Impact of Modern Digital Technologies - Essay Example

Running head: Impact of Modern Digital Technologies Impact of Modern Digital Technologies Insert Insert Insert 01January 2012 Impact of Modern Digital Technologies Introduction Technology has grown over the decades, with the world embracing the modern digital technology. The modern digital technology has significantly impacted on the organization structure as well as on the industries in which these technologies have been embraced. In addition, companies have adopted the modern digital technology to enhance their competitiveness and effectiveness in the marketplace. However, modern digital technology has influenced it adopters and users both negatively and positively, considering that, the corporate world adopts technological advancement to improve quality of production and more so, efficiency and effectiveness in both production and communication. Digital Printing Industry The modern digital technology has revolutionized the printing industry from the ancient application of faded images and texts to come up with complete printed product. The printing industry has advanced technologically from the use of ancient dot matrix printers that were characterized with holes in a row, which fed the ream of printing papers to the digital printing. The old dot matrix printers were repeatedly accompanied by the challenge of jamming of printing papers. The impact of the modern digital technology in the printing industry is clearly depicted by the strikingly clear texts and images with the flexibility of a wide range of colors where digital printing can be advantageously used to display a wide range of products, ranging from photographs to marketing materials. Small companies and business entities in the printing industry are able to match up to the big names in the printing industry through the application of digital printing to come with less costly and high quality products. Big companies dominated the production of quality and large quantities of printing products at less costly products as compared to small business entities that had to incur huge costs to produce printing products of higher quality, thanks to the modern digital technology that has enabled them to compete fairly in the printing industry. Digital printing has replaced the making of photocopies that were of low quality and were not that clear enough for detailed representations. Adoption of digital printing can therefore be associated with the significant quality of printing and representation of detailed graphics. It has replaced the less quality printing products from the ordinary printing devices and photocopy machines, where the result could never achieve more quality that original copy. The old printing machines could never achieve much quality as the digital technology, since any slight depreciation in quality of the original copy was always highlighted by the printer. Digital technologies have the advantage of using original soft copy material unlike the physical hard copy whose quality can be compromised by handling complications such as creases, dust, and oil. However, companies operating within the printing industry have not fully embraced the digital printing technology, considering the rather huge costs involved in installing the digital printing devices. Large printing companies have been reluctant in installing newer printing devices that can produce large quantities at high speed. More over, in relation to huge costs incurred in installing high-speed digital printing devices, some companies in the industry generally have a slow pace in innovation and adoption of new technologies other than the modern digital technology itself. Total digital printing represents two percent of the entire printing industry and it is projected to grow minimally in future, considering that there is limited modern digital printing equipment in the whole industry. Companies are reluctant to embrace digital printing technologies consideration the high capital costs incurred in installing digital printing equipment. Perhaps, the long period of time the printing industry is taking to fully adopt the modern digital technology is due to the fact that the printing industry has a long history in industry development such as the printing press alongside quality improvement of printing products. Newspaper production, particular daily newspaper production, cannot easily adopt digital printing, given the limited production cycle time required. The printing industry has come a long way, with the biggest longstanding development being the innovation of photocopy, which constituted the foundation of the printing industry (Joss 3). Development and advances of the modern day digital printing has largely benefited both entities and individuals focusing on production of high quality and affordable products, particularly in high definition marketing. The technology is further enhanced by the possibility of incorporating the technology with internet, where clients and employees can easily exchange electronic files. Internet incorporation further applies the options of editing and storing data online in a secure manner, while timely and convenient printing is initiated periodically when needed. Moreover, modern digital technology has significantly influenced competitiveness, efficiency, and effectiveness of the printing industry, considering that quality can never be compromised irrespective of the number of times the original soft copy is reproduced. Technological paradigm shift in general has facilitated effective production and marketing in most companies that have kept themselves up-to-date with the newest technologies. Many organizations have made their functions and competitiveness endeavors more efficient by adopting computers and other new technologies such as the modern digital technology. Moreover, computers have formed the basis of standard equipment required, though this has necessitated the employment of technology experts to maintain and monitor computer and network systems. In general, the organization structure has been changed considering that, technology experts such as Information Technology professionals are a necessity to organizations. More so, the organization structure has adopted developments such as teleconferencing and the use of new digital data management that has replaced paper work. The Structure of Organizations Structure of organizations is basically the manner in which managers delegate responsibility, power, and roles to the rest of the employees of the organization. As technology advancement and improvement is