Technology Changing World

Major changes have occurred within the computer revolution; changes which encompass all aspects of its role. These are not just quantitative in nature, such as exponential increases in processing power and storage capacity, but are more fundamental, pointing not only to the function of computer technology, but its emerging diversity both in terms of its form and place in the world. Computers are now embedded within a huge range of materials and artefacts, and take on roles in almost all aspects of life. People and lifestyles are altering. These changes are sometimes spurred on by technology, but other times work in parallel or provoke technological innovation. There is a global scale of change which is taking place hand in hand with new technologies. This gives rise to tensions between individuals and governments, and between globalisation and cultural diversity. In this Part, we comment on change at all levels, and provide pointers to where we are going in future.

Changing Computers

There have been various computer-driven revolutions in the

past: the widespread introduction of the personal computer

(PC) was one, the invention of the graphical browser was

another, and the Internet yet another. There have also been

computer eras where one type of computer has dominated,

having straightforward implications for whether the

computers were shared or personal, and for whether they

were specialised commodities or not (see diagram below). But

the ways computers have altered our lives, all aspects of our

lives, is more comprehensive than, at first blush, recollections

of these technological revolutions or eras might suggest.

Computers affect how we undertake the most prosaic of

activities – from buying food to paying our bills – and they

do so in ways we might not have imagined when the first

personal computers arrived on our desks. They have also

created wholly new experiences, for example, allowing us

to inhabit virtual worlds with people from many different

parts of the globe. In between these extremes, from the

prosaic to the wholly new, computers have taken over

from older technologies in ways that looked merely like

substitution at first but which have ended up creating

radical change.

Photography, for example, has retained its familiarity despite

moving from being chemically-based to being digital. At the

point of creation, people still ‘point and shoot’ in much the

same way as they used to.

However, what one can do with images when they are digital is

quite different. Whereas, before, we may have only printed one

or two rolls of film, displaying the photos on the mantelpiece

or in an album, digital images are now reproduced many times

over, and are often broadcast around the world on websites.

The activities we undertake and the goals we have in mind

when we take photos and share them, then, are not at all the

same now as they were even five years ago.

It is not just in terms of user experiences, such as shopping,

games, and picture-taking that the world has changed.

Computers have altered our sense of the world at large,

letting us see images of far-away places, instantaneously and

ubiquitously. The world, now, seems so much smaller than it

was even a decade ago. In this section we begin to look at

many different aspects of how computing technologies have

changed and their impact on our lives.

Posted in: Computer