When you ride a train, you will see everyone holding their phones. When you eat in a restaurant or with your family, it is rare not to hear sounds from mobile games, facebook videos, and messenger notifications. Go inside classrooms; you will see a television, a laptop, and tablets owned by each student. Things have transformed from hide and seek to Clash of Clans, from books to e-books, and from everything—to Google. The 20th century entered, and technology entered our lives too; information is within a hand’s reach. “Information Age” was born.
In the previous age, which is the Industrial Era, there were benefits and disadvantages; for example, many inventions were made and transportation improved, but inequality leaped. The era brought the countries to competition; the country which grew the fastest was considered the most powerful. The effects of the Industrial Era can still be seen up to now; most countries have advanced so much that many are left behind. In our current age, the Informational Era, are we already on our way to correct those mistakes and minimize the disadvantages of our creations? Are we on our way to a benign age of improvement or are we on our way to creating crises that destroy mankind?
One veritable disadvantage of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is the Nonverbal Communication. It limits face to face communication among people, but the social networking sites actually brought closer the people who are far from each other. ICT also makes us obtain information for daily tasks like studying, cooking, or anything else under the sun, but does it really promote laziness as we can know and experience things without actually physically being engaged? Does it make our health deteriorate as we spend all our time on bed or does it help us search for ways to improve our health? In addition, ICT helps us perform tasks that people can’t do; it maximizes productivity and creativity. However, does it mean that the people will be replaced in the future by those artificial intelligences? In all our activities, there are advantages and disadvantages to us, but the thing is that we must find the right formula where the rewarding things are maximized and the inimical are minimized.
It is not right to say that we should remove ICT in our daily lives, for it can actually make our lives easier if done in the right way. We must understand that we are only on the first years of Informational Era, and a lot can still be improved! May we all take our time to assess what we do with our creations, for just one step can delete everything we know from our world—even ourselves and the world itself.