Digitalization and Mechanization Influence on the Living World - Coursework Example

Digitalization and Technization Influence on the Living World

Introduction

Within the last few decades, people's lives have significantly been changed with the level of digitalization that has made it barely impossible for one to imagine not only how the future would be but also how daily life would be without the current technology of gadgets. A large proportion of individuals are currently working and socializing online via computers. Presently, research shows that after every fifteen minutes, on average, an individual would probably check his or her phone or computer. With such changes in people’s lifestyle, there have occurred a number of issues that the digitalization and technization have impacted on people. Digitalization's social aspects have become the greatest concern more than the effect of the process of the revitalization of business models and operations.

Firstly, online activities have impacted on individuals' truth and trust, such as via social media communications. The wellbeing of people stands to have been effected both emotionally and physically. However, the process has also led to positive and exceptional benefits in different fields of life that affect society as a whole, ranging from healthcare benefits, social relationships at work environments, and society's education (Hülür and Birthe, p.554). This prompts the question: To what extent has the adopted levels of digitalization and technization affected human beings, and their environment? In response, the paper herein explores to explain how big is the role that digitalization plays and how it affects human beings. The paper also focuses on providing the societal response to the negative impacts of digitalization and technization.

The Difference Between Digitalization and Technization

In many pieces of literature, the use and definition of digitalization have been fraught with ambiguity and confusion. According to Gobble (pp.56-59), digitalization has no single and precise definition like that embraced by the concept of digitization. While the latter would singly relate to taking analog information and encoding it into zeros and ones for computer storage and transmission (analog-digital process), the former relates more to the social life, i.e., how individuals in a society interact and associate as a factor of the current technology. Digitalization embraces discussions on how individuals’ interactions are moving away from analog technologies such as the snail mails to the digital technology media such as social media with respect to how leisure and work domains become digitalized. It remains vague to define digitalization with respect to business models and operations; as such, would mean digitization, a term that though stand closely associated to digitalization, they are distinctive per se.

On the other hand, technization stands to refer to a process that relates to technological civilization through machines or the techniques that develop or produce these machines. The underlying concept under technization is that it is rooted in the human language’s capacity (Reis, 2018). It is the constant human learning and imagining of the ever-new goals and means to achieve, that dictate the whole concept of technization. With respect to social life, technization corresponds to techniques being embedded in a broader array of societal, cultural beliefs and practices that are passed from generation to generation. For instance, what ancestors used and related with, which may not be inherently related to science, may have only evolved through generations, resulting in society's technicization. Such would automatically mean that technization is the process in which techniques have come to be invented or refined for effectiveness and efficiency. Conferring to Vairinhos et al. (pp.7-23), the application of science to technique transformation transforms how people understand themselves and dictate the organization of societies and their tasks. It follows that understanding technization calls for understanding the society as not being an empirical one, but for awareness of society as realm-separate nature, but under the domain of human imagination and work.

As differentiated from digitalization, technization corresponds to the transformation of a human lifestyle expressed in four ways; the managerial society, human social ethics, the existential self, and the public policy (Gobble (pp.56-59). According to Gobble (2018), the order of a society is never fixed, and given the order of nature, people must reorganize structures of the society to make their interactions and work possible as well as engage in social ethics in attempts that define the norm of technization transformation. All these will call for choices of inventions. This follows that presently, the stories of 'natural order' as had been believed in earlier years have been demythologized and replaced with a technological understanding of the society, which constitutes technization transformation.

However, there lies a narrow difference between the two concepts (digitalization and technization) when one focuses on several aspects, such as ethics. As Brennen (pp.1-11) provides, both technization and digitalization threaten the human ability to think and act ethically. He goes ahead to exclaim that the technicization of ethics evidences the seriousness of this problem. This is because, in a technical civilization, individuals with technical expertise command respect and are as well financially rewarded. These ethical concerns have, in their entirety up surged due to digitalization. The problem now calls for techno bureaucratic experts to guide on this socially emerged issue (ethics). It is the society that dictates mechanization. For instance, managerial societies tend to be dominated by the bureaucracies of scientific-technical experts who identify and promote efficient approaches to meet human-technical needs (Brennen, 2016).

