Individuals and businesses are understandably concerned about the security and privacy consequences of widespread technological use and data collecting. There are numerous obstacles to overcome in a society where technology plays an increasingly important role, from acquiring and using personal data to the risk of cyber-attacks and data breaches. Companies and governments must keep spending money on security measures and working to educate people about the significance of privacy and security if personal data is to remain safe.

In conclusion, technology has profoundly impacted virtually every aspect of our lives, including society and culture, ethics, work, education, personal relationships, and security and privacy. The rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning has presented new ethical considerations, while automation is transforming the future of work. 

In education, technology has revolutionized the way we learn and access information. At the same time, our dependence on technology has brought new challenges in terms of personal relationships, communication, security, and privacy.

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Importance of information technology in today’s world

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What is information technology?

Information technology (IT) involves the study and application of computers and any type of telecommunications that store, retrieve, study, transmit, manipulate data and send information. Information technology involves a combination of hardware and software that is used to perform the essential tasks that people need and use on an everyday basis. In this article, we will discuss the importance of information technology in 2024 .

Most IT professionals work with an organization and technically understand what they need in order to meet their needs, showing them what the current technology is that is available to perform their required tasks, then their current implementing technology in the setup, or creating a whole new set up. Information technology in today’s world understates the scope of the critical career field. There is much-unexpected importance in Information Technology.

The 1958 article published in the Harvard Business Review refers to information technology that consists of three basic parts: computational data processing, decision support, and business software. Information technology refers to anything related to computing technology, such as networking, hardware, software, the Internet, or people working with these technologies.

Read also: Know about the classification of computer and its right purpose

Many companies now have IT departments to manage computers, networks, and other technical areas of their businesses. IT jobs include computer programming, network administration, computer engineering, web development, technical support, and many other related occupations.

Since we live in the “world of information”, information technology has become a part of our daily lives. In the coming decades, many corporations will create so-called “IT departments” to manage computer technologies related to their business. 

Whatever these departments are working on or will work on became the real definition of information technology,

There are many facts about Information Technology which are listed below:

Information technology governance:.

The effective combination of policies and processes to run the IT systems smoothly and hand in hand with the need of the organization.

Information Technology operations: The operation of IT can be seen in the daily work of an IT department. It provides tech support, security testing, network maintenance, and perform device management.

Hardware and infrastructure: The physical components of Information Technology comes under the hardware of IT. It includes setting up and maintaining equipment like phone systems, routers, servers, and laptops.

Business Information Technology Definition

The importance of Information Technology in business is vast. It helps each and every business sector in automating its processes and systems to target objectives, generate revenue, and reduce the inefficiency of their work. The value of Business information technology is increasing day by day in areas such as commercial transactions, to fulfil the demands of customers and regulatory requirements.

The purpose behind Business Information Technology is to fulfil the everyday growing needs of industries and to fulfil the growing expectations of customers of every field.

To maintain the balance between complex computer systems and the right practices of business, employers eye on sound business information technology.

Business IT backs the companies in a hardware system, software, system, and all the changes in procedures. With proper technology management, serving customers more will become really easy as it helps in increasing employee engagement, gives access to information, and provides flexibility in responding to business challenges.

To get success in any business field, there are two non-tangible things including relevant knowledge and information are very important. Business information technology effectively combines management skills and communication technology with the competency of information. With a sound communication system and information, the company can minimize its risks, strengthen its system and give support to its business strategies.

Professionals of Business information technology offer modelling, and expertise in data security, management, and system upgrades.

Why IT is important?

Information technology helps to build and grow the commerce and business sector and generate the maximum possible output. The time taken by different sectors to generate business is now minimized with advancements in Information technology. It provides electronic security, storage, and efficient communication.

Upholds flexible work arrangements

Why is technology important? The very first reason why IT is important is the upgrading facility. Information technology is likewise changing how people work by providing the infrastructure to help flexible arrangements, like remote work and telecommuting.

Because of the availability of collaboration tools, employees or contractors can work from locations of their choice while being able to collaborate with their teams on projects. Being able to provide work flexibility helps employers cut operating expenses and provides access to a larger talent pool since companies can recruit people internationally.

Not-for-Profit Organizations Additionally Depend On The Latest IT

Whether you call them nonprofit or not-for-profit, these organisations depend on the importance of IT to get their work done.

These organisations secure revenue to cover their expenses and distribute their labour and products, but without making profits for the owners.

For example, companies that need to use digital marketing might require a web-based entertainment manager to handle their virtual entertainment channels.

Due to the Internet and innovations, for example, web stores, it’s possible to look for different types of items or services online. You can trade items online, deliver products to customers and boat freight across continents from your workplace.

In tertiary institutions, the importance of information technology permits the workforce to deliver lectures and supervise students remotely. Students can likewise access immense academic resources for their papers, theses and dissertations.

There’s additionally an online tutor industry that matches students who require personalised attention with subject matter specialists. Information tech has likewise created a new ecosystem of abilities-based education in the form of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).

Types of information technology

Information technology has several distinct fields.

Numerous business functions generate large measures of data, and companies require the expertise of IT examiners to make sense of their data.

For example, websites, virtual entertainment and some outsider software, like POS terminals, generate data that can help companies improve their functions.

Automation makes work faster, but it can likewise help reduce the expense of operation. Several areas can benefit from IT automation, including data processing, customer backing and error logging.

Cloud computing

Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services over the Internet.

Cloud computing takes into consideration higher flexibility and innovation and can help businesses reduce costs while enjoying economies of scale.

Cybersecurity

Firewalls, against infection software and hostile to spyware, are some tools used to prevent noxious assaults.

Networking is an integral piece of information technology. The protocols that govern data transfer and the software and hardware that make communication possible on the Internet and within organisations all rely on networking systems.

