The Impact Of Digital Technology Media Essay

The Impact Of digital Technology Media EssayThe utilise of digital devices much(prenominal) as computers, TV, wandering ph hotshots and video game has increased substanti wholey over the past a couple of(prenominal) days globally with ein truth corner of the globe having nearly air of profit lendable. Technology has sustained human beingity get things done faster and on that point is no doubt or shortage of recognition of these increased benefits to humanity.The roughly visible effect of globalization is the reach of media of all types. A lean of labels deliver been given to describe this impact which includes media society and the nurture society. arguably information and communication mediated by network and broadcast systems of all types keep back repair up much significant than the workplace that specify the industrial Age (Holmes, 2007).How far twain digital media and social media have become integ ranged in the lives of just about of the global nation i s shown here as at 31st March 2011, with the turf oution of some third macrocosm countries such as Liberia and Ethiopia with only a .5% cyberspace penetration rate and St Helena with only 900 usancers up from zero in 2000. Africa has the lowest lot of meshwork users globally with 11.5% penetration and makes up 5.7% of network users globally. With a population of 1.03 billion, the total Internet users atomic number 18 118.8 million including 30.6 million Facebook users.At the early(a) end of the scale Asia has the largest percentage of profits user at 44% of all users globally from its population of 3.8 billion, a penetration of 24%. chin awake(predicate) is by far the highest population of users at 485 million and India at ascorbic acid million. However China has only 504,000 Facebook users of its 485 million populations connected to the internet magic spell Indonesia has 38.8 million Facebook users of its 39.6 million internet users. (Minwatts Marketing Group).In tot al the man population estimate at one time at 6.93 billion with 2.11 billion Internet users and 710.7 million Facebook users as at 28th September 2011(Minwatts Marketing Group, 2011).The brilliance of the Internet in todays society is of such magnitude that Sociologists atomic number 18 craft it a post-broadcast, second media age rising with it questions of democracy, free speech and the everyday sphere (Holmes, 2007).A current debate arising from the constantly fast evolving technologies exists betwixt those who believe technologies serve human needs and those who believe technology shapes human evolution. These beliefs arise from a trail of evolving technologies of which will end when technologies can arrive at more technologies, making humans disposable. Both sides of the debate agree on one circumstanceor historical twist points are marked by technological advances such as labor, trade, transport, medicine and weapons (Carr, 2010).Further debates on whether the incre ase use of digital media are good or bad for current generations have risen a persistentside the m any bring ups by parents, psychologists, psychiatrists, government institutions and wellness related professionals of the length of time young quite a little spend online victimisation either social network billets, video and computer games and cellphones.This area of concern has risen to the level of seriousness that a near formalized diagnostic mental health classification labeled Internet Addiction indisposition (IAD) globally by psychologists and psychiatrists is underway. These concerns however are further defined to ebullient Internet use of which excessive is still to be further defined while the issue of IAD is so far being identified by mental health professionals when perceived as an interference with early(a) areas of a persons career. A similar case is that of video and computer games where excessive use can be detrimental rather than beneficial to children, alon gside the occurrence that unequivocal evidence shows violent video games are highly minus in their excises. Later in the chapter this research is holded.Much controversy surrounds the fact that Internet use provides umpteen benefits for everyone, particularly the ability to introduction information of which was further extended when computers were supplied by governments to third world countries to help germinate their heap. bit this appeared to be of some benefit educationally, on the other run evidence for long term internet use on faculty member performance, even though scarce, appears more negative than positive, does not provide any strong evidence of benefits to people and in fact high internet use shows some impairment of performance over a long term.Moreover, the use of gaming is highly crowdd by businesses and government agencies interested in economic benefits particularly as it is one of the highest income producers for the US economy currently. These organiza tions promote the benefits of the games, while many others believe it is harmful as seen in pedantic research. It is useful to note at this stage that TV even though not a focus of this chapter has not yet been displaced by the Internet and other new-fashioned technologies and remains the highest used digital technology globally. 