Prepared by:

COSME T. SOCITO, JR., MSIT

IT Special Lecturer
 Module I
____________________

Introduction to Information and Communication

Technology

This module provides an introduction on Information Communication Technology,

elements of a computer system and its classifications. It tackles also the classification,
capabilities and limitations of computer. It discusses also the history of computing.

After successfully completing this module, you should be able to:

• Define ICT;
• Contrasts elements of the computer system and its functions;
• Categorizes computer;
• Identify various events/ improvement in the computing world;
• Qualifies the understanding of computer usage;
• Contrasts professions and careers in the computing field;
• Qualifies computing domains, computing disciplines and computing
knowledge areas.

• Weblinks for substantial reading and information reference

• Online videos for visual representation and demonstration
• PDF document and online articles as evidence of topic resource
• Virtual Meeting for class discussion, brainstorming and exchange of ideas

LESSON 1: History of ICT

ICT is an acronym that stands for Information and Communications Technology.

ICT is the integration of information processing, computing and communication

technologies. ICT is changing the way we learn, work and live in society and are often
spoken of in a particular context, such as in education, health care, or libraries. A good
way to think about ICT is to consider all the uses of digital technology that already exist
to help individuals, businesses and organizations use information. ICT covers any product
that will store, retrieve, manipulate, transmit or receive information electronically in a
digital form and is concerned with these products. Importantly, it is also concerned with
the way these different uses can work with each other. For example, personal computers,
digital television, email, robots.
 ICT, or information and communications technology (or technologies), is the
infrastructure and components that enable modern computing. The term is generally
accepted to mean all devices, networking components, applications and systems that is
combined and allows people and organizations (i.e., businesses, nonprofit agencies,
governments and criminal enterprises) to interact in the digital world.
Diverse set of technological tools and resources used to transmit, store, create,
share or exchange information. These technological tools and resources include
computers, the Internet (websites, blogs and emails), live broadcasting technologies
(radio, television and webcasting), recorded broadcasting technologies (podcasting,
audio and video players and storage devices) and telephony (fixed or mobile, satellite,
visio / video-conferencing, etc.).
A look at what we use at home, in the office, in school, or at any business or social
function finds many devices equipped with computer chips. They include access cards,
mobile phones, point of sales scanner, medical instruments, TV remote controls,
microwaves ovens, DVD players, digital cameras, PDAs, etc.

History…

IT defines as Information Technology, consists of study, design, advance

development, accomplishment, support or administration of computer foundation
information system, mostly software application and computer hardware. Information
technology works with the use of electronic computers and computer software to
renovate, defend, development, and broadcast and other information.
Information technology has overstuffed to cover many features of computing and
technology, and this word is more familiar than ever before. Information technology
subject can be quite large, encompassing many fields. IT professionals perform different
types of responsibilities that range from installing applications to designing complex
computer networks.
IT professional's responsibilities are data management, networking, database,
software design, computer hardware, management and administration of whole system.
IT (Information Technology) is combined word of computer and communications or
"InfoTech". Information Technology illustrates any technology which helps to
manufacture, manipulate, accumulate, communicate or broadcast information.
Recently it has become popular to broaden the term to explicitly include the field
of electronic communication so that people tend to use the abbreviation ICT (Information
and Communications Technology).
The term "information technology" evolved in the 1970s. Its basic concept,
however, can be traced to the World War II alliance of the military and industry in the
development of electronics, computers, and information theory. After the 1940s, the
military remained the major source of research and development funding for the
expansion of automation to replace manpower with machine power.
Since the 1950s, four generations of computers have evolved. Each generation
reflected a change to hardware of decreased size but increased capabilities to control
computer operations. The first generation used vacuum tubes, the second used
transistors, the third used integrated circuits, and the fourth used integrated circuits on a
single computer chip. Advances in artificial intelligence that will minimize the need for
complex programming characterize the fifth generation of computers, still in the
experimental stage.
 The first commercial computer was the UNIVAC I, developed by John Eckert and
John W. Mauchly in 1951. It was used by the Census Bureau to predict the outcome of
the 1952 presidential election. For the next twenty-five years, mainframe computers were
used in large corporations to do calculations and manipulate large amounts of information
stored in databases. Supercomputers were used in science and engineering, for
designing aircraft and nuclear reactors, and for predicting worldwide weather patterns.
Minicomputers came on to the scene in the early 1980s in small businesses,
manufacturing plants, and factories.
In 1975, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed microcomputers. In
1976, Tandy Corporation's first Radio Shack microcomputer followed; the Apple
microcomputer was introduced in 1977. The market for microcomputers increased
dramatically when IBM introduced the first personal computer in the fall of 1981. Because
of dramatic improvements in computer components and manufacturing, personal
computers today do more than the largest computers of the mid-1960s at about a
thousandth of the cost.
Computers today are divided into four categories by size, cost, and processing
ability. They are supercomputer, mainframe, minicomputer, and microcomputer, more
commonly known as a personal computer. Personal computer categories include
desktop, network, laptop, and handheld.