In numerous organisations, the IT department commonly has a professional who is specialised in configuring networking systems and resolving issues, as any problems with the network systems can paralyse an organisation’s operations.

Software and application development

Software and application is another instance of importance of IT in daily life. It likewise creates a wide range of general and specialised programs for desktop computers, mobile devices, servers, database management systems and other functions.

Maintenance and repair

Information technology infrastructure requires regular maintenance and repair. There are technical help personnel who ensure that an organisation’s IT systems have cutting-edge hardware and software for smooth operations.

Besides diagnosing, troubleshooting and resolving technical issues, the maintenance and repair IT experts can likewise train end users and document their activities for future reference.

To conduct the work, Information technology needs computer applications. Computers connect IT to the different organizations of the world. It helps the employees to maintain records of their numerous clients of various companies. It helps patients to contact physicians online and take advice regarding their health problems. Also, records of patients can be managed properly by the system.

To collect information, programming/coding, data conversion, data communications retrieval and storage, and system analysis are used. Even the education sector has been dramatically changed with the arrival of Information Technology. To run a business in the right way and generate expected outcomes, computers, software, and the internet helps a lot.

Companies are now having virtual vaults which is a new form of storage system which allows users to keep or withdraw their documents. The IT department is providing a strong communication system to communicate effectively.

The use of computers and the internet increases the quality of education. The pedagogical method of teaching and learning has been improving and IT contributes to improving school systems, student activities, and teaching practices.

Students are more open to learning with modern technologies and focusing on online teaching more. Their learning methods are depending on live interaction with the teachers and special classes for special children.

Students are not bound to use the same old traditional method of learning. And all this is made possible by the introduction of Information Technology in the education field and the importance of technology can be seen.

The aura of Information technology can be seen in almost all fields including work, learning, leisure, and health. From ministries to classrooms, every sector uses IT for the best results.

Physicians also use Information technology to check record entries, patient history, and their prescribed dose to move accordingly. The use of Information technology can also be seen in agriculture and to increase productivity. Satellites are connected with agriculture to predict monsoons and smog. Through drone technology, mass data collection, land surveys, use of pesticides, seed planting, water irrigation, and use of fertilizers are possible.

The above discussion clears that Information technology is very important in this 21st century. Each and every field needs Information technology. Without the internet and technical system, no business, education, agriculture work, or health sector can produce the expected outcome. Technology in today’s world is important.

There are many types of roles in the field of IT such as:

• Data scientist
• Network Administrator
• System Administrator
• System Analyst
• Technology Specialist
• Database administrator
• Support Analyst
• Database developer
• A software tester, Engineer, Architect
• Software Development Manager
• Network Engineer
• Software / Application developer
• Technical Consultant

Uses Of Information Technology

We can see the uses and role of information technology in our society in many fields:

Since the arrival of computers, the entire face of the business world has changed. To run the different departments of business swiftly, the use of Information Technology is important and it is possible with computers and software. The use of information technology can be seen in departments such as finance, human resources, manufacturing, and security. The role of IT can’t be ignored.

Businesses that need to assemble websites require web designers and developers. Programmers, system analysers, cloud engineers and a wide range of other professionals in the IT industry currently serve critical functions while earning decent incomes.

Technology enables teachers to be up to date with new techniques and help their students to be updated with the latest technologies such as the use of tablets, mobile phones, computers, etc. in education. Information technology not only helps students to learn new things but also helps students to college dropouts.

Information Technology opens the doors for traders and common people to do online purchases. Banks keep records of all the transactions and account through computers. Unlike before, now transactions and other deals have become faster and easier.

For example, accounting departments currently use software to prepare financial statements and other bookkeeping functions. HR uses specialised applications to manage every aspect of recruitment, employee compensation, training and termination.

With Information Technology, the field of medicine and health has been seeing tremendous improvements. For doctors, sending and receiving information, checking patients, and discussing with other experts have become very convenient. Also, it reduces the time taken on paperwork.

Online transactions and keeping records of all online transactions are now safer than in earlier times. Only proper management and a person responsible for the system can access the data online. It prohibits any random person from checking the details. All these have been made possible by keeping the system passwords proof. Only permissible authorities can access your information.

Communication

With improvements in information technology, globalization has increased. The world is brought closer, and the world’s economy is quickly becoming a single interdependent system. Information can be shared quickly and easily from all over the globe, and barriers of linguistic and geographic boundaries can be torn down as people share ideas and information with each other.

With Information Technology, new jobs have been introduced. It creates new jobs for programmers, hardware and software developers, systems analyzers, web designers, and many others. Information Technology has opened entirely new fields and thousands of jobs for IT professionals.

Benefits Of Information Technology

Information technology has changed our lives drastically. You are only a single click away from everything. So here is a list of the benefits of information technology in our lives also there is a need for Information Technology in every field.

• With the advancement in IT, one can access the system of the company from any place. It is not necessary for the authority to be in the office only. They can submit their work from home as well. Easy access to the system has surely increased one’s productivity without any physical presence of the person in the office.
• There is a huge demand for IT professionals in various fields. The demand opens an immense opportunity for IT professionals to explore the field and show their talent. The IT field offers people to work in computer programming, system analysis, testing, software and hardware development, web application design, etc.
• With the advancement of information technology, the education field has transformed its outlook and has adopted a modern way of teaching and learning. Teaching on the blackboard is now an old thing. Teachers and institutions are using modern gadgets to teach their students. A computer with an internet connection helps students to learn new things and understand the topics easily and deeply.
• Information technology helps patients as well. They can now connect with physicians and take advice online. Also, there are many virtual healthcare applications available to provide guidance. Electronic health records and telemedicine are delivering efficient and quality health to patients.
•  In the technology world, with information technology, the drawback of time and distance in business activities has been removed. Now, buying and selling are too easy. Customers can buy online from their local and international vendors as well.
• With wireless communication mediums, news broadcasts have become so easier. Only a few seconds are needed to know the news from any corner of the world.
• The use of the internet on mobile phones, tablets, laptops, iPods, and other gadgets has been offering us unlimited access to entertainment mediums. People can watch movies or new songs on OTT platforms.
• With Information technology, communication between people has become cheaper, easier, and faster than ever before. Texting, video calling, and sending e-mails are so easy nowadays. There are so many apps available online to provide these services.
• With Information technology, we have seen and understood the meaning of globalization. Today, the world is on one platform and there are no physical barriers between nations. People are now ‘global’ citizens.

