Unit 23: Human computer interaction

Describe the impact of HCI in recent years on each of: Society, Economy, Culture

Human computer interaction has affected everyday life for over the last 30 years to an incredible effect, the fact that computers have been embedded into everyday life in the 21st century is an indication of how much everybody relies on computing. An example of this can be the development of mobile phone technology, mobile phones now have more processing power than the super computers 30 years ago and in fact the average mobile phone today has more processing power than Apollo 13. So in this report I am going to talk about how HCI has impacted Society, Culture and the economy.

Society
The most common impact that HCI has had on society is making everyday life easier by improving how easy it is to use computers and other devices. Current technology allows people who have had no training to be able to use most devices. The interfaces have been designed to make using computers, mobile phone and tablets easy to use. The designers of the user interfaces try to make the interface simple and easy for the user. For example touch screen technology has become very popular in the last 5 years and also the ability of portable technology has become very popular such as mobile phones, tablets etc. furthermore voice recognition has become very interesting to people and now it is a part of our lives we use it with ease and it helps us get on with everyday life as now it can tell us when to leave work because traffic is bad, it can remind us to buy things, but like most new technology voice recognition is still a work in progress there are some problems with it such as sometimes the voice recognition cannot understand some people but compared to what technology was like 30 year ago being able to speak to a hand held phone is a miracle. Technology has become so important to the current generation its now very rare to find a teenager without some sort of device that can connect to the internet, each year there seems to be a new type of device or a new way to make things easier for everyday life an example of that is 3D printing this is now available to the public, I could go and buy a 3D printer, this is amazing because you can print pretty much anything for example you can print a gun, shoes, phone cases and many more things and this is now becoming a part of everyday life which amazes me but other generations will grow up with this as a part of their lives.
Culture
HCI has a major impact on our culture because of the way that electronic devices are a part of our everyday lives and now they have more features to help us with everyday things, some people say that this is just the beginning and that every two years technology power will double, increasing the amount that technology helps us with everyday things, the biggest example of this is the smartphone, modern day smartphones have more power than what Apollo 13 did. They are becoming very powerful being able to do things that 10 year ago computers struggled to do. Most smartphones do what any computer could so people just have a phone instead so the need of having a computer is going down, you can even watch television on your mobile phone now and play some very decent games. The new phones make everyday life incredibly easy, also it helps people live their lives for example people who cannot leave their home can easily order anything they want on their phone making their life easy to live. Technology is helping more and more people to communicate as now you can learn a new language whilst your walking down the street, at work because you can just pop in your head phones and learn, so it’s helping more cultures