Current development

Every day, people use computers in new ways. Computers are increasingly
affordable; they continue to be more powerful as information-processing tools as well as
easier to use.

Computers in Business:
One of the first and largest applications of computers is keeping and managing
business and financial records. Most large companies keep the employment records of
all their workers in large databases that are managed by computer programs. Similar
programs and databases are used in such business functions as billing customers;
tracking payments received and payments to be made; and tracking supplies needed and
items produced, stored, shipped, and sold. In fact, practically all the information
companies need to do business involves the use of computers and information
technology.
On a smaller scale, many businesses have replaced cash registers with point-of-
sale (POS) terminals. These POS terminals not only print a sales receipt for the customer
but also send information to a computer database when each item is sold to maintain an
inventory of items on hand and items to be ordered. Computers have also become very
important in modern factories. Computer-controlled robots now do tasks that are hot,
heavy, or hazardous. Robots are also used to do routine, repetitive tasks in which
boredom or fatigue can lead to poor quality work.

Computers in Medicine:
Information technology plays an important role in medicine. For example, a
scanner takes a series of pictures of the body by means of computerized axial
tomography (CAT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). A computer then combines the
pictures to produce detailed three-dimensional images of the body's organs. In addition,
the MRI produces images that show changes in body chemistry and blood flow.
Computers in Science and Engineering:
Using supercomputers, meteorologists predict future weather by using a
combination of observations of weather conditions from many sources, a mathematical
representation of the behavior of the atmosphere, and geographic data.
Computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing programs, often called
CAD/CAM, have led to improved products in many fields, especially where designs tend
to be very detailed. Computer programs make it possible for engineers to analyze designs
of complex structures such as power plants and space stations.

Integrated Information Systems:

With today's sophisticated hardware, software, and communications technologies,
it is often difficult to classify a system as belonging uniquely to one specific application
program. Organizations increasingly are consolidating their information needs into a
single, integrated information system. One example is SAP, a German software package
that runs on mainframe computers and provides an enterprise-wide solution for
information technologies. It is a powerful database that enables companies to organize
all their data into a single database, then choose only the program modules or tables they
want. The freestanding modules are customized to fit each customer's needs.

Information Communication Technology

Classification of Computers

According to purpose, computers are either general purpose or specific purpose.

General purpose computers are designed to perform a range of tasks. They have the
ability to store numerous programs, but lack in speed and efficiency. Specific purpose
computers are designed to handle a specific problem or to perform a specific task. A set
of instructions is built into the machine.
According to data handling, computers are analog, digital or hybrid. Analog
computers work on the principle of measuring, in which the measurements obtained are
translated into data. Modern analog computers usually employ electrical parameters,
such as voltages, resistances or currents, to represent the quantities being manipulated.
Such computers do not deal directly with the numbers. They measure continuous physical
magnitudes. Digital computers are those that operate with information, numerical or
otherwise, represented in a digital form. Such computers process data into a digital value
(in 0s and 1s). They give the results with more accuracy and at a faster rate. Hybrid
computers incorporate the measuring feature of an analog computer and counting feature
of a digital computer. For computational purposes, these computers use analog
components and for storage, digital memories are used.
According to functionality, the type of computers is classified as:
1. Analog Computer
An analog computer (spelt analogue in British English) is a form of computer that
uses continuous physical phenomena such as electrical, mechanical, or hydraulic
quantities to model the problem being solved.
2. Digital Computer
 A computer that performs calculations and logical operations with quantities
represented as digits, usually in the binary number system.
3. Hybrid Computer (Analog + Digital)
A combination of computers who’s capable of inputting and outputting both digital
and analog signals. A hybrid computer system setup offers a cost-effective method
of performing complex simulations.

