The Impact of Technology in a Changing World
Chapter 1
Technology in a Global Society
• Accelerating change around the world
• Galvanizing people in new ways
Recent political and global issues are showing that technology is accelerating change around
the world and galvanizing groups of people in new ways.
Technology in a Global Society Impact of Tools of Modern Technology
• Social networking tools enable groups to connect and exchange ideas
• Crisis-mapping tools collect and map information
• Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram enable people to connect and exchange ideas. These
same tools are also bringing together people facing similar problems to fight for social
change.
• Crisis-mapping tools collect information and then maps it, instantly making the
information publicly available.
Technology in a Global Society Global Issues
• Health care
– Develop and deliver vaccines
– Increased vaccine production
– Computer programs help to design new helmets
• The Environment
– Data could alert scientists to new trends
• Health Care
• Researchers say there is a nearly 100 percent chance of a flu pandemic in the
next century. Technology could help us develop and deliver vaccines to save
lives.
• Computationally intense modeling software is helping researchers increase the
pace of vaccine production, saving lives.
• Computer programs have collected sensor data from impacts on the field, which
scientists have analyzed and used to create a new kind of helmet used by college
programs and the NFL to better distribute the impact of collisions.
• Environment
• Tagged with geographical information, data could alert scientists to new trends
in our environment.
• The Digital Divide
– Gap exists between levels of Internet access and availability of technical tools
– Prevents use of all minds to solve planet’s problems
There is a great gap in the levels of Internet access and the availability of technical tools in
different regions of the world. The term coined for this difference in ease of access to
technology is the digital divide. One danger of a digital divide is that it prevents us from using all
the minds on the planet to solve the planet’s problems.
Technology Connects Us with Others Technology Impacts How and Why We Connect and
Collaborate
• We collaborate for the benefit of others
– Web 2.0
▪ Allows easy content contribution
▪ Facilitates easy connections with others
– Cognitive Surplus
▪ Combination of leisure time and tools to be creative
• As more web applications appeared that allowed everyone to become a “creator” of the
web, a new kind of Internet came into being. Nicknamed Web 2.0, it had a set of new
features and functionality that allowed users to contribute content easily and to be
easily connected to each other. Now everyone could collaborate internationally at the
click of a mouse.
• Cognitive surplus is the combination of leisure time and the tools to be creative.