How Digitalization and Technization Affect and Influence the Living Environment

The transformation associated with digitalization and technization affects people and their 'natural' environment. Social and ethical issues are the ones that arise first whenever digitalization is mentioned. Typically, humans are influenced by the dominant technologies that have emerged; persuasive technology, Internet of Things, biometrics, robotics, the digital platforms such as social media platforms as well as virtual and augmented reality. These digital transformations effects involve humans in six aspects, privacy, human dignity, autonomy, the balance of power, and justice (Lindgren, 2017). This, therefore, explains the current pressure that human experience regarding these public values. It follows that the concepts of digitalization and technization are ubiquitous in society. When the two concepts are linked with other ICT technologies, including biotechnology, nanotechnology, and neurotechnology, there results in a convergence that penetrates most if not all aspects of human lives. Technology nestling in people could be represented through brain implants, interactions such as through Facebook, through emotional and physical recognition techniques of big data, and also through constant learning of behavior as exhibited through software for intelligent behaviors of mimicking as well as robotic mimicking, among others. This is what Lindgren (2017) refers to as an intimate technological revolution.

In general, society's digitalization pushes the boundaries for human abilities to provide all sorts of opportunities. However, it also challenges the moral boundaries that a society holds. For instance, IOT and robotics primarily penetrate the material world, such as through public spaces, production processes, and home environments. Through IOT, objects and humans are monitored as well as exchange information. Imagine a situation where an alarm clock wakes up an individual and switches on the machine for making fresh coffee or having a fridge that reminds the expiry dates of its contents. These explain the kind of interaction that humans and objects are exposed to as a result of digitalization. Digitalization and technization through IOT technologies allow the interaction of people and give the individuals additional real-time information about the environment (augmented-reality glasses). With such, is when specific questions relating to privacy and other ethical dilemmas are asked (Vairinhos pp 1-23).

The digitalization process has effected the human biological world, as well. This is through biometrics and persuasive technology, having digitalized human behavior, the human body, as well as the brain. The identification of people uniquely by using biometrics such as fingerprint, face, and voice identification constitute an influence in human life that technology has significantly dictated. For example, a person passing through electronic gates to places like airports would have to be biometrically scanned and verified. Without the verification no pass through. Such is an influence that the process has infringed on the people's way of life. In the case of persuasive technology influencing people's behavior, it follows after recognition and analysis of systems. As explained by Lindgren (2017), persuasive technology that influences people's behavior aims to encourage individuals to change their behavior. For the change achievement, the right motivation has to be stimulated to induce the behavior. For instance, a driver has to be persuaded or stimulated to fix the seat belts. In such being a typical requirement in the normal life of people using motor vehicles, security serves as motivation.

The intensifying use of ICT means that digitalization affects people’s interaction, through digital platforms and augmented & virtual reality. As such, digitalization penetrates the socio-cultural world that encompasses people's decision to listen to music, an individual's shopping preferences and activities, transactions by people, the interaction of friends, among other social activities and endeavors of people are affected as they are now mostly performed online (Lindgren, 2017). Overall, people's communication activities are now influenced by the digitalization process on course. Following all these, various recurring themes are elicited; privacy. Privacy has become an ethical concern following the very technically transformative society that is currently exhibited. For instance, when one reads the 46-page Samsung TV privacy policy, the individual will realize that the techno giant records and registers when, where, and what time the TV is turned on. The TV also is featured with a microphone for recognition of speech as well as a camera for face recognition.