achieved and adopted by organizations, their structures are changed to fit with the global competitive, innovative, and new technology-focused organizational structures. Modern digital technology has seen organizations’ structures shift to networked structures, where geographically dispersed individuals, organizations, and groups work together as a team to achieve a common purpose. Here, geographically dispersed organization workforce can work together and collaborate via digital technologically interconnected networks. Moreover, organizational network structure enables functions of the organization to be managed irrespective of geographical location, as long as participants are self-driven by mutual interest and responsibility to the common purpose. The manager of an organization should be visionary, in order for the rest of the employees to feel the role and purpose for the organization from the managers vision as well as how he or she presents that vision. Employees work as a team through the organization structure to collaborate, interact, and figure out the best means of working together for a common goal. The open source software is a perfect example of organizational network structure organization, where software engineers from all over the world with mutual interest and responsibility contribute to the source willfully and for the common purpose of building professional credentials. Individuals use modern digital technology to access information that is vital for their progress and areas of specific interests. The modern digital technology has had a major impact to globalization of knowledge, where it provides an opportunity for all, as long as one is able to access network connection. Further, organizations have been revolutionized through the adoption of the modern digital technology, where they can gather and disseminate data from remote locations, let alone improving their products and services to meet the global standards. Managerial functions have been incorporated into the general labor force by the adoption of modern digital technology, where unskilled labor has been replaced by skilled labor, with organizational growth being specifically influenced by the vision being provided by the management. Organization structures that have embraced the modern digital technologies have large proportions of their clerical employees being replaced by managerial employees for the benefit of organization growth and competitiveness. Management of organizations relies on competence and their knowledge to perform functions, considering that decision-making hierarch has been greatly changed by digital revolution (Agboola, Yinusa, and Ologunde 3). Although adoption of modern digital technologies has had huge benefits to organizations and the society with regards to the accessibility of information, a number of impact concerns have emerged alongside the advancement. Improved capabilities of sharing of information and communication have excessively expanded capabilities of technologies that existed and new technologies that have brought about many opportunities that can be potentially exploited. Modern digital technologies have brought about mass surveillance that has generated human rights and civil issues, since reliability of digital information is complicated by its fast replication characteristics prior to verification. Feasibility of data is a major issue to the modern digital technologies, considering the fact that replication can be as fast as the whole globe within a limited amount of time. Digital information can be easily modified and deleted unlike the historical perspective of information that is characterized by physical existence in written document. Written documents have the advantage of easy verification and complication of modification and deletion, and thus they are of little risk to the organization. Variation of formats in which information can be stored can make data recovery a little bit complicated or even impossible, as information may be stored on media that is obsolete and facilities for reproducing them are not available. More so, identification of the makeup and interests of such data may not be possible if the information cannot be accessed, or even worse, cannot be read. Overall, verification and security of information is as important as accessibility and distribution of information, since false information can bring more harm to the organizations than its lack of the information. Digital technologies have however brought introduction of copyright and trademarks to cover up for risk factor where consumers have widespread ability to reproduce and distribute exact copies of original work. Although organizations should embrace digital technologies, there is need to put into consideration, the regulation, censorship, sharing of information and privacy at large, as controversial issues may arise. Focus on information and network security is paramount if the digital technology is to have a positive impact and not a negative impact on organizational progress and competitiveness (Technical University of Denmark 44). Conclusion Modern digital technology has been one of the major advancement factors in organizations and industries in general. There has been a rapid change and advancement in processing of information, as well as the manner in which managers and employees undertake their function and roles within an organization. More business entities and individuals are continuously installing electronics information processing systems such as computers and other digital gadgets for their day-to-day activities. This global adoption of digital technologies has had a huge impact upon managers and employees, as well as organizations and the industry in general, since variations in operational procedures, information flow from managers, working structure, and the distribution of labor have been transformed. Works Cited Agboola A.A., Yinusa D.O., and Ogunda A.O. Impact of digital Revolution on the structure of Nigerian Banks. University of Botswana. 2009. Web. 01 January 2012. http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/16705/1/MPRA_paper_16705.pdf Joss, Molly. Production Inkjet Printing Today and Tomorrow. Seybold Report: Analyzing Publishing Technologies, 9/13/2010, Vol. 10, Issue 17, p2-4. Web. 01 January 2012. http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=4&hid=9&sid=3cbbd97f-0bea-49c9-a5c4-748e2a828c32%40sessionmgr11 Technical University of Denmark. New Technologies and their Impacts on Regulation. 2007. Web. 01 January 2012. www.ictregulationtoolkit.org/en/Document.3731.pdf Read More