On the basis of size, the type of computers is;

1. Super Computer
The fastest and most powerful type of computers; supercomputers are very
expensive and are employed for specialized applications that require immense amounts
of mathematical calculations. For example, weather forecasting requires a
supercomputer. Other uses of supercomputers include animated graphics, fluid dynamic
calculations, nuclear energy research, and petroleum exploration. The chief difference
between a supercomputer and a mainframe is that a supercomputer channels all its
power into executing a few programs as fast as possible, whereas a mainframe uses its
power to execute many programs synchronously.

2. Mainframe Computer
A very large and expensive computer capable of supporting hundreds, or even
thousands, of users simultaneously. In the hierarchy that starts with a simple
microprocessor (in watches, for example) at the bottom and moves to supercomputers at
the top, mainframes are just below supercomputers. In some ways, mainframes are more
powerful than supercomputers because they support more simultaneous programs. But
supercomputers can execute a single program faster than a mainframe.

3. Mini Computer
A midsized computer. In size and power, minicomputers lie between workstations
and mainframes. In the past decade, the distinction between large minicomputers and
small mainframes has blurred, however, as has the distinction between small
minicomputers and workstations. But in general, a minicomputer is a multiprocessing
system capable of supporting from 4 to about 200 users simultaneously.

4. Micro Computer or Personal Computer

• Desktop Computer: a personal or micro-mini computer sufficient to fit on a desk.

• Laptop Computer: a portable computer completes with an integrated screen and
keyboard. It is generally smaller in size than a desktop computer and larger than
a notebook computer.
• Palmtop Computer/Digital Diary /Notebook /PDAs: a hand-sized computer.
Palmtops have no keyboard but the screen serves both as an input and output
device.

5. Workstations

A terminal or desktop computer in a network. In this context, workstation is just a

generic term for a user's machine (client machine) in contrast to a "server" or "mainframe."
Capabilities of Computer System

Capabilities of a computer system are the qualities of the computer that put it in a
positive light and make the user experience more efficient.
1. Speed - means the duration computer system requires in fulfilling a task or completing
an activity. It is well-known that computers need very little time than humans in completing
a task. Generally, humans take into account a second or minute as a unit of time.
Nevertheless, computer systems have such fast operation capacity that the unit of time
is in fractions of a second. Today, computers are capable of doing 100 million calculations
per second and that is why the industry has developed Million Instructions per Second
(MIPS) as the criterion to classify different computers according to speed.

2. Accuracy - means the level of precision with which calculations are made and tasks
are performed. One may invest years of his life in detecting errors in computer
calculations or updating a wrong record. A large part of mistakes in Computer Based
Information System (CBIS) occurs due to bad programming, erroneous data, and
deviation from rules. Humans cause these mistakes. Errors attributable to hardware are
generally distinguished and corrected by the computer system itself. The computers
rarely commit errors and do all types of tasks precisely.

3. Reliability - the quality due to which the user can stay dependable on the computer.
Computer systems are well-adjusted to do repetitive tasks. They never get tired, bored or
fatigued. Hence, they are a lot reliable than humans. Still, there can be failures of a
computer system due to internal and external reasons. Any failure of the computer in a
highly automated industry is disastrous. Hence, the industry in such situations has a
backup facility to take over tasks without losing much of the time.

4. Adaptability - the quality of it to complete a different type of tasks: simple as well as

complex. Computers are normally versatile unless designed for a specific operation.
Overall, a daily purpose computer is used in any area of application: business, industry,
scientific, statistical, technological. A general-purpose computer, when introduced in a
company, can replace the jobs of multiple specialists due to its flexibility. A computer
system can replace the functions of all these specialists because of being very versatile.