We need information technology in today’s world to establish faster communication, maintain electronic storage and provide protection to records. In a simple way, IT makes a system of electronic storage to provide protection for the company’s records. Customer demands for secured maintenance files and all are made possible by IT.

Information technology is important in our lives because it helps to deal with everyday dynamic things. Technology offers various tools to boost development and exchange information. Both these things are the objective of IT to make tasks easier and to solve many problems.

A career in Information Technology offers a secured job and growth with a good salary. Getting a degree in information technology does not only prepare specialists in IT with a good salary and job security as well.

To be an Information Technology professional, students need to obtain a bachelor’s degree in IT whether it is in computer science or other tech-related sectors. The Bachelor of Science in IT is a common degree pathway every student must have.

Information Technology enables the sharing of knowledge throughout the world. With IT today, not only students but teachers too are taking advantage and staying up-to-date. For accurate sharing of knowledge and information, teaching and learning, information technology is important.

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The Impact of Digital Technologies

Technologies can help make our world fairer, more peaceful, and more just. Digital advances can support and accelerate achievement of each of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals – from ending extreme poverty to reducing maternal and infant mortality, promoting sustainable farming and decent work, and achieving universal literacy. But technologies can also threaten privacy, erode security and fuel inequality. They have implications for human rights and human agency. Like generations before, we – governments, businesses and individuals – have a choice to make in how we harness and manage new technologies.

A DIGITAL FUTURE FOR ALL?

Digital technologies have advanced more rapidly than any innovation in our history – reaching around 50 per cent of the developing world’s population in only two decades and transforming societies. By enhancing connectivity, financial inclusion, access to trade and public services, technology can be a great equaliser.

In the health sector, for instance, AI-enabled frontier technologies are helping to save lives, diagnose diseases and extend life expectancy. In education, virtual learning environments and distance learning have opened up programmes to students who would otherwise be excluded. Public services are also becoming more accessible and accountable through blockchain-powered systems, and less bureaucratically burdensome as a result of AI assistance.Big data can also support more responsive and accurate policies and programmes.

However, those yet to be connected remain cut off from the benefits of this new era and remain further behind. Many of the people left behind are women, the elderly, persons with disabilities or from ethnic or linguistic minorities, indigenous groups and residents of poor or remote areas. The pace of connectivity is slowing, even reversing, among some constituencies. For example, globally, the proportion of women using the internet is 12 per cent lower than that of men. While this gap narrowed in most regions between 2013 and 2017, it widened in the least developed countries from 30 per cent to 33 per cent.

The use of algorithms can replicate and even amplify human and systemic bias where they function on the basis of data which is not adequately diverse. Lack of diversity in the technology sector can mean that this challenge is not adequately addressed.

THE FUTURE OF WORK

Throughout history, technological revolutions have changed the labour force: creating new forms and patterns of work, making others obsolete, and leading to wider societal changes. This current wave of change is likely to have profound impacts. For example, the International Labour Organization estimates that the shift to a greener economy could create 24 million new jobs globally by 2030 through the adoption of sustainable practices in the energy sector, the use of electric vehicles and increasing energy efficiency in existing and future buildings.

Meanwhile, reports by groups such as McKinsey suggest that 800 million people could lose their jobs to automation by 2030 , while polls reveal that the majority of all employees worry that they do not have the necessary training or skills to get a well-paid job.

There is broad agreement that managing these trends will require changes in our approach to education, for instance, by placing more emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and maths; by teaching soft skills, and resilience; and by ensuring that people can re-skill and up-skill throughout their lifetimes. Unpaid work, for example childcare and elderly care in the home, will need to be better supported, especially as with the shifting age profile of global populations, the demands on these tasks are likely to increase.

THE FUTURE OF DATA

Today, digital technologies such as data pooling and AI are used to track and diagnose issues in agriculture, health, and the environment, or to perform daily tasks such as navigating traffic or paying a bill. They can be used to defend and exercise human rights – but they can also be used to violate them, for example, by monitoring our movements, purchases, conversations and behaviours. Governments and businesses increasingly have the tools to mine and exploit data for financial and other purposes.

However, personal data would become an asset to a person, if there were a formula for better regulation of personal data ownership. Data-powered technology has the potential to empower individuals, improve human welfare, and promote universal rights, depending on the type of protections put in place.

THE FUTURE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media connects almost half of the entire global population . It enables people to make their voices heard and to talk to people across the world in real time. However, it can also reinforce prejudices and sow discord, by giving hate speech and misinformation a platform, or by amplifying echo chambers.

In this way, social media algorithms can fuel the fragmentation of societies around the world. And yet they also have the potential to do the opposite.

THE FUTURE OF CYBERSPACE

How to manage these developments is the subject of much discussion – nationally and internationally – at a time when geopolitical tensions are on the rise. The UN Secretary-General has warned of a ‘great fracture’ between world powers, each with their own internet and AI strategy, as well as dominant currency, trade and financial rules and contradictory geopolitical and military views. Such a divide could establish a digital Berlin Wall. Increasingly, digital cooperation between states – and a universal cyberspace that reflects global standards for peace and security, human rights and sustainable development – is seen as crucial to ensuring a united world. A ‘global commitment for digital cooperation’ is a key recommendation by the Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation .

FOR MORE INFORMATION

The Sustainable Development Goals

The Age of Digital Interdependence: Report of the UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation

ILO | Global Commission on the Future of Work

Secretary General’s Address to the 74th Session of the UN General Assembly

Secretary General’s Strategy on New Technology

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Essay on Use of Computer in Daily Life

Students are often asked to write an essay on Use of Computer in Daily Life in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Use of Computer in Daily Life

Introduction.

Computers have become an essential part of our daily life. They are used in various fields such as education, healthcare, and entertainment.

In education, computers help in learning and research. They provide access to vast information and educational resources online.

In healthcare, computers help in diagnosing diseases, keeping patient records, and conducting complex surgeries.

Entertainment

For entertainment, we use computers for gaming, watching movies, and listening to music. They keep us engaged and entertained.

Thus, computers have a significant impact on our daily life, making tasks easier and efficient.

250 Words Essay on Use of Computer in Daily Life

The ubiquity of computers in daily life.

Computers have permeated every aspect of our daily lives, becoming an indispensable tool for various tasks. From the moment we wake up, we interact with computers in various forms, from smartphones to laptops, smart home devices to digital billboards.

Academic Applications

In academic settings, computers have revolutionized the way students learn and teachers instruct. Online databases provide vast amounts of information at our fingertips, while educational software and platforms facilitate interactive learning. Moreover, the advent of digital classrooms and online courses enables students to learn from anywhere, breaking geographical barriers.

Professional Use

In the professional world, computers have streamlined operations across industries. They are used for data analysis, project management, communication, and design, among other tasks. The rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning, powered by computers, is further transforming the workplace by automating routine tasks and providing insightful data analysis.

Social and Personal Life

In our personal lives, computers enable us to stay connected with friends and family through social media platforms. They also serve as a source of entertainment, whether through streaming movies, playing video games, or reading digital books. Additionally, computers aid in managing personal finances, online shopping, and even health monitoring.

In conclusion, computers have become an integral part of our daily lives, enhancing our learning, work, and personal experiences. As technology continues to evolve, the role of computers in our daily lives is set to become even more significant, reshaping society in profound ways.

500 Words Essay on Use of Computer in Daily Life

The advent of computers has revolutionized many aspects of human existence. We have come to rely heavily on these devices in our everyday lives, from personal to professional realms. The use of computers in daily life has become so prevalent that it is difficult to imagine a world without them. They have transformed the way we work, communicate, learn, and entertain ourselves.

The Role of Computers in Communication

One of the most significant impacts of computers lies in the realm of communication. The rise of email, social networking sites, and instant messaging apps have made it possible to communicate with anyone, anywhere in the world, in real time. This has not only made personal communication more accessible but has also transformed the business world, enabling global collaboration and remote work.

Computers in Education

In the field of education, computers have emerged as powerful tools for learning and teaching. They provide access to a wealth of information and resources, enabling students to learn at their own pace and teachers to deliver personalized instruction. Online courses and e-learning platforms have opened up new opportunities for lifelong learning, breaking down geographical and economic barriers.

Computers and Entertainment

Computers have also significantly affected the entertainment industry. They have revolutionized the way we consume media, from streaming music and movies to playing video games. Moreover, the rise of digital art and computer-generated imagery (CGI) has transformed the fields of visual arts and filmmaking.

Computers in Business and Commerce

In the business world, computers have become indispensable tools for managing operations, making decisions, and conducting transactions. They have enabled the automation of various processes, leading to increased efficiency and productivity. Moreover, the rise of e-commerce has transformed the way businesses operate and consumers shop, making it possible to buy and sell goods and services online.

In conclusion, the use of computers in daily life has brought about profound changes in the way we communicate, learn, entertain ourselves, and conduct business. They have made our lives more convenient, efficient, and connected. However, as we continue to rely on computers, it is essential to consider the potential risks and challenges, such as issues related to privacy, security, and digital divide. As we navigate this digital era, it is crucial to harness the power of computers responsibly and ethically.

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Josephine Wolff; How Is Technology Changing the World, and How Should the World Change Technology?. Global Perspectives 1 February 2021; 2 (1): 27353. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/gp.2021.27353

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Technologies are becoming increasingly complicated and increasingly interconnected. Cars, airplanes, medical devices, financial transactions, and electricity systems all rely on more computer software than they ever have before, making them seem both harder to understand and, in some cases, harder to control. Government and corporate surveillance of individuals and information processing relies largely on digital technologies and artificial intelligence, and therefore involves less human-to-human contact than ever before and more opportunities for biases to be embedded and codified in our technological systems in ways we may not even be able to identify or recognize. Bioengineering advances are opening up new terrain for challenging philosophical, political, and economic questions regarding human-natural relations. Additionally, the management of these large and small devices and systems is increasingly done through the cloud, so that control over them is both very remote and removed from direct human or social control. The study of how to make technologies like artificial intelligence or the Internet of Things “explainable” has become its own area of research because it is so difficult to understand how they work or what is at fault when something goes wrong (Gunning and Aha 2019) .

This growing complexity makes it more difficult than ever—and more imperative than ever—for scholars to probe how technological advancements are altering life around the world in both positive and negative ways and what social, political, and legal tools are needed to help shape the development and design of technology in beneficial directions. This can seem like an impossible task in light of the rapid pace of technological change and the sense that its continued advancement is inevitable, but many countries around the world are only just beginning to take significant steps toward regulating computer technologies and are still in the process of radically rethinking the rules governing global data flows and exchange of technology across borders.