Consequently, the company's TV manual warns the user to watch what he or she might say at the TV's vicinity. But given the ‘consent fatigue’ that people have while reading permissions, terms, and conditions of techno-devises, it raises the question of privacy given such unwittingly provided privacy data. This creates worry or fuss, as people may be tempted to ask, where the responsibility lies in such digitalization occurrences. It, therefore, comes to happen that the data collected with such technological devices through IOT and others as collected via televisions, thermostats, washing, machines, refrigerators, smartwatches, and smart toothbrushes remain the property of the manufacturer and not the user. Digitalization affects society in the way that the home that is supposed to be a private domain turns to become a transparent and public home as monitored by devices that are currently in use. This is why (Hülür and Birther, p.554) argue that there is a need for protection of people against digital spying as people's free lifestyles have failed its purpose. People currently have no place to permanently exercise privacy right.

Another digitalization effect on people revolves around the entire concept of autonomy. Technology has led to the concept of paternalism, i.e., people may now profess to know others better than how those people know themselves. This has influenced the way people interact with the environment. For example, a smart fridge being capable of varying the order for the owner's favorite cheese to cheese with low fat, having been triggered by the biometric sensors that would have detected the cholesterol levels of the user being too high. Such kind of technological integration provokes ethical concerns and social issues such that the environment (objects-fridge for this case) can enforce certain behaviors to an individual endangering personal autonomy. This brings the aspect of a manipulative environment as a result of digitalization and technization processes in the contemporary world.

Ideally, digitalization through persuasive technologies, IOT, big data, augmented reality, and big data have significantly played a part in designing a new pattern of the desired behavior, thus proving to be compelling that could, therefore, to some extent be regarded by many as undesirable. Despite these undesirable likelihoods from digitalization, Mishra (2019) argues that compelling technologies could be utilized positively or usefully if an individual behavior can lead to collective risks. Furthering on that, he posits that it’s the people who what it this way, given that majority would like such connectivity with objects. For example, people decide by themselves whether to switch on or off most of these technological programs such as peeping of cars during parallel parking when too close to another. Mishra (2019) asserts that this could also be seen with the majority of people advocating for speed limiters in cars, which on the other hand do restrict freedom of people to drive at a maximum of their speed. In response, this corresponds to the need for a reduction of collective risks to other road users.

Summarily, the concept of digitalization's influence on the people and environment corresponds to the limitation of various aspects such as privacy and autonomy of the people. However, other aspects such as security as associated with cybercrimes and balance of power where manufacturers of most of these software consoles are much dependent on the software support, i.e., they may easily render them useless affecting the users who bought them. Others include effect to undermine human dignity following the failure of the technology such as robotics to be applied within certain framework conditions despite them proving useful in supporting human existence through healthcare, education, entertainment, and others. This risk to humanity could be imagined with a situation where robots are programmed to act as caregivers. Perhaps that would call for emotional intelligence, something that may still be risky to human dignity. Therefore, it stands vital that societal and ethical issues do emerge with the digitalization in place influencing people and their environment.

Impacts of Digitalization and Technization

Positive Impacts

The development of digital life brings both positive and negative impacts on people. Positively, researchers from the Pew Research Center agree that the internet and the whole process of digitalization is one of the biggest booms to humankind (Parviainen, pp.63-77). The process enables one to link people of all purposes, in terms of family, education, knowledge field, among others, thus giving freedom as well as countless options of how an individual may want or wish to spend his or her lifetime. Fundamentally, global interconnection is and continues to be made possible. Also, digital life impacts positively through inventions, reinventions, and innovations of private life and career through networking. The information that comes through networking made possible by the digitalization and mechanization processes enables people and society as a whole to develop new sociological and business ideas.

Healthcare systems gain huge from the digitalization process as experts provide that most digitalization efforts are centered on medical attention, health resources, and safety (Parviainen, pp.63-67). This provides potentialities in the process of becoming a game-changer to the facilitation of human health and medications. The process serves to enable early diagnosis of illnesses, faster access to information regarding health and hospitals, information regarding prior health conditions, and complications, among many other health-related concerns. Thirdly, efficient services, as laid down by Parviainen (pp.63-77), stand as one positive impact of the digitalization and technization process. The process has impacted the easy accessibility of products such that shopping may be gracefully conducted online and deliveries made, as well as information through google. The latter follows that education has been made easy; people can access information at their convenience. This could be visualized higher through an examination of easy booking trips or adventures, easy tenacious searches on different pages that avoid travel to travel agencies, and many benefits.