5. Storage - computers has the ability to store data in itself for accessing it again in the
future. Nowadays, apart from having instantaneous access to data, computers have a
huge ability to store data in a little physical space. A general computer system has a
capacity of storing and providing online millions of characters and thousands of pictures.
It is obvious from the above discussion that computer capabilities outperform the human
capabilities. Therefore, a computer when used rightfully, will tenfold the effectiveness of
an organization.

Limitations of Computer Systems

Limitations are the drawbacks of the computer system in which humans outperform
them.

1. Lack of common-sense - This is one of the major limitations of computer systems. No

matter how efficient, fast and reliable computer systems might be but yet do not have
any common sense because no full-proof algorithm has been designed to programme
 logic into them. As computers function based on the stored programme(s), they simply
lack common sense.

2. Zero IQ - Another limitation of computer systems is that they have zero Intelligence
Quotient (IQ). They are unable to see and think the actions to perform in a particular
situation unless that situation is already programmed into them. Computers are
programmable to complete each and every task, however small it may be.

3. Lack of Decision-making - Decision-making is a complicated process involving

information, knowledge, intelligence, wisdom, and ability to judge. The computer
system does not have the ability to make decisions on their own because they do not
possess all the essentials of decision-making.

Computers can be programmed to take decisions, which are purely procedure-

oriented. If a computer has not been programmed for a particular decision situation, it will
not take a decision due to lack of wisdom and evaluation faculties. Human beings, on the
other hand, possess this great power of decision-making.
Computer cannot operate without the instructions given by humans. It is
programmed to work effectively, fast and accurately. Computer cannot itself and does not
have common sense. It is totally dependent on humans.

History of Computers: A Brief Timeline

The computer was born not for entertainment or email but out of a need to solve a
serious number-crunching crisis. By 1880, the U.S. population had grown so large that it
took more than seven years to tabulate the U.S. Census results. The government sought
a faster way to get the job done, giving rise to punch-card based computers that took up
entire rooms.
Today, we carry more computing power on our smartphones than was available in
these early models. The following brief history of computing is a timeline of how
computers evolved from their humble beginnings to the machines of today that surf the
Internet, play games and stream multimedia in addition to crunching numbers.