These are exciting times not just for technological development but also for technology policy—our technologies may be more advanced and complicated than ever but so, too, are our understandings of how they can best be leveraged, protected, and even constrained. The structures of technological systems as determined largely by government and institutional policies and those structures have tremendous implications for social organization and agency, ranging from open source, open systems that are highly distributed and decentralized, to those that are tightly controlled and closed, structured according to stricter and more hierarchical models. And just as our understanding of the governance of technology is developing in new and interesting ways, so, too, is our understanding of the social, cultural, environmental, and political dimensions of emerging technologies. We are realizing both the challenges and the importance of mapping out the full range of ways that technology is changing our society, what we want those changes to look like, and what tools we have to try to influence and guide those shifts.

Technology can be a source of tremendous optimism. It can help overcome some of the greatest challenges our society faces, including climate change, famine, and disease. For those who believe in the power of innovation and the promise of creative destruction to advance economic development and lead to better quality of life, technology is a vital economic driver (Schumpeter 1942) . But it can also be a tool of tremendous fear and oppression, embedding biases in automated decision-making processes and information-processing algorithms, exacerbating economic and social inequalities within and between countries to a staggering degree, or creating new weapons and avenues for attack unlike any we have had to face in the past. Scholars have even contended that the emergence of the term technology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries marked a shift from viewing individual pieces of machinery as a means to achieving political and social progress to the more dangerous, or hazardous, view that larger-scale, more complex technological systems were a semiautonomous form of progress in and of themselves (Marx 2010) . More recently, technologists have sharply criticized what they view as a wave of new Luddites, people intent on slowing the development of technology and turning back the clock on innovation as a means of mitigating the societal impacts of technological change (Marlowe 1970) .

At the heart of fights over new technologies and their resulting global changes are often two conflicting visions of technology: a fundamentally optimistic one that believes humans use it as a tool to achieve greater goals, and a fundamentally pessimistic one that holds that technological systems have reached a point beyond our control. Technology philosophers have argued that neither of these views is wholly accurate and that a purely optimistic or pessimistic view of technology is insufficient to capture the nuances and complexity of our relationship to technology (Oberdiek and Tiles 1995) . Understanding technology and how we can make better decisions about designing, deploying, and refining it requires capturing that nuance and complexity through in-depth analysis of the impacts of different technological advancements and the ways they have played out in all their complicated and controversial messiness across the world.

These impacts are often unpredictable as technologies are adopted in new contexts and come to be used in ways that sometimes diverge significantly from the use cases envisioned by their designers. The internet, designed to help transmit information between computer networks, became a crucial vehicle for commerce, introducing unexpected avenues for crime and financial fraud. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, designed to connect friends and families through sharing photographs and life updates, became focal points of election controversies and political influence. Cryptocurrencies, originally intended as a means of decentralized digital cash, have become a significant environmental hazard as more and more computing resources are devoted to mining these forms of virtual money. One of the crucial challenges in this area is therefore recognizing, documenting, and even anticipating some of these unexpected consequences and providing mechanisms to technologists for how to think through the impacts of their work, as well as possible other paths to different outcomes (Verbeek 2006) . And just as technological innovations can cause unexpected harm, they can also bring about extraordinary benefits—new vaccines and medicines to address global pandemics and save thousands of lives, new sources of energy that can drastically reduce emissions and help combat climate change, new modes of education that can reach people who would otherwise have no access to schooling. Regulating technology therefore requires a careful balance of mitigating risks without overly restricting potentially beneficial innovations.

Nations around the world have taken very different approaches to governing emerging technologies and have adopted a range of different technologies themselves in pursuit of more modern governance structures and processes (Braman 2009) . In Europe, the precautionary principle has guided much more anticipatory regulation aimed at addressing the risks presented by technologies even before they are fully realized. For instance, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation focuses on the responsibilities of data controllers and processors to provide individuals with access to their data and information about how that data is being used not just as a means of addressing existing security and privacy threats, such as data breaches, but also to protect against future developments and uses of that data for artificial intelligence and automated decision-making purposes. In Germany, Technische Überwachungsvereine, or TÜVs, perform regular tests and inspections of technological systems to assess and minimize risks over time, as the tech landscape evolves. In the United States, by contrast, there is much greater reliance on litigation and liability regimes to address safety and security failings after-the-fact. These different approaches reflect not just the different legal and regulatory mechanisms and philosophies of different nations but also the different ways those nations prioritize rapid development of the technology industry versus safety, security, and individual control. Typically, governance innovations move much more slowly than technological innovations, and regulations can lag years, or even decades, behind the technologies they aim to govern.

In addition to this varied set of national regulatory approaches, a variety of international and nongovernmental organizations also contribute to the process of developing standards, rules, and norms for new technologies, including the International Organization for Standardization­ and the International Telecommunication Union. These multilateral and NGO actors play an especially important role in trying to define appropriate boundaries for the use of new technologies by governments as instruments of control for the state.

At the same time that policymakers are under scrutiny both for their decisions about how to regulate technology as well as their decisions about how and when to adopt technologies like facial recognition themselves, technology firms and designers have also come under increasing criticism. Growing recognition that the design of technologies can have far-reaching social and political implications means that there is more pressure on technologists to take into consideration the consequences of their decisions early on in the design process (Vincenti 1993; Winner 1980) . The question of how technologists should incorporate these social dimensions into their design and development processes is an old one, and debate on these issues dates back to the 1970s, but it remains an urgent and often overlooked part of the puzzle because so many of the supposedly systematic mechanisms for assessing the impacts of new technologies in both the private and public sectors are primarily bureaucratic, symbolic processes rather than carrying any real weight or influence.