Negative Impacts

All the information brought in through this constantly evolving digitalization and mechanization (technization) process may cause inattentive behaviors that are and would affect personal life in many ways, including studies, friendships, work, among others. One critical adverse impact is information overload. From surveys by researchers from the Pew Research Center as well as their own experience and observations on the people and their technological environment indicate that people experience and will continue to experience anxiety and stress from the instant access to anything they need (Vial, pp.118-14). They provide that further consequences of this overload of information would lead to impatience and sleeplessness. This could lead to exacerbating social relationships as social interactions with others may be missed. It will disconnect people from real life as an entertainment, and other sources of interaction could be provided via online means (Vial, pp.118-14).

Influence on friendships and interactions stands to be another impact of digitalization and technization. The University of Washington, through its survey on the impact of digitalization, provides that individuals, particularly young people, are highly diminishing offline friendships due to their inclination on online activities. They likely get full interaction online. Though this may prove positive in that it prevents constant conflicts, people get exposed to new other serious conflicts and insecurities such as cyberbullying. Furthermore, the California State University found out in a study that digitalization reduces student concentration and causes distraction (Vial, pp.118-14). The study, in conjunction with the Pew Research Center, provides that habits such as checking Facebook every fifteen minutes make students keep concentrate on one thing for a longer period of time. This has proved to cause poor performance at school, given attempts by students to multitask online and offline during classes.

Generally, with the continued advancement of technology, the definition of human beings will significantly change. The social and political setups of people will be altered. These changes will be obligatory and unavoidable, and because of such, the existing structures of the society will lose meaning and valance. As such, the world would need to develop a new order that would operationalize new modes of lifestyle. Summarily, the process of digitalization and technization would negatively impact people and their environment as equal to the extent to which they would be otherwise impacted positively. Other unmentioned negative impacts could be through cyber-terrorism, increase in crime, as well as lack of social skills as the dominant skills will constitute personal skills (technical skills).

Regarding the future, scientists from MIT predict the continuing digitalization process of informational sharing. They posit that devices in the future will offer more automation and control that people will have to live cooperatively with these devices (Vial, pp.118-14). They observe that the internet will completely blend into people’s background information, as there will be no secret again. People's decisions and choices will fail to capture their privacy and independence as things will all be blended.

Societal Response to the Impacts

It is worth noting that less could be done to stop or inhibit the pace digitalization moves with to the future. However, in response to the negative impacts of the process, efforts may be directed towards aspects such as encouragement of ethical adherence as per the technological laws and regulations. One of the ways provided by available literature constitute self-assertive measures on the part of users, and their interactions vial technological platforms. As provided by Vial (pp.118-14), privacy challenge stands out as the main challenge that the society has to respond to. In its consideration, various society administration configurations (countries or states) have stipulated laws and regulations that guide through invention and reinvention processes, as well as usage. Society responds by demanding more information from manufacturers of these techniques (technization). IT remains fundamental that it is for society to act against misinformation and demand the right information regarding technological products. This is in consideration of the example mentioned earlier on Samsung Smart TVs.

The step by the society to embrace legal laws set in place against manipulation via digitization processes would serve best in trying to provide a positive response to the associated impacts. Society responds through mechanisms that limit privacy breaches, cyberbullying, and exploitive elicitations of technology such as those that alter human behavior through limiting most access of technological products and software consoles to access most of their individual data or information that would get them against their control. Also, through the provisions of obligatory requirements for third parties and manufacturers to comply. This response avails those breaching the set terms to lawsuits, thus controlling an effective response. In summary, there lies a myriad of mechanisms and responses that societies have in place to limit the adversities of technological impacts. Some include setting measures and regulation that call for the need to conduct awareness training, regular updating of software, development of cyber breach and control response plans, and the utilization of unique identities for difficultness in deciphering for security and privacy breaches that expose the adversities of technology to people’s freedom of association and right to privacy.