1801: In France, Joseph Marie Jacquard invents a loom that uses punched wooden cards
to automatically weave fabric designs. Early computers would use similar punch
cards.
1822: English mathematician Charles Babbage conceives of a steam-driven calculating
machine that would be able to compute tables of numbers. The project, funded by
the English government, is a failure. More than a century later, however, the
world's first computer was actually built.
1890: Herman Hollerith designs a punch card system to calculate the 1880 census,
accomplishing the task in just three years and saving the government $5 million.
He establishes a company that would ultimately become IBM.
1936: Alan Turing presents the notion of a universal machine, later called the Turing
machine, capable of computing anything that is computable. The central concept
of the modern computer was based on his ideas.
1937: J.V. Atanasoff, a professor of physics and mathematics at Iowa State University,
attempts to build the first computer without gears, cams, belts or shafts.
1939: Hewlett-Packard (HP) is founded by David Packard and Bill Hewlett in a Palo Alto,
California, garage, according to the Computer History Museum.
1941: Atanasoff and his graduate student, Clifford Berry, design a computer that can
solve 29 equations simultaneously. This marks the first time a computer is able to
store information on its main memory.
1943-1944: Two University of Pennsylvania professors, John Mauchly and J. Presper
Eckert, build the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC).
Considered the grandfather of digital computers, it fills a 20-foot by 40-foot room
and has 18,000 vacuum tubes.
1946: Mauchly and Presper leave the University of Pennsylvania and receive funding
from the Census Bureau to build the UNIVAC, the first commercial computer for
business and government applications.
1947: William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain of Bell Laboratories invent the
transistor. They discovered how to make an electric switch with solid materials and
no need for a vacuum.
1953: Grace Hopper develops the first computer language, which eventually becomes
known as COBOL. Thomas Johnson Watson Jr., son of IBM CEO Thomas
Johnson Watson Sr., conceives the IBM 701 EDPM to help the United Nations
keep tabs on Korea during the war.
1954: The FORTRAN programming language, an acronym for FORmula TRANslation, is
developed by a team of programmers at IBM led by John Backus, according to the
University of Michigan.
1958: Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce unveil the integrated circuit, known as the computer
chip. Kilby was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000 for his work.
1964: Douglas Engelbart shows a prototype of the modern computer, with a mouse and
a graphical user interface (GUI). This marks the evolution of the computer from a
specialized machine for scientists and mathematicians to technology that is more
accessible to the general public.
1969: A group of developers at Bell Labs produce UNIX, an operating system that
addressed compatibility issues. Written in the C programming language, UNIX was
portable across multiple platforms and became the operating system of choice
among mainframes at large companies and government entities. Due to the slow
nature of the system, it never quite gained traction among home PC users.
1970: The newly formed Intel unveils the Intel 1103, the first Dynamic Access Memory
(DRAM) chip.
1971: Alan Shugart leads a team of IBM engineers who invent the "floppy disk," allowing
data to be shared among computers.
1973: Robert Metcalfe, a member of the research staff for Xerox, develops Ethernet for
connecting multiple computers and other hardware.
1974-1977: A number of personal computers hit the market, including Scelbi & Mark-8
Altair, IBM 5100, Radio Shack's TRS-80 — affectionately known as the "Trash 80"
– and the Commodore PET.
1975: The January issue of Popular Electronics magazine features the Altair 8080,
described as the "world's first minicomputer kit to rival commercial models." Two
"computer geeks," Paul Allen and Bill Gates, offer to write software for the Altair,
using the new BASIC language. On April 4, after the success of this first endeavor,
the two childhood friends form their own software company, Microsoft.
1976: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak start Apple Computers on April Fool's Day and roll
out the Apple I, the first computer with a single-circuit board, according to Stanford
University. The TRS-80, introduced in 1977, was one of the first machines whose
documentation was intended for non-geeks (Image credit: Radioshack)
1977: Radio Shack's initial production run of the TRS-80 was just 3,000. It sold like crazy.
For the first time, non-geeks could write programs and make a computer do what
they wished.
1977: Jobs and Wozniak incorporate Apple and show the Apple II at the first West Coast
Computer Faire. It offers color graphics and incorporates an audio cassette drive
for storage.
1978: Accountants rejoice at the introduction of VisiCalc, the first computerized
