What is the digital era?
The Digital Era is an era in which the economy shifts from an industrial to an information-based economy, with computers and other technological gadgets serving as the means of communication.
Important Things about the Digital Age
The most recent economic revolution is the Digital Revolution. The Digital Revolution, like the Industrial Revolution, represents a dramatic transition in our society, ushering in a new age and affecting many parts of our life. The Digital Revolution refers to the transition from analog and mechanical electronics to digital technology, which is a concept that not everyone is acquainted with.
Information can be precisely reproduced and recreated thanks to digital technology. Our civilization is today defined by computers, smartphones, internet access, and mobile phone communication thanks to digital technology. In reality, the Digital Revolution heralds the dawn of a new era: the Information Age.
Advantages
The benefits of the Digital Revolution are easy to perceive. It is likely that you profit from it on a daily basis. Indeed, if you are reading this article, you are benefiting from one of the Revolution’s benefits: it dramatically expands the amount of knowledge at our fingertips, improving our awareness of the world, and accumulating entire encyclopedias of knowledge in online databases. Consider some of the Revolution’s additional benefits:
- Individuals and organizations are linked via the Digital Revolution. Never before have we been able to speak with people in other parts of the world in real time. This benefit isn’t only restricted to worldwide communication; we now have rapid contact to friends and family members who live just a few miles away. Unlike traditional telephones, mobile phones have put this “communication power” in our hands even in the most remote places.
- The Digital Revolution has given birth to instruments that serve as catalysts for the exchange of ideas. You don’t have to be the CEO of a multibillion-dollar corporation to share your ideas with the world — ideas can be shared and innovation can be expedited utilizing social media and ordinary technology.
- Similarly, we now have access to a universe of internet possibilities. A single laptop may be used to start a business in a bedroom. In the back of a truck deep in the woods, jobs may be found – and worked. Without leaving your bed, you may search for and buy rare books using internet platforms.
- While not everyone appreciates it, the Digital Revolution pushes global competition. Prior to the revolution, retailers had to compete solely with other stores in their immediate vicinity. It didn’t have to be the finest book on the subject; it just had to be the best book in the library. Now, the battle is on a worldwide scale. If competition damages smaller, less efficient, and lower-quality businesses, it gives us, the customers, access to a far larger marketplace of goods and information.
Disadvantages
While we can all identify and appreciate the enormous benefits that the Digital Revolution provides to our fingertips, the purpose of this post is to make us aware of the drawbacks that come with it. We may be oblivious to the negative consequences of the Digital Revolution because it has grown so pervasive in our lives. My aim is not to focus on the obvious ills like hackers and organized crime; you presumably already know about such issues. Consider how the Digital Revolution might result in such negative consequences on a personal and global level:
- People abuse this richness of information in three ways, as I have already described: (1) by just seeking to be familiar with many things, (2) by turning its blessing into a curse, and (3) by wishing to know only for the sake of knowing.
- The Information Age permits evil to breed and expand at an alarming rate by opening up so much knowledge to us and putting it at our fingertips. From the doubtful to the perverse, the dubious to the depraved, the same information may be delivered to us quickly and sent over the world in seconds, without affording society time to analyze the facts or thoughts presented to us.
- Because this Revolution has broken down many relationships and our sense of community, a whole family can now live in a single house and live like single people. While we may sustain connections across states and nations, it disintegrates any ties that aren’t actively cultivated in the digital arena. When you board a bus or train full of people who are glued to their cellphones, it becomes clear that everyone is connected, but only to those with whom they want to connect.
- Digital technology, meanwhile, shatters our sense of political and regional community. This has been deteriorating for some time, but the Information Age is pulling it apart at a greater rate than ever before. The concept that we can pick our friends through social media and stay connected with only those – rather than spending time with those who live and interact with us – shatters the notion that we live in a community, in a unique location in the globe. It deconstructs the notion that we need our neighbors on a political level, paving the way for democratic abuse.
- Finally, rather than encouraging discernment, the digital world fosters passivism. When information is displayed on a screen (as it is in the Information Age), viewers are encouraged to sit back, take the message, and move on without pausing to think. While movies and other forms of media all convey messages, digital technologies have a peculiar way of masking this reality and encouraging passive consumption. Television has been around for a long time, yet it just serves to exacerbate the situation.