Conclusion

It lies evident that digitalization and technization have a significant influence in the world, affecting people socially and ethically. In pursuit of answering the question of what extent the adopted levels of digitalization and technization affect human beings and their environment, the paper finds it imperative that digitalization is a process that stands to affect the society in many ways, i.e., positively and negatively. As such, the paper has successfully provided evidential literature in support explaining how big the role that digitalization plays, its effects or alteration of people's behaviors, and how the society may choose to respond to the negative impacts of digitalization technization taking place.

Read More

It is the constant human learning and imagining of the ever-new goals and means to achieve, that dictate the whole concept of technization. With respect to social life, technization corresponds to techniques being embedded in a broader array of societal, cultural beliefs and practices that are passed from generation to generation. For instance, what ancestors used and related with, which may not be inherently related to science, may have only evolved through generations, resulting in society's technicization. Such would automatically mean that technization is the process in which techniques have come to be invented or refined for effectiveness and efficiency. Conferring to Vairinhos et al. (pp.7-23), the application of science to technique transformation transforms how people understand themselves and dictate the organization of societies and their tasks. It follows that understanding technization calls for understanding the society as not being an empirical one, but for awareness of society as realm-separate nature, but under the domain of human imagination and work.

As differentiated from digitalization, technization corresponds to the transformation of a human lifestyle expressed in four ways; the managerial society, human social ethics, the existential self, and the public policy (Gobble (pp.56-59). According to Gobble (2018), the order of a society is never fixed, and given the order of nature, people must reorganize structures of the society to make their interactions and work possible as well as engage in social ethics in attempts that define the norm of technization transformation. All these will call for choices of inventions. This follows that presently, the stories of 'natural order' as had been believed in earlier years have been demythologized and replaced with a technological understanding of the society, which constitutes technization transformation.

However, there lies a narrow difference between the two concepts (digitalization and technization) when one focuses on several aspects, such as ethics. As Brennen (pp.1-11) provides, both technization and digitalization threaten the human ability to think and act ethically. He goes ahead to exclaim that the technicization of ethics evidences the seriousness of this problem. This is because, in a technical civilization, individuals with technical expertise command respect and are as well financially rewarded. These ethical concerns have, in their entirety up surged due to digitalization. The problem now calls for techno bureaucratic experts to guide on this socially emerged issue (ethics). It is the society that dictates mechanization. For instance, managerial societies tend to be dominated by the bureaucracies of scientific-technical experts who identify and promote efficient approaches to meet human-technical needs (Brennen, 2016).

How Digitalization and Technization Affect and Influence the Living Environment

The transformation associated with digitalization and technization affects people and their 'natural' environment. Social and ethical issues are the ones that arise first whenever digitalization is mentioned. Typically, humans are influenced by the dominant technologies that have emerged; persuasive technology, Internet of Things, biometrics, robotics, the digital platforms such as social media platforms as well as virtual and augmented reality. These digital transformations effects involve humans in six aspects, privacy, human dignity, autonomy, the balance of power, and justice (Lindgren, 2017). This, therefore, explains the current pressure that human experience regarding these public values. It follows that the concepts of digitalization and technization are ubiquitous in society. When the two concepts are linked with other ICT technologies, including biotechnology, nanotechnology, and neurotechnology, there results in a convergence that penetrates most if not all aspects of human lives. Technology nestling in people could be represented through brain implants, interactions such as through Facebook, through emotional and physical recognition techniques of big data, and also through constant learning of behavior as exhibited through software for intelligent behaviors of mimicking as well as robotic mimicking, among others. Read More