spreadsheet program.
1979: Word processing becomes a reality as MicroPro International releases WordStar.
"The defining change was to add margins and word wrap," said creator Rob
Barnaby in email to Mike Petrie in 2000. "Additional changes included getting rid
of command mode and adding a print function. I was the technical brains — I
figured out how to do it, and did it, and documented it." The first IBM personal
computer, introduced on Aug. 12, 1981, used the MS-DOS operating system.
(Image credit: IBM)
1981: The first IBM personal computer, code-named "Acorn," is introduced. It uses
Microsoft's MS-DOS operating system. It has an Intel chip, two floppy disks and
an optional color monitor. Sears & Roebuck and Computerland sell the machines,
marking the first time a computer is available through outside distributors. It also
popularizes the term PC.
1983: Apple's Lisa is the first personal computer with a GUI. It also features a drop-down
menu and icons. It flops but eventually evolves into the Macintosh. The Gavilan
SC is the first portable computer with the familiar flip form factor and the first to be
marketed as a "laptop."
1985: Microsoft announces Windows, according to Encyclopedia Britannica. This was the
company's response to Apple's GUI. Commodore unveils the Amiga 1000, which
features advanced audio and video capabilities.
1985: The first dot-com domain name is registered on March 15, years before the World
Wide Web would mark the formal beginning of Internet history. The Symbolics
Computer Company, a small Massachusetts computer manufacturer, registers
Symbolics.com. More than two years later, only 100 dot-coms had been registered.
1986: Compaq brings the Deskpro 386 to market. Its 32-bit architecture provides as
speed comparable to mainframes.
1990: Tim Berners-Lee, a researcher at CERN, the high-energy physics laboratory in
Geneva, develops HyperText Markup Language (HTML), giving rise to the World
Wide Web.
1993: The Pentium microprocessor advances the use of graphics and music on PCs.
1994: PCs become gaming machines as "Command & Conquer," "Alone in the Dark 2,"
"Theme Park," "Magic Carpet," "Descent" and "Little Big Adventure" are among
the games to hit the market.
1996: Sergey Brin and Larry Page develop the Google search engine at Stanford
University.
1997: Microsoft invests $150 million in Apple, which was struggling at the time, ending
Apple's court case against Microsoft in which it alleged that Microsoft copied the
"look and feel" of its operating system.
1999: The term Wi-Fi becomes part of the computing language and users begin
connecting to the Internet without wires.
2001: Apple unveils the Mac OS X operating system, which provides protected memory
architecture and pre-emptive multi-tasking, among other benefits. Not to be
outdone, Microsoft rolls out Windows XP, which has a significantly redesigned
GUI.
2003: The first 64-bit processor, AMD's Athlon 64, becomes available to the consumer
market.
2004: Mozilla's Firefox 1.0 challenges Microsoft's Internet Explorer, the dominant Web
browser. Facebook, a social networking site, launches.
2005: YouTube, a video sharing service, is founded. Google acquires Android, a Linux-
based mobile phone operating system.
2006: Apple introduces the MacBook Pro, its first Intel-based, dual-core mobile computer,
as well as an Intel-based iMac. Nintendo's Wii game console hits the market.
2007: The iPhone brings many computer functions to the smartphone.
2009: Microsoft launches Windows 7, which offers the ability to pin applications to the
taskbar and advances in touch and handwriting recognition, among other features.
2010: Apple unveils the iPad, changing the way consumers view media and jumpstarting
the dormant tablet computer segment.
2011: Google releases the Chromebook, a laptop that runs the Google Chrome OS.
2012: Facebook gains 1 billion users on October 4.
2015: Apple releases the Apple Watch. Microsoft releases Windows 10.
2016: The first reprogrammable quantum computer was created. "Until now, there hasn't
been any quantum-computing platform that had the capability to program new
algorithms into their system. They're usually each tailored to attack a particular
 algorithm," said study lead author Shantanu Debnath, a quantum physicist and
optical engineer at the University of Maryland, College Park.
2017: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is developing a new
"Molecular Informatics" program that uses molecules as computers. "Chemistry
offers a rich set of properties that we may be able to harness for rapid, scalable
information storage and processing," Anne Fischer, program manager in DARPA's
Defense Sciences Office, said in a statement. "Millions of molecules exist, and
each molecule has a unique three-dimensional atomic structure as well as
variables such as shape, size, or even color. This richness provides a vast design
space for exploring novel and multi-value ways to encode and process data
beyond the 0s and 1s of current logic-based, digital architectures." [Computers of
the Future May Be Minuscule Molecular Machines]

