Impacts of Information Technology on Society in the new Century

Robert Lee Konsbruck

2012
Introduction
In the past few decades there has been a revolution in computing and communications
and the proliferation of Information Technology has become evident in every part of life.
Information Technology refers to anything related to computing technology that enables
people to store, manipulate, distribute or create information. Modern society is characterized
by a sudden growth and development in information technology (IT) resulting in large
dependence of the society, in a wider sense, on the individual knowledge and competence of a
person in the IT area. Therefore, today, being computer illiterate is likely to result in failure to
participate in modern society.
As a matter of fact, IT cannot exist without the Internet, which is one of the
indispensable tools in the Information Age. This global network of computers, largely based
nowadays on the platforms of wireless communication, provides ubiquitous capacity of
multimodal, interactive communication in chosen time, transcending space through the
Internet. Since the Internet was privatized, it diffused around the world at extraordinary speed.
To illustrate, in 1996 the first survey of Internet users counted about 40 million, but in 2013
they were over 2.5 billion, with China accounting for the largest number of Internet users.
Especially, with the explosion of wireless communication in the early twenty-first century,
subscribers of wireless devices in the world, in 2013, were close to 7 billion (in a planet of 7.7
billion human beings). Counting on uses of mobile phones in remote places such as villages
and taking into consideration the limited use of these devices among children under five years
of age, it is possible to say that humankind is now almost entirely connected. In other words,
since the 21st century is described as the "Information Age", IT has become a part of
everyday lives of people.
Although these advances in IT present many significant opportunities, no one can
deny the fact that they also pose major challenges affecting various aspects of human life.
This article will focus on the impacts of IT on commerce, education, private life and society
as a whole.

Business Models, Commerce and Market Structure

IT is affecting work by reducing the importance of distance. In many industries, the
geographic distribution of work is changing significantly. Some firms have found that they
overcome the tight local market for software engineers by sending projects to India or other
nations where the wages are much lower. Furthermore, such arrangements harvest the
advantage of time differences so that it becomes possible to carry out critical projects
continuously, throughout day and night. Moreover, firms outsource their manufacturing to
other nations and rely on telecommunications to keep marketing, research, development, and
distribution teams in close contact with the manufacturing groups. Thus, the use of technology
can enable a finer division of labour among countries.
IT has facilitated the evolution of trading system through enhanced mail order
retailing. Today, goods can be ordered quickly by using telephones or computer networks and
then dispatched by suppliers through integrated transport companies. These companies rely

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extensively on computers and communication technologies to control their operations.
Nonphysical goods, such as software, can be sent electronically, eliminating the entire
transport channel. Similarly, payments can be done in new ways.
Another favourable impact of IT on a firm is that there is serious cost reduction when
running a business via electronic commerce rather than in a traditional store. Although setting
up and maintaining an e-commerce web site might be expensive, it is certainly less expensive
to maintain such a storefront than a physical one because it is always open, can be accessed
by millions around the globe, and has few variable costs, so that it can scale up to meet the
demand. By maintaining ‘one store’ instead of several, duplicate inventory costs are
eliminated. In addition, e-commerce is very effective at reducing the costs of attracting new
customers, because online advertising is typically cheaper than for other media. Through e-
commerce, firms are able to move much of their customer support online so that customers
can access databases or manuals directly. This significantly cuts costs while generally
improving the quality of service.
Although electronic commerce causes the elimination of mediators who facilitate trade
between buyers and sellers, it creates greater dependency on services. Advertising, a secure
online payment system and delivery can be counted among these services that could increase
the costs of e-commerce transactions. For new e-commerce start-ups, the process of
establishing a brand name and generating consumer familiarity and trust can be extremely
expensive and represent a significant transaction cost. The openness, global reach, and lack of
physical clues that are inherent characteristics of e-commerce also make it vulnerable to fraud
and thus increase certain costs for e-commerce merchants as compared to traditional stores.
New techniques are being developed to protect the use of credit cards in e-commerce
transactions, but the need for greater security and user verification leads to increased costs.
This progress of global markets leads businesses to pay closer attention to the developments
in IT.

Workplace and Labour Market

Computers and communication technologies allow individuals to communicate with
one another in ways complementary to traditional face-to-face, telephonic, and written modes.
They even enable collaborative work involving distributed communities of actors who
seldom, if ever, meet physically. These technologies utilize communication infrastructures
that are both global and always up, thus enabling 24-hour activity and asynchronous as well
as synchronous interactions among individuals, groups, and organizations. Social interaction
in organizations is affected by the use of computers and communication technologies. Peer-to-
peer relations across department lines are enhanced through sharing of information and
coordination of activities. Moreover, the use of e-mail lowers the barriers to communications
across different status levels, resulting in more uninhibited communication between the
supervisors and subordinates.
By reducing the fixed cost of employment, widespread telecommuting makes it easier
for individuals to work on flexible schedules, to work part time, to share jobs, or to hold two
or more jobs simultaneously. Since changing employers would not necessarily require
changing one’s place of residence, telecommuting increases job mobility and accelerates
career growth. This increased flexibility reduces job stress and increases job satisfaction.

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Since job stress is a major factor governing health there may be additional benefits in the form
of reduced health costs and mortality rates.
E-commerce establishes new markets or extends market reach beyond traditional
borders. Enlarging the market has a positive effect on creating alternative jobs. Expenditure
for e-commerce-related intermediate goods and services create jobs both directly and
indirectly, because of the increasing volume of electronic transactions and their effect on
prices, costs and productivity. The convergence of media, telecommunication and computing
technologies establishes a new integrated supply chain for the production and delivery of
multimedia and information content. This eventually leads to the emergence of a wide range
of new occupations. Most of these new employment related to e-commerce evolves around
the content industries and communication infrastructure such as the Internet.
The disappearance of some traditional jobs is inevitable with the changes introduced
by technology. To clarify, human workforce is replaced with the ability of computers and
communications to perform routine tasks. The changes in the skill composition of
employment are underlined. It is apparent that workers with different skill levels have been
affected differently. E-commerce is certainly driving the demand for IT professionals but it
also requires IT expertise to be coupled with strong business application skills, thereby
generating demand for a flexible, multi-skilled work force.
There is a growing need for employees who can integrate their computing abilities into
their organizational skills. Many of the IT skill requirements needed for Internet support can
be met only by high-paid IT workers who have the high-end skills to manage the
organizational services needed for web page programming. Wide area networks, competitive
web sites, and complex network applications require much more expertise in IT. Since the
skills required for e-commerce are rare and in high demand, e-commerce accelerates the up
skilling trend in many countries by requiring high-skilled computer scientists to replace low-
skilled information clerks, cashiers and market salespersons.

Education
Advances in IT affect education by complementing rather than eliminating the
traditional classroom environment. The greatest potential for new IT lies in improving the
productivity of time spent outside the classroom. Making solutions to problem sets and
assigned reading materials available on the Internet offers a lot of convenience. The process
of simulation and modelling is effective in improving science education while the use of word
processing and communication software is influential over developing language skills. As e-
mail vastly simplifies communication among learners and instructors, students are much more
easily being motivated to engage in scientific group projects. Since IT makes a large
expansion in coverage and better delivery of instruction possible, texts can be combined with
audio/video so that learners can interact in real time online about what they have read.
Moreover, IT improvements in education coincide with a general demand for
retraining and up skilling people who cannot attend the traditional in-class courses due to their
work and family demands. Distance learning via the Internet is likely to complement existing
schools for children and university students.
On the other hand, the integration of technology into formal education is highly
debatable as it may have a negative impact on student motivation in the long run. There have

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been a lot of studies and assessments carried out to see whether or not and to what extent IT
usage facilitates motivation but the results of the studies are mixed. Much simplified, it would
appear that the motivation effect soon fades as using IT becomes the new normal.
Probably the most significant threat that IT poses on educational settings is that it
raises the questions concerning reliability of content and students’ unethical behaviour. The
fact that vast amount of incorrect and misleading information is available on the Internet
causes students to be wrongly informed, which in turn affects their intellectual and academic
development negatively. Easy access to information is likely to result in a tendency to be
involved in academic misconduct among some students, as well.

Private Life and Society

Some of the positive aspects of the use of IT are increased easy information access and
cheaper communications through online services and applications. Staying in touch and
accessing information, regardless of time and space, have never been so easy for the members
of the society. People now have the ability to have a face to face conversation with others
without being at the same place and time. For instance, making contacts, forming and
sustaining relationships with people around the world have become very easy with the help of
IT. The use of IT has also brought new opportunities for leisure and entertainment.
No one can deny that increasing representation of a wide variety of content in digital
form results in easier and cheaper duplication and distribution of information. In other words,
the fact that content can be distributed at a lower unit cost provides unlimited and easy access
to information. This fast and easy distribution of information poses a concern among creators
and distributors of content as theft of intellectual property has become a serious issue.
Therefore, in order to solve this problem, IT experts work on developing new tools for
property protection as well as new regulations.
Interestingly, the Internet threatens to have an even more isolating influence than has
been created by television. Humans have always been present in the non-computerized
systems. However, because of computerization, many people may feel a loss of identity today.
They may feel like “just another number” because computers reduce or eliminate the human
identity. Some people can become so addicted to the Web that they drop out of their regular
social activities, at school, work or home. As a result of their addiction, they may experience
serious societal and organizational problems. Some argue that the lack of social contacts
could be damaging to the social, moral, and cognitive development of school-age children
who spend long periods of time working alone on the computer.

Conclusion
The ongoing computing and communications revolution has numerous economic and
social impacts on modern society and requires serious social science investigation in order to
manage its risks and dangers. Such work would be valuable for both social policy and
technology design. Decisions have to be taken carefully. Many choices being made now will
be costly or difficult to modify in the future.

Adapted from: https://www.zurich.ibm.com/pdf/news/Konsbruck.pdf

All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a data base or
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