Technologists are often ill-equipped or unwilling to respond to the sorts of social problems that their creations have—often unwittingly—exacerbated, and instead point to governments and lawmakers to address those problems (Zuckerberg 2019) . But governments often have few incentives to engage in this area. This is because setting clear standards and rules for an ever-evolving technological landscape can be extremely challenging, because enforcement of those rules can be a significant undertaking requiring considerable expertise, and because the tech sector is a major source of jobs and revenue for many countries that may fear losing those benefits if they constrain companies too much. This indicates not just a need for clearer incentives and better policies for both private- and public-sector entities but also a need for new mechanisms whereby the technology development and design process can be influenced and assessed by people with a wider range of experiences and expertise. If we want technologies to be designed with an eye to their impacts, who is responsible for predicting, measuring, and mitigating those impacts throughout the design process? Involving policymakers in that process in a more meaningful way will also require training them to have the analytic and technical capacity to more fully engage with technologists and understand more fully the implications of their decisions.

At the same time that tech companies seem unwilling or unable to rein in their creations, many also fear they wield too much power, in some cases all but replacing governments and international organizations in their ability to make decisions that affect millions of people worldwide and control access to information, platforms, and audiences (Kilovaty 2020) . Regulators around the world have begun considering whether some of these companies have become so powerful that they violate the tenets of antitrust laws, but it can be difficult for governments to identify exactly what those violations are, especially in the context of an industry where the largest players often provide their customers with free services. And the platforms and services developed by tech companies are often wielded most powerfully and dangerously not directly by their private-sector creators and operators but instead by states themselves for widespread misinformation campaigns that serve political purposes (Nye 2018) .

Since the largest private entities in the tech sector operate in many countries, they are often better poised to implement global changes to the technological ecosystem than individual states or regulatory bodies, creating new challenges to existing governance structures and hierarchies. Just as it can be challenging to provide oversight for government use of technologies, so, too, oversight of the biggest tech companies, which have more resources, reach, and power than many nations, can prove to be a daunting task. The rise of network forms of organization and the growing gig economy have added to these challenges, making it even harder for regulators to fully address the breadth of these companies’ operations (Powell 1990) . The private-public partnerships that have emerged around energy, transportation, medical, and cyber technologies further complicate this picture, blurring the line between the public and private sectors and raising critical questions about the role of each in providing critical infrastructure, health care, and security. How can and should private tech companies operating in these different sectors be governed, and what types of influence do they exert over regulators? How feasible are different policy proposals aimed at technological innovation, and what potential unintended consequences might they have?

Conflict between countries has also spilled over significantly into the private sector in recent years, most notably in the case of tensions between the United States and China over which technologies developed in each country will be permitted by the other and which will be purchased by other customers, outside those two countries. Countries competing to develop the best technology is not a new phenomenon, but the current conflicts have major international ramifications and will influence the infrastructure that is installed and used around the world for years to come. Untangling the different factors that feed into these tussles as well as whom they benefit and whom they leave at a disadvantage is crucial for understanding how governments can most effectively foster technological innovation and invention domestically as well as the global consequences of those efforts. As much of the world is forced to choose between buying technology from the United States or from China, how should we understand the long-term impacts of those choices and the options available to people in countries without robust domestic tech industries? Does the global spread of technologies help fuel further innovation in countries with smaller tech markets, or does it reinforce the dominance of the states that are already most prominent in this sector? How can research universities maintain global collaborations and research communities in light of these national competitions, and what role does government research and development spending play in fostering innovation within its own borders and worldwide? How should intellectual property protections evolve to meet the demands of the technology industry, and how can those protections be enforced globally?

These conflicts between countries sometimes appear to challenge the feasibility of truly global technologies and networks that operate across all countries through standardized protocols and design features. Organizations like the International Organization for Standardization, the World Intellectual Property Organization, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, and many others have tried to harmonize these policies and protocols across different countries for years, but have met with limited success when it comes to resolving the issues of greatest tension and disagreement among nations. For technology to operate in a global environment, there is a need for a much greater degree of coordination among countries and the development of common standards and norms, but governments continue to struggle to agree not just on those norms themselves but even the appropriate venue and processes for developing them. Without greater global cooperation, is it possible to maintain a global network like the internet or to promote the spread of new technologies around the world to address challenges of sustainability? What might help incentivize that cooperation moving forward, and what could new structures and process for governance of global technologies look like? Why has the tech industry’s self-regulation culture persisted? Do the same traditional drivers for public policy, such as politics of harmonization and path dependency in policy-making, still sufficiently explain policy outcomes in this space? As new technologies and their applications spread across the globe in uneven ways, how and when do they create forces of change from unexpected places?

These are some of the questions that we hope to address in the Technology and Global Change section through articles that tackle new dimensions of the global landscape of designing, developing, deploying, and assessing new technologies to address major challenges the world faces. Understanding these processes requires synthesizing knowledge from a range of different fields, including sociology, political science, economics, and history, as well as technical fields such as engineering, climate science, and computer science. A crucial part of understanding how technology has created global change and, in turn, how global changes have influenced the development of new technologies is understanding the technologies themselves in all their richness and complexity—how they work, the limits of what they can do, what they were designed to do, how they are actually used. Just as technologies themselves are becoming more complicated, so are their embeddings and relationships to the larger social, political, and legal contexts in which they exist. Scholars across all disciplines are encouraged to join us in untangling those complexities.

Josephine Wolff is an associate professor of cybersecurity policy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Her book You’ll See This Message When It Is Too Late: The Legal and Economic Aftermath of Cybersecurity Breaches was published by MIT Press in 2018.

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Use of Information Technology in Our Daily Lives

Are you aware that you are surrounded by networks through which information flows constantly? The notions of time and location are evolving and the world seems to have become a “ global village ” with distance not being a barrier for commercial or social contact anymore.

Sometimes we forget how important is this networked infrastructure in our everyday lives and it is impossible to imagine our lives without it. Simply put, most businesses and companies would crumble without functioning of the IT systems.

Let’s read about the several uses and applications of IT in daily lives.

Application of IT in Everyday Life

Here is a list of uses of information technology affecting our daily lives.

