The Impact of the Digital Age

INTRODUCTION

The digital age refers to present time use of machines and computers to present information. The digital age had an overall impact on our societies and day to day activities. It has a lot of advantages and disadvantages i.e. it came with so many opportunities as well as costs.

We are living in the age in which professionals in digital technologies are trying to push their boundaries on becoming more advanced in technology even beyond our imagination. Digital world has given a new explanation to technology which is now used as a mode of expression, interactions, entertainments, learning etc.

Most of us knew that there will be a stage in life where digital devices will be the most important part of human beings. Let’s take ourselves as an example here; we use smart phones, ipads, laptops etc. Devices that we carry with us whenever we go to the toilet, but the most important question here is…can we survive without these devices in our possession or pockets? The answer will most definitely be “no” for most of us depend so much on these devices in our daily life or activities.

As we know that we are living in the digital world and these devices have changed completely the way human beings have lived before, due to the simplicity of using digital devices from texting, sending/receiving pictures/music/, making video calls and other hundreds of functions that digital devices have. These devices have even made us to be able to perform multiple tasks as soon as we hold them in our hands, we might read a message, listen to music, talking to someone, checking Facebook accounts etc. But how do we divide our attention from these tasks? We as humans may not perform multitasking accurately like how computers do, as we lack the ability to monitor multiple tasks at the same time but yet we can give individual attention to each task.

The essential thing to humans on these digital devices is their memory, which has extended extremely fast and efficiently. We use this memory part of the digital devices from storing very critical secrets, important business documents, pictures etc. Not only due to its faithfulness but also the ability to maintaining the stored information for a very long time as long as we keep them in our machines and nobody can access them without our permission. Professionals in memory engineering have managed to make our lives easier by creating and improving the digital memory that we use. Instead of saving information in our heads/papers we just save them in our digital devices and carry the saved information with us wherever we go to and we do not even worry about them once they are stored.

THE IMPACT OF DIGITAL AGE ON THE SOCIAL, ECONOMIC, AND POLITICAL LIFE OF SOCIETIES TODAY.

SOCIALLY

Digital age has impacted the social life of societies hugely. In the past, most of our social interactions were private and undocumented. That is increasingly not the case with the advent of digital age. When we interact with each other through the internet, we leave digital records behind. Companies like Facebook and Twitter have huge databases full of all kinds of information about our social behaviours. Let’s think of the days where there were no online messengers, no emails, and no cell phones. Indeed cellular technology made it possible for us to communicate over wireless media. Web communication facilities have worked wonders in speeding long-distance communication. Today we can reach and keep in touch with our family and friends…even our enemies, with the help of social networks like bbm, facebook, twitter, skype etc.On the other hand, they have deprived mankind of the warmth of personal contact. Emails replaced handwritten letters and communication lost its personal touch. With the means of communication so easily accessible, that magic in waiting to reach someone and the excitement that followed has vanished. Also, the internet has bred many unethical practises, like hacking, spamming etc. Internet crime is on the rise. The internet being an open platform lacks regulation. There is no regulation on the content displayed on websites. Internet gambling has become an addiction for so many, access to pornographic sights and inappropriate information is made accessible to children. Overexposure to the internet has taken its toll. Children are spending all their time playing online and less or almost no time on the ground. Youngsters are spending most of their time social networking, missing on the joys of real social life.

ECONOMICALLY

Economically, the digital age has also helped a whole lot. Industrial revolution is one of the impacts of digital age in the economic life of societies today because the use of new technologies and inventions of machines helps towards increasing production of goods and services and also delivering those goods to the appropriate place when needed. Also, without the world wide web(www) for example, globalization and outsourcing would not be nearly as feasible as they are today. The digital revolution radically changed the way individuals and companies interact. Small regional companies were suddenly given access to much larger markets. Concepts such as on-demand services, manufacturing and rapidly dropping technology costs, made possible innovations in all aspects of industry and everyday life.

POLITICALLY

Going deep into the impact of digital age on the political life of the society, another considerable impact to look on is during the election period today, people do come out of their houses to vote for the beloved candidate, individuals were given the right to vote for whom they wish to be their leader and at any period. A well educated individual with the necessary requirement that will qualify him to stand as a candidate during an election can do so.

Today, you can now write an article, letter or even through computers that are all over which will enable you to go online, search for one of your leaders and have a mutual conversation with him/her about the political problems that rises all the time, the issue of corruption among the leaders, misuse of public funds etc and the best way to tackle all these problems. People could get things that were previously not available to common people, and the standard of living could go up.

Conclusion

We integrate through digital age, nature and quality of interactions. We have with everything around us given full control to utilize the digital world as human begins. We share a lot of information with one another via digital world (pictures, own and family histories, feelings etc) and yet we have managed to accept the uniqueness of one another in the digital world. We even share invitations for private parties, birthdays and other events through facebook instead of calling friends or sending invitation cards, and people whom we invite respond to those invitations saying if they can come to the invited event or not and even sending their best wishes.

Well maybe we should ask ourselves are we safe in this digital surrounding (social media etc), do we have enough knowledge about the dangers of digital age? What about our own privacy and the information we share? We might be aware that sharing information via social media might even ruin someone’s carrier, relationship or even our social status. Being aware of the dangers of the digital world and learning about our own privacy will make us take control of the information we share about ourselves since technology has been and will always play a key role in our society.

The impact of technology on our society is deep. It is both positive and negative. Technology has largely influenced every aspect of living. It has made life easy, but so easy that it may lose its charm on day. One can cherish an accomplishment only if it comes after effort. But everything has become so easily available due to technology that it has lost its value. There is a certain kind of enjoyment in achieving things after striving for them. But with everything a few clicks away, there is no striving, there’s only striking. With the developments in technology, we may be able to enjoy all the pricey luxuries in life but at the cost of losing its priceless joys.