Learning Resource:

1. Videos to watch:
a. Information Communication Technology
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PDQKu2-bAc
b. Classification of Computers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgWlKK62YRg
c. History of Computing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5nskjZ_GoI

2. Articles to Read:
a. Information Communication Technology
http://aims.fao.org/information-and-communication-technologies-ict
b. What is ICT?
http://tutor2u.net/business/ict/intro_what_is_ict.htm
c. Austin and Hughes, Information technology -
http://www.floweradvisor.com/lifestyle/technology/information_technology/556/informati
on_technology/
d. Classification of Computers
https://www.vskills.in/certification/tutorial/it-support/classification-of-computers-2/
e. Capabilities and Limitations of Computers
http://abarientoskeene.weebly.com/capabilities-and-limitations-of-computer.html
f. History of Computing
https://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/computers/

Activities / Assessment:

1. Write an article about a current or future development in ICT. This may include innovations,
inventions and future designs, note the most important technology variation among others
including its classification, capabilities and limitations. All in 400 - 500 maximum words.

2. In the current state of ICT in the Philippines, what do you think is the most significant role ICT
plays? Cite examples and broaden your research. Write your output in a minimum of 300-400
words.

Submit article to [email protected] on a given date of submission.

Deadline of submission: Friday, February 18, 2022 until midnight only.
 LESSON 2: Uses of ICT in Daily Lives

ICT in Everyday Life

Information, communication and technologies are all the basis, methods and steps
used in communicating, disseminating information, and performing calculations using all
electronic devices designed for this purpose such as computers and various means of
communication within established scientific rules and regulations.
Information and communications technology (ICT) can also be defined as: all the
technologies used to handle broadcast media, telecommunications, intelligent building
management systems, network-based control and monitoring functions, audiovisual
processing and transmission systems and others.
ICT was recently used to express the use of communication lines, to transfer
various types and formats of data. Audio and video networks and computer networks are
combined through a common cable system, such as providing internet, telephone, and
television services to homes and companies through a single optical cable, which
contributes to a significant reduction in costs.
The term (ICT) that appeared in the eighties, and its popularity increased in 1997
AD, can be considered as the broadest synonym for information technology, because the
first includes a focus on unified communications and communication integration, with the
aim of storing and transmitting the information.

Importance of ICT in Today's World

Information and communication technologies have greatly affected human life.

Since the industrial revolution, man has begun to develop machines and equipment that
facilitate his work.
With the advent of information technology, mankind has jumped a qualitative leap
towards development on the one hand and luxury on the other hand, where the work was
done in the old offices using paperwork and transactions manually, which leads to taking
a long time to finish.
After the entry of technology into the world of business, agreements and
transactions have been established from anywhere in the world very quickly. Thus, ICT
has a great impact on our lives.
On the educational side: Boards, chalk, and heavy books were overloaded with
a computer board containing all the educational courses, thus providing greater comfort
to the student and introducing them to the world of development since childhood.
Some schools in the world have begun to teach the basics of programming
languages as basic materials in schools, thus creating a scientific and cultural awareness
of the student and making them an innovative person who makes the applications and
devices he wants on his own.
On the industrial side: The entry of ICT after the industrial revolution led to the
development of the machines used and linking them to the web to send orders to them
from different sectors.
 ICT has increased the productivity of industries and reduced the time required to
achieve the desired goal.
In the political and military aspects: Information technology has played a major
role in the power and dominance of a state. The major countries sought to develop means
of communication and means of obtaining information about the enemy. The amount of
information available can serve as a serious weapon in which entire countries could be
destroyed through technologies embedded on radars, drones and even cyber-terrorize a
nation. Encrypted information is one of the fundamentals of military power [in the state].
Alongside digital intelligence and national defense mechanism that are put in place by all
nations, various technological defense innovations and advances on warfare are
continuously developed to counteract cyber-terrorism and digital attacks.

Components of ICT

The ICT system consists of the following components:

▪ Cloud Computing
▪ Software
▪ Hardware
▪ Transactions
▪ Communication Technologies
▪ Data
▪ Internet

Uses and applications of ICT in Our Daily Life

Information and communications technology (ICT) is used in most of the fields

such as e-commerce, e-governance, banking, agriculture, education, medicine, defense,
transport, etc. With technological advances, advanced computing infrastructure,
sophisticated marketing strategies, and reduced cycle times with robotic process
automation (RPA), ICT is playing a vital role. Information and communication technology
can be used in various fields, including:

ICT in Entertainment:
Information and communication technologies (ICT) have impacted entertainment
and leisure activities in different ways in which you spend your time. ICT offers a variety
of entertainment and leisure activities and allows for quick access to movies or music that
can be easily accessed, watch movies and listen to music directly from the internet. ICT
adds more interactive technologies to TV shows. Digital cameras, printers and scanners
have enabled more people to experience image production, in addition to developing
graphic interfaces.

ICT in Medical Science:

Medical devices and modern equipment have evolved considerably favoring
information and communications technology. Information and communication
technologies (ICT) are related to the devices, resources and tools needed to improve the
acquisition, retrieval, storage and use of information in health and biomedicine. Most of
the medical devices that now exist rely on information and communication technology in
the way it is used on detection and treatment of diseases. Health informatics tools include
formal medical terms, clinical guidelines, computers, and information and communication
systems.

ICT in Finance:
Information and communication technology is used daily by financial companies,
to trade financial instruments, to report a business's earnings, and to keep records of
personal budgets. ICT allows rapid calculation of financial data and provides financial
services companies with strategic and innovative benefits as well as electronic transfer
of money, through the use of credit cards, or e-commerce, which includes the purchase
and payment via the Internet and others. ICT helps deal with security concerns, legal
issues and access to global markets. In the existence of a growing information and
demand of business data, data analytics highly contribute on the prediction of customers
demand, sales trend, geological and regional market benchmarks, supply-chain and
financial strategic plan.

