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The Networking Age - Impacts on Individuals
It is difficult to overstate the impact that the networking era is having - and is going to have - on individual society. Here we will take a look at the direct, short-term impacts of ebusiness and then we will look at the broader, indirect long-term impacts on individuals.
A. Direct, short-term impacts on individuals
Greater convenience - though ebusiness suits some buying situations better than others
Greater efficiency - lower search costs, helps to make educated decisions
Greater choice - related to greater efficiency, self service
Potential for lower prices - reduced costs can be passed on to the consumer
Various inequities (see this informative site) - access: the 'digital divide', generational gaps
Potential for crime - fraud, identity theft, cyber attack etc..
Privacy - big brother is watching!
B. Indirect, long-term impact on individuals
We are moving from a passive broadcasting society where individuals, like those in a faceless crowd, have little power - to a networked society where individuals can regain their voice.
Quote:
The press, radio, and television never got close; all they can do is spray the same information out from one source toward many destinations. Nor can the letter or the telephone approach the web's power, because even though those media enable one-on-one exchanges, they are slow and devoid of the computer's ability to display, search, automate, and mediate.
....[think] of the web as a medium that [will] codify, in its gigantic distributed information links, human knowledge and understanding
-Michael Dertouzous' forward to Tim-Berners Lee's 'Weaving the Web'.
In a nutshell we are seeing shifts in the nature of communication - and in the nature of production and distribution. The impacts are already being felt on areas such as media, journalism, politics, activism, and so on. Over time these shifts will have a dramatic affect on our entire social structure.
C. Other important impacts
The very definition and nature of education. What is literacy? How is education delivered?
The decentralization of society. What is the role of the nation-state in a globally connected society?
Our culture is changing! We live to rip, burn & mix.
Corporate and legal battles. Which ideas should be freely accessible?
Posted by Mark Hemphill on January 14, 2004 | Permalink
Comments
Internet is taking over and there is nothing that can be done to stop it. This networking has is getting big day after day. Because now you can do everything with your computer; listen to music, watch movies, and see television programs among other things. Thus making the computer almost powerful tool that a human been can own. today you will fin children prefer seating in front of there computer’s for hours instead of watching television.
Posted by: Patient Nkulu | Apr 7, 2006 10:33:42 AM
I would agree that many children today would rather sit infront of their gaming system, then go outside but this is partly the fault of the parents who have encouraged such ideas from childhood up. Isn't it easier and cheaper in this world to buy a gaming system for a child then to buy a dirtbike, or most other forms of entertainment. Cost seems to drive parents to put their kids in a position to get addicted to gaming, more so then 50 years ago when entertainment had to be thought up.
Posted by: Mark Corney | Apr 7, 2006 11:51:48 AM
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