Information technology has helped improve productivity. Work that needed hours earlier could now be done in minutes, e.g. finding a specific document from the archives. And work that was simply impracticable earlier is not only practicable but also easy to do now, e.g. generating an elaborate report on customer buying behavior from different data sources. There is much more, such as the ability to connect with headquarters from anywhere in the world using mobile devices.
While business has benefited in ways as outlined above, ordinary consumers have also benefited from advances in information technology. They have the iPhone and iPad, Facebook and Twitter, Internet TV and can video-chat with someone at the other end of the globe at little cost.
Amidst all these great developments, it might seem negativistic to talk about the adverse impact on society that the same developments have created. Yet the negative impact has also been serious enough to deserve extremely serious attention and purposeful action.
Consider the danger our children are exposed to through the easy access child predators have to them. The predators can establish contact with the children and win their trust and confidence, quite unknown to us unless we are very cyber-vigilant.
Cyber-fraud is another phenomenon that developments in infotech have helped. There are robots that crawl the web harvesting e-mail addresses; e-mail servers that focus on sending out spam mail; and fraudsters who use these to send out announcements that you have won a million dollars in some prize draw (which you will never get even after sending money as “processing fee” to the fraudster).
Read more details at PewResearch.