ICT in Public Sector Management:

Information and communication technology (ICT) is used to facilitate more
convenient government services, make the government more transparent and
accountable to citizens, promote a more efficient and cost-effective government. ICT
provides greater public access to information and constitutes opportunities for public
administration that require meeting many economic, financial, structural and legal
conditions. ICT also allows people to perform many different activities, such as: paying
bills or renewing official documents such as driving licenses and others over the internet.

ICT in Home Electronics:

The use of ICT in domestic electronics is developing rapidly. ICT equipment is

used to increase access to home care. As it became possible to manage the house
through a system that controls lighting, home security, air conditioning, and others. The
emergence of internet-of-things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) converts appliances,
cars, gadgets and more to be intelligent and interactive; with the embedded sensors,
intelli-sense and voice commands.

ICT in Education:
Information and communication technology contributes greatly to education
because it improves the way of education and provides a better educational environment,
through the use of computers, tablets, data displays, interactive electronic boards, and
others in the process of communicating information to students.
UNESCO pursues a comprehensive educational system, enhanced by information
and communications technology, which focuses on the main challenges in joint work,
whether in the field of communications, information, science, and education.
Current development on 3D graphics and hologram, aids in magnifying vision and
audio signal that helps in enhancing the learning experience and cognition.

ICT in Agriculture:
Information and communication technology in agriculture helps in the growing
demand for new approaches and focuses on enhancing agricultural and rural
development through better information and communication processes. ICT also helps
empower rural people by providing better farming techniques, better access to natural
resources, effective production strategies, and digital marketing strategies for
agribusiness and financial services, etc.
In the presence of newly developed strategies and technologies; climate
prediction, weather updates and temperature pattern tracking, humidity and water level
sensors are some of the attributes that ICT can contribute in a more advanced farming.

ICT in Business
The use of information and communications technology is very important for
businesses to establish a hassle-free and secure communication flow and to meet daily
operational tasks. ICT tools help companies analyze, store, process and share vast
amounts of data and make better use of products and resources. ICT tools also help
improve profitability, reduce costs compared to manual tasks and minimize lead times.
ICT systems allow managers and employees to make decisions quickly and accurately
so that they can effectively manage the operations process and day-to-day activities and
rapidly predict business opportunities or threats. The presence of rapidly growing number
of open-source software and internet platforms made working easy and light in the
comfort of our home.

ICT in Peace and Security

Intensive development of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and
their wide use in all spheres of human activity have accelerated post-industrial
development and the building of a global information society. ICTs have become a driving
force of social development. The global information infrastructure provides
unprecedented opportunities for communication among people, their socialization and
access to information. Individuals, society and the state depend on the stability and
reliability of the information infrastructure.
However, ICTs could enable a fundamentally new and effective means to disrupt
or destroy a country's industry, its economy, social infrastructure and public
administration. ICTs have the potential to be a means of combat capable of achieving
goals related to inter-state confrontation at the tactical, operational and strategic levels.
In this way ICTs gain the characteristics of a weapon "designed to defeat an enemy in
combat". The potential destructive power of so-called "information weapons" will increase
as ICTs develop further and as the information infrastructure of society evolves. This
power will be magnified as military equipment and weapons are increasingly integrated
with – and reliant on – ICTs.

Positive and Negative Impacts of ICT in Everyday Life

Information and communications technology (ICT) is often used as an extended

synonym for information technology (IT), but is a more specific term that stresses the role
of unified communications. ICT provides access to information through
telecommunications. It is similar to Information Technology (IT), but concentrates mostly
on communication technologies such as the Internet, wireless networks, cell phones, and
other communication mediums. ICT includes any communication device or application,
encompassing: radio, television, cell phones, computer, laptops, tablets, and network
hardware and software, so on. ICT also provides the various services online and
applications associated with them.

Revolution by Rapid Development in ICT

The early computers to latest cell phones have huge revolution as with different
computer generations. History can teach us a lot about the dynamics between society
and businesses.
We can see that in the past digital signal are generated by one room machine
which now comes in our hand. Communication medium has also a vast change that will
affect the ICT because these devices are needed to use the ICT technology. Probably
over 50% of people engaged in their devices like smart phones, tablets, laptops, etc.

Effects