Information Technology and Social Issues

By Raul Bernardino

Introduction:

Today era of the globalization needs more communication infrastructure in order to be able to communicate from time to time without any limitation. For instance the cross border information, culture interaction, and people interaction at anytime and anywhere. The Information Communication and Technology have played a vital role on today communication.

In other hand the rapid of technology innovation and software development has contributed positive and negative impact in the communities.

The positive parts as follows:

a)     People easy to interact:  People can easily interact with the rest of world even it is from very remote area. As far as there is a tool of communication and electricity such as mobile connectivity, Vsat communication, solar panels, generator, and etc., they will able to establish a communication with their relatives, friends, and make new friends

b)    No difficult in distance and time: Today distance and time are not a big deal. We can easily interact via virtual media such through audio and video conferences, web streaming, email communication, browsing internet, and etc. without have to travel to purpose destination to get same information.

c)     Effective, efficient, reliable, and accuracy: With the technology innovation, human works becomes efficient and effective. And those works can be accessible at anytime with different entities or groups because it is stored digitally.

d)    Human health improvement: The innovation of the technology has helped lot medical person to identify diseases in the hospitals and clinics, such robot surgeries, x-rays, etc.

e)     More exploration on the space: The technology helps to identify objects on the space; it is including shipping the astronaut to the space for direct observation.

f)      More job creation: the technology innovation also bring new field of knowledge area and job creation.

The negative parts as follows:

a)     Too much dependency on the technology: Today human has been invading by technology. Without the technology people just cannot deliver the works or services. For instance the system that they use to use for daily operation had hardware defected or power fails. They can’t deliver a job until it fixed. In order to overcome the situation we have to do a backup plan for generator and manual system if the automatic fail.

b)    Unpredictable hardware and software failure: The prediction on the hardware and software failures are unexpected, therefore we have to have backup system, have proper design and have to meet the criteria or requirements, modeling and testing the applications.

c)     Privacy invasion: Today social networks have also invaded the privacies of the users. To overcome this privacy issue, the ethical and awareness as an important part of the sharing information.

d)    Culture shock: The indigenous and modern people will shock with the other culture; the way to overcome the situation is to adjust and adapt some positive values from the other cultures.

In conclusion: The creations of any systems have to be in-line with existing law in the country or in-line with ethical computing, social entities needs, market, and use available technology or architecture.

References:

Baruh, L. & Soysal, L. (2010), Public Intimacy and the New Face (Book) of

Surveillance—The Role of Social Media in Shaping Contemporary Dataveillance, [Online].  Available from:  http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?action=printpage;topic=171979.0 (Accessed: 7 October 2011).

West, A. (2009), NASA Study on Flight Software Complexity, [Online]. Available

from:  http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/418878main_FSWC_Final_Report.pdf (Accessed: 7 October 2011).

Gordon, A. (2009), Jobs of the future, Science and Technology enable employment

 

for 2020-2030, [Online]. Available

http://futuresavvy.net/2009/08/jobs-of-the-future-technology-enabled-employment-for-2020-2030/ (Accessed: 7 October 2011).

Adams, A.A. & McCrindle, R.J. (2008) Pandora’s box: Social and professional

issues of the information age. West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Hall, P. A.V. & Fernandez-Ramil, J. (2007) Managing the Software Enterprise:

Software Engineering and Information Systems in Context. London: Thomson Learning.