How Does Communication Technology Affect People’s Lives?

Introduction

There is hardly any place around us today where technology is not used. A typical life for a student for instance, starts at 8 am, waking up on an alarm which nowadays is an application on a mobile smart phone. With a single button pressed, they can get a warm cup of coffee on the go and head to school. At school, an overhead projectors and laptops are widely present in class, with most of class material are communicated via e-mail, student blogs, or web-based applications. Basically, everything is somehow done via a technological interface, be it the coffee maker or the internet.

Even further, daily chore duties such as washing dishes, clothes and mowing the grass have become very simple with the use of technology to an extent that you really do not feel that you are doing anything. All you are doing is place a basket of clothes in your dishwasher, press 2 buttons, and then come back in 2 hours, where the clothes are clean and dried. A duty that used to take 1-2 days to complete and a copious of efforts nowadays can be completed successfully with 2 buttons pressed and 2 hours effortlessly and with minimal discomfort.

One aspect of technology advancement requires more attention that others that is communication. Communicating with humans, be it as home, school or work, is one of the most important necessities of human’s social need. People need to talk to each other to feel good, feel existent, productive and sociable. There is no way you can get anything done at school without having a discussion or a one-to-one chat with your peers, students or administrative staff. Likewise, at work, without meetings and briefings, managers cannot communicate with staff to get work done. Clients cannot talk to stores to tell them about their needs, etc. etc. Communication is key.

Technology has impacted communication so much and deep to the extent that most people spend more time communicating via a technology interface such as the internet or cellphone, than speaking to each other face-to-face. It doesn’t take more than a free chat application online to chat with someone 20 thousand miles away. While this can be viewed as a tool of globalization and productivity at work place, it may have other side effects and influences on our lives that maybe worth discussing.

The trend of utilizing technology in every aspect of life has grown over the last few decades for several factors, affordability being one of them. Such trend and availably of technology, have visible influence on our daily lives, be it good or bad. In this paper, we want to discuss those factors, trends, and influence in details.

The paper first introduces the recent developments in technology communication channels with reference to the most widely used channels such as social networks and smartphones. Then, the following sections will build on this by categorizing and discussing the influence of these channels on our daily lives. We then conclude the discussion.

Overview of Technology Communication Channels

Before starting the discussion of trends and influence, let’s review the most recent developments in communication tools. This will aid us in discussing their influence on people’s lives in the later section.

1. Video Media Communication

Since its invention in 1920, TV has become the most popular and commonly available video media communication tool. It has gained even more popularity after the introduction of color TV sets and live broadcasting infrastructure a couple of decades ago. This was primarily enabled with the affordable satellite technology and the CTR technology of modern TVs. Nowadays you can get any channel in the world with a basic $30 monthly subscription to a satellite or local cable services.

With such progress in TV technology, one may think the market for media communication is reaching a saturation level, but it isn’t. It is actually nowhere