Access to Information

As the world wide web has turned the world into a social village as it passes unlimited information available on the internet to the visitors and users around the globe. Most of the information you read on social media is actually factual and now you can view the images as well. Not only is there daily news updates available online, but the access to information by anybody has become a simple process.

Modern technologies such as Dell , IBM, Apple etc. allow you to relax at home while gathering all the information you might need on a daily basis, such as new updates, sports updates, cooking recipes and new episodes of your favorite series. With eBooks available on the internet, it has become even better and a replacement to the traditional TV’s and radios.

Employment Growth

Everyday the demand of IT professionals across several industries is increasing with a fast pace. Several emerging economies across the world are aiming at boosting their economies by enhancing the competency in this field.

With greater number of people interested to take up IT as their profession including computer programming, system analysis, testing, developing software and hardware, and designing apps and websites, has impacted the growth of the economy.

Entertainment

The internet works in several devices, from laptops, computers, tablets to smartphones, ipods and other devices, in order to provide us with unrestricted access to diverse entertainment channels available to watch 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Now you do not have to even get up from your bed to switch on the TV in order to get your daily updates or to watch that special broadcast you have been waiting for. With the comfort of your bed and convenience of time, you can now download and buy music, movies, web series, TV shows and unlimited games.

Communication

With better information technology in today’s world, globalization has reached heights. It has brought the world close and the world economy is becoming a single independent system. Sharing information quickly and easily across the globe, crossing the barriers of linguistic and geographic boundaries, people are continually communicating with each other.

Sharing images and videos online, or just your thought of the day. From messaging someone living on the other end of the map, use of IT has made it possible to connect via internet rooms and open-source apps.

Finance & Business

With information technology, the world has opened all doors for traders and common people to carry out transactions online. From purchasing an item, to sending your family money in the village through online banking, the online financial system has improved the functioning of banks, reaching to millions of people at one time. One of the most recent innovations in this area is the use of route plan software to optimize delivery routes, allowing businesses to save time and money.

The whole process of purchasing or transacting has become much easier, faster and better. Using the bank accounts online has eased the effort of travelling to the bank and waiting in lines, especially in this pandemic, it has helped the business in many ways.

The role of IT can also be recognized across several departments of the business through computers and software programming. It cannot be ignored in the departments such as finance, human resources, manufacturing and security.

Information technology has made the field of medicine and healthcare a tremendous opportunity of growth. Doctors can now send and receive information through computers and internet, they can check and diagnose their patients online, while discussing and taking second opinions from experts across the world.

With extreme reduction in the time taken to complete the paperwork or the time taken to get an appointment, reach the hospital and get diagnosed. Now, sitting at home, the medicines reach you in no time, especially during covid-19, when hospitals have been the epicenter for the virus.

With unlimited access to information online, there is no stopping of education of children. Information technology has enabled the teachers and students to adapt to new techniques along with updating their gadgets to the latest technology such as tablets, laptops, smartphones or mobiles, for home education.

The classes can now be held online, with sharing of notes and presentation through emails and asking questions or doubts in the chat box. It has made the education system work tirelessly for the growth of students and also helps students learn new things.

Security of the online transactions for business or personal use is the foremost use of information technology. Keeping proper records of the online transactions, while managing the system properly can help secure the accounts, online data and computer software.

This kind of IT security has prohibited random people from checking out personal details of any other person without their consent. IT has made these systems password proof with only permissible authority to access the information when required.

In today’s world, as crypto currency has become viral and a part of several lives, such security of personal information and data is essential.

Bottom Line

Did you ever imagine that you were always this surrounded by Information Technology in your Daily Life? From using social media to purchasing a new dress online or watching the latest episode of your favorite show, everything is possible with the Use of Information Technology.

Are you aware of any other applications of IT in your life? Let us know in the comments down below!

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Use of Technologies in Daily Life & in Business

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Published: Nov 8, 2019

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Effect of technology, benefits of technology, how we can improve face to face discussion.

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From the world wide web to AI: 11 technology milestones that changed our lives

The world wide web is a key technological milestone in the past 40 years. Image:  Unsplash/Ales Nesetril

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.chakra .wef-9dduvl{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;font-size:1.25rem;}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-9dduvl{font-size:1.125rem;}} Explore and monitor how .chakra .wef-15eoq1r{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;font-size:1.25rem;color:#F7DB5E;}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-15eoq1r{font-size:1.125rem;}} Artificial Intelligence is affecting economies, industries and global issues

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Stay up to date:, emerging technologies.

• It’s been 40 years since the launch of the Apple Macintosh personal computer.
• Since then, technological innovation has accelerated – here are some of the most notable tech milestones over the past four decades.
• The World Economic Forum’s EDISON Alliance aims to digitally connect 1 billion people to essential services like healthcare, education and finance by 2025.

On 24 January 1984, Apple unveiled the Macintosh 128K and changed the face of personal computers forever.

Steve Jobs’ compact, user-friendly computer introduced the graphical user interface to the world, marking a pivotal moment in the evolution of personal technology.

Since that day, the rate of technological innovation has exploded, with developments in computing, communication, connectivity and machine learning expanding at an astonishing rate.

Here are some of the key technological milestones that have changed our lives over the past 40 years.

Have you read?

9 ways ai is helping tackle climate change, driving trust: paving the road for autonomous vehicles, these are the top 10 emerging technologies of 2023: here's how they can impact the world, 1993: the world wide web.

Although the internet’s official birthday is often debated, it was the invention of the world wide web that drove the democratization of information access and shaped the modern internet we use today.

Created by British scientist Tim Berners-Lee, the World Wide Web was launched to the public in 1993 and brought with it the dawn of online communication, e-commerce and the beginning of the digital economy.

Despite the enormous progress since its invention, 2.6 billion people still lack internet access and global digital inclusion is considered a priority. The World Economic Forum’s EDISON Alliance aims to bridge this gap and digitally connect 1 billion people to essential services like healthcare, education and finance by 2025.

1997: Wi-Fi

The emergence of publicly available Wi-Fi in 1997 changed the face of internet access – removing the need to tether to a network via a cable. Without Wi-Fi, the smartphone and the ever-present internet connection we’ve come to rely on, wouldn’t have been possible, and it has become an indispensable part of our modern, connected world.

1998: Google

The launch of Google’s search engine in 1998 marked the beginning of efficient web search, transforming how people across the globe accessed and navigated online information . Today, there are many others to choose from – Bing, Yahoo!, Baidu – but Google remains the world’s most-used search engine.

2004: Social media

Over the past two decades, the rise of social media and social networking has dominated our connected lives. In 2004, MySpace became the first social media site to reach one million monthly active users. Since then, platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok have reshaped communication and social interaction , nurturing global connectivity and information sharing on an enormous scale, albeit not without controversy .

2007: The iPhone

More than a decade after the first smartphone had been introduced, the iPhone redefined mobile technology by combining a phone, music player, camera and internet communicator in one sleek device. It set new standards for smartphones and ultimately accelerated the explosion of smartphone usage we see across the planet today.

2009: Bitcoin

The foundations for modern digital payments were laid in the late 1950s with the introduction of the first credit and debit cards, but it was the invention of Bitcoin in 2009 that set the stage for a new era of secure digital transactions. The first decentralized cryptocurrency, Bitcoin introduced a new form of digital payment system that operates independently of traditional banking systems. Its underlying technology, blockchain, revolutionized the concept of digital transactions by providing a secure, transparent, and decentralized method for peer-to-peer payments. Bitcoin has not only influenced the development of other cryptocurrencies but has also sparked discussions about the future of money in the digital age.

2014: Virtual reality

2014 was a pivotal year in the development of virtual reality (VR) for commercial applications. Facebook acquired the Oculus VR company for $2 billion and kickstarted a drive for high-quality VR experiences to be made accessible to consumers. Samsung and Sony also announced VR products, and Google released the now discontinued Cardboard – a low-cost, do-it-yourself viewer for smartphones. The first batch of Oculus Rift headsets began shipping to consumers in 2016.

2015: Autonomous vehicles

Autonomous vehicles have gone from science fiction to science fact in the past two decades, and predictions suggest that almost two-thirds of registered passenger cars worldwide will feature partly-assisted driving and steering by 2025 . In 2015, the introduction of Tesla’s Autopilot brought autonomous features to consumer vehicles, contributing to the mainstream adoption of self-driving technology.

2019: Quantum computing

A significant moment in the history of quantum computing was achieved in October 2019 when Google’s Sycamore processor demonstrated “quantum supremacy” by solving a complex problem faster than the world’s most powerful supercomputers. Quantum technologies can be used in a variety of applications and offer transformative impacts across industries. The World Economic Forum’s Quantum Economy Blueprint provides a framework for value-led, democratic access to quantum resources to help ensure an equitable global distribution and avoid a quantum divide.

2020: The COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated digital transformation on an unprecedented scale . With almost every aspect of human life impacted by the spread of the virus – from communicating with loved ones to how and where we work – the rate of innovation and uptake of technology across the globe emphasized the importance of remote work, video conferencing, telemedicine and e-commerce in our daily lives.

In response to the uncertainties surrounding generative AI and the need for robust AI governance frameworks to ensure responsible and beneficial outcomes for all, the Forum’s Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR) has launched the AI Governance Alliance .

The Alliance will unite industry leaders, governments, academic institutions, and civil society organizations to champion responsible global design and release of transparent and inclusive AI systems.

2022: Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) technology has been around for some time and AI-powered consumer electronics, from smart home devices to personalized assistants, have become commonplace. However, the emergence of mainstream applications of generative AI has dominated the sector in recent years.

In 2022, OpenAI unveiled its chatbot, ChatGPT. Within a week, it had gained over one million users and become the fastest-growing consumer app in history . In the same year, DALL-E 2, a text-to-image generative AI tool, also launched.

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Microchips – their past, present and future

Victoria Masterson

March 27, 2024

‘Microfactories’ could be the future of manufacturing

Open Transaction Network: What is it and what does it mean for the incoming era?

Satwik Mishra, Neeraj Jain and Rajeesh Menon

March 22, 2024

Nvidia unveils new chip, and other technology stories to read

Sebastian Buckup

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Open Transaction Network: Could this shift in technology transform the global economy?

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How People Are Really Using GenAI

• Marc Zao-Sanders

The top 100 use cases as reported by users on Reddit, Quora, and other forums.

There are many use cases for generative AI, spanning a vast number of areas of domestic and work life. Looking through thousands of comments on sites such as Reddit and Quora, the author’s team found that the use of this technology is as wide-ranging as the problems we encounter in our lives. The 100 categories they identified can be divided into six top-level themes, which give an immediate sense of what generative AI is being used for: Technical Assistance & Troubleshooting (23%), Content Creation & Editing (22%), Personal & Professional Support (17%), Learning & Education (15%), Creativity & Recreation (13%), Research, Analysis & Decision Making (10%).

It’s been a little over a year since ChatGPT brought generative AI into the mainstream. In that time, we’ve ridden a wave of excitement about the current utility and future impact of large language models (LLMs). These tools already have hundreds of millions of weekly users, analysts are projecting a multi-trillion dollar contribution to the economy, and there’s now a growing array of credible competitors to OpenAI.

• Marc Zao-Sanders is CEO and co-founder of filtered.com , which develops algorithmic technology to make sense of corporate skills and learning content. He’s the author of Timeboxing – The Power of Doing One Thing at a Time . Find Marc on LinkedIn or at www.marczaosanders.com .

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