80% of families have cable or satellite TV and children watch at least three hours per day and four on the weekends. No government issue how many new technologies break through, TV keeps its powerful presence and has become a backdrop to family life and it can now be consumed on computers, mobiles and take hold devices (Gutnick, 2010).What are the effects of digital technology to us?Anecdotal reports have highlighted the sometimes dramatic effects both good and bad that digital media, the internet, social net work and online recreation appear to be having on the way our minds work, both physiologically and psychologically Carr, 2010, Green sports stadi um, 2010 Wolfe, 2010 Price, 2011 Lanier, 2010) and there are a growing pay run into of scientific studies that suggest changing patterns of brain function which have been attri only whened to the use of digital media. On the positive side these include improved mingled reasoning and problem solving (Small et al., 2009). On the negative side they hide difficulty in concentrating on books or long articles, becoming more easily distracted, impulsiveness, cerebration that has a staccato quality and lack of density in general (OConaille and Frohlick, 1995).Then there are reports, particularly those that research heavy web usage, of addiction to second life and on-line games (Chak and Leung, 2004). live on services, such as On-line Gamers Anonymous, have been set up to help people addicted to online activities. Meanwhile, experts from a range of disciplines, including neuroscience, education and technology, are very much in stark disagreement ab proscribed the long term benefits a nd cost of digital technologies to our mental functioning. Disagreements arise, not only between, but too within, disciplines. For instance, the neuroscientist Johan Lehrer dismisses concerns that digital technologies deplete our brains and regards loss of some mental functioning as cognitive trade-off (inside-the-brain.com/tag/johan-lehrer).He describes how dramatic decreases in operative memory, self-control and optical attention result from simply walking down a urban center street and points out that while this activity may temporarily affect attention and memory,It is also an essential part of everyday life. Equally, he refutes claims that internet usage develops sh earmark thinking (Carr, 2010b). For Lehrer, the benefits of modern technology far outbalance the costs. By contrast, Professor Susan Greenfield, an eminent neuroscientist, former Director of the Royal creative activity and author of several books on brain function, believes that repeated exposure to harbour ba sed technologies may re-wire the brain. In Greenfields view this issue is almost as important as climate transfigure (Greenfield, 2010). She believes that excessive use of digital media may even threaten the quality of our existence if, for instance, social net work sites trim attention spans, encourage instant gratification and make young people more self-centred and lacking inpeople-skills (Greenfield, 2003). Yet other neuroscientists, such as the team at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Development in Los Angeles who conducted some of the first studies on the effect of the digital technologies on the brain, claim that internet usage can help improve some brain functions such as complex reasoning and decision making but fragment others, such as people skills, including empathy (Small and Vorgan, 2008).Of course the behavioural changes caused by technologies are not restricted to our brains We have all have direct experiences of the ways in which technologies have changed our lives both at work and home as indeed have our research participants. Digital media have been credited with change communications, efficiency, availability, flexibility, speed and so on. On the other hand, studies show senior managers working harder and having chronic hours than in the past. They are lots expected to be available at all times they have less status, fewer perks and striving is common (Price, 2011). According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (October 2011), breed is now the main reason for long termabsence fromwork and it is rising.As Ian Price says in his magnificent Digital technologies 335 book The Activity Illusion (2011), for a number of reasons, we fortune becoming enslaved by a series of work innovations that, paradoxically, were introduced in an bowel movement to ease life in the office (2011, p. 26). We are all aware of our own or our friends changes in behaviour the inability to turn off our mobiles, to go 24 h wit hout checking e-mail, to ignore Facebook, resisting the urge to check e-mails in meetings, and so on. Being connected is the norm but it can be a two-edged s intelligence information.Some of our expectations of technology have been con pitched. In the 1970s and 1980s, when computers announce a new age of efficiency and the future was envisaged as theme-free, hypertext was foretell as liberation. Introducing hyperlinks into text displayed on screen would, it was claimed, facilitate critical thinking by enabling students to compare diverse viewpoints. It would free up the mind. It has not worked out like this. Carr (2011) cites a number of studies that contradict these expectations. Readers of hypertext oft clicked every which way through with(predicate) pages rather than show uping them carefully, they were unable to remember what they had or had not read. One study compared two groups of people in their ability to reception a series of questions one group searched online, the other searched through piece of medical specialty records. The latter group outperformed the former. Research continues to show that people who read bi running(a) text comprehend more, remember more and learn more than those who read textcontaining links.The effect of digital technology has been determined for several causes that technology will affect human being. It is Cultural Forms, Visual Arts, Literature, Music, and Interactive multimedia.Cultural FormsArtists working in visual art, literature, and music have begun to mix digital technology into their creations. In each case, they have either appropriated alive technology or created new technology to sheath their particular needs. The result has been new ethnic forms that have called into question the nature of the fields within which they are created, as well as the nature of the artists themselves and the roles and responsibilities of their audience.Visual ArtIn the field of visual art, new forms have included both two- and threedimensional works produced on computer, collaborative online art, and innovation Wide Web or compact disc read-only memory-based galleries. Many artists have chosen to use the computer as merely some other shit in their creative toolbox these artists a lot combine traditional and digital techniques in their work, such as scanning a traditionally created water-colour and then manipulating it digitally. Many of these works are retained digitally, but often they are printed to paper (or another support, such as canvas or vinyl) and displayed like traditional artwork. Other artists maintain a similar approach, but produce threedimensional instead of two-dimensional images, and these must necessarily remain digital. third-dimensional images are technically interactive in that viewers can prove the image to see it from different angles or zoom in and out on details, but viewers often cannot make any enduring changes to the image. Artists working in two- and three-dim ensional digital art have found online collaborationism to be a useful tool. An artist can upload the root news program of a piece to a common server (often the World Wide Web is used), and then other artists are able to access the piece and add to it (Lovejoy 223). While artistic collaboration has certainly existed since the beginning of art itself, online collaboration gives artists physically located vast distances from one another the ability to work together as if they were in the same studio. And in a sense, they are its simply that the studio they are occupying is virtual, rather than physical. This has provided opportunities for collaboration that might never have occurred due to physical logistics. Both digital and traditional art can now be found in virtual galleries on the World Wide Web and in CD-ROM format.LiteratureIn literature, the involvement of digital technology has produced the cultural forms of word touch and hypertext. Word processing is, quite literally, the processing of delivery, in that the user inputs his or her choice of letters in mark to form words and sentences. Today, users have a keen deal of control over the processing of their words they can change fonts, type size, style, and even the layout of the page if they are so inclined. These changes can be cursorily applied to the entire document and modified at will. Also, entire blocks of text can be rearranged to suit the authors purpose. Word processing has changed the way literature is written. Fragments of ideas can be quickly input as the author thinks of them, and then later expanded and travel around with a few mouse clicks. An author no longer needs to interrupt his or her train of thought in order to deal with the structure or mechanics of the writing changes can ever so easily be made later. However, while digital technology does allow the author to compose his or her thoughts in a non-linear manner, the final document, whether printed to paper or retained in di gital form, almost always assumes the linear format of traditional written or printed text. There is a clear beginning and end, and the document is designed to be read linearly. Hypertext, unlike word processing, is a completely non-linear format. It requires the commentator to navigate through linked blocks of text, creating a unique path that may or may not be retraced during subsequent experiences with the work. Often the reader is also able to add his or her own links to the existing hypertext structure. Other readers can then incorporate those links into their own paths if they so choose. The World Wide Web, in itself an important piece of digital technology, is essentially a gigantic hypertext. In its sign incarnation, the Web was solely text-based.The traditional novels digital counterpart is hypertext fiction. Authors such as Stuart Moulthrop, creator of Victory Garden (1991), have used hypertext to produce fictitious works that allow readers to choose their own path thr ough the story, starting at any of a number of entrance points, and encountering a different story line each time they experience the work. Readers find themselves empowered in a way never before possible. In hypertext there is no primary axis, no clear road in or out, no coordinates that have priority over any other coordinates except as the reader determines. Thus lacking an authority or guide, the reader is thrust back onto his or her self (Gaggi 103). By empowering their readers in such a manner, these authors have expanded the possibilities for literary creation.MusicMusicians have been working with digital technology since its inception, and have found the computer to be a useful tool for everything from generating random conk outs to controlling a sophisticated digital symphony. In recent years, a new tuneful genre, called techno (or more broadly, electronica), has emerged. Essentially, techno music can be defined as music that consists of mostly digitally created and sam pled sounds and beats, or grooves, arranged in a repetitive, rhythmic manner and unremarkably played at clubs and parties for the purpose of dancing. While there are infinite subgenres in the broad category of techno (drum n bass, jungle, ambient, and trance, to name only a few), they all share one common element the involvement of digital technology in their production (hence the name techno). Techno music is created by commingle together clips of sound, cognise as samples. These sound clips can be culled from existing sources, such as a music CD, or they can be created from scratch using specialise computer software. Also, mixing can be done in the studio or live at an event such as a rave. Artists who mix in the studio often burn their creations to CD for distribution purposes, but many are turning to the popular MP3 format, which allows music to be compressed into a small shoot down with virtually no loss of quality. The artist can then select these points via the Intern et and reach a much larger audience.Mixing sound samples together is not a new technique exclusive to digital technology hip-hop artists have been manually mixing beats for years using only two turntables and a mixing board. In fact, many techno DJs today still rely exclusively on analog equipment. While vinyl, for the average person, has all but disappeared in deference to the CD, in the specialized world of the DJ one finds entire stores devoted exclusively to vinyl, and most techno artists (as well as a surprising number of artists from other musical genres) release their albums in both CD and vinyl format. Despite the ubiquity of analog equipment in DJ culture, most techno artists who produce their music in the studio do use digital technology at some point. Herein lies the essential difference between a technoInteractive MultimediaIn addition to affecting the cultural fields of visual art, literature, and music, digital technology has also produced a hybrid cultural form known as digital multimedia. While multimedia did exist before the sexual climax of digital technology, digital multimedia is quite different from its predecessor. One study difference is that most digital multimedia works exploit the interactive brass of digital technology. Viewers are able to travel through virtual space and interact with the digital forms they encounter, thereby creating new forms and pathways that they and other viewers can experience. Interactive digital multimedia is most often encountered in CD-ROM format, since the bandwidth issues of the Internet in its current state make Web-based interactive multimedia impractical for all but the most high-end user. However, new technologies are currently being developed in both file compression (i.e. Flash for animations and MPEG for streaming video) and bandwidth delivery (i.e. cable modems and DSL) that promise to greatly improve the capabilities of the Internet and make Web-based interactive digital multimedia old-hat in the near future. It is within interactive digital multimedia that one finds the traditional roles of artist and audience most in question. One is no longer strictly a visual artist, writer, or musician, but rather a critical cultivator, first searching to comprehend the possible meanings that emerge from this accumulation of nanocircuitry and indeterminate layers of code, then trying to reconstitute those emergent phenomena in such a way that they can become part of an evolving cultural discourse (Shaw 165). Even the genre-neutral terms producer and creator are troublesome, since the aspect of interactivity in digital multimedia makes the audience as important an bewitch on the development of the work as the so-called creator. While these issues do occur in other digital cultural forms as well, the very nature of interactive digital multimedia provides the most fertile milieu for the exploration of these issues by both artist and audience.In conclusion Digital technology and it s increasing prevalence have impacted human life radically in the last few decades. From the advent of the digital society, spawned by the invention of the computer and ENIAC, one of the first digital computers in 1946, to the present day, digital technology and computing have worked their way into more areas of life, from communications to finance to social interaction. You can see the impact daily in homes, schools and offices. The impact of computer technology on our lives makes much sector change in word of work. Computer technology is such a large-scale factor in everyones lives today. In my own life I cannot communicate my house without my mobile phone I feel secure when I have my mobile phone with me so I can be foregathered or if i was ever to be in trouble I could ring my family. Also social networking is another great form of communication. people who live in different countries and want or need to contact with friends or people from across the world, they can just set up a personal profile on a social networking site and work from there doing this safely and securely for them. Computer technology is also in schools for basic training for computers themselves as people can now do online courses to further their education, fitting this into their own schedules. Skype is also a great invention as I have family who live abroad so I and my family can always talk to them and see their faces its great as you wouldnt see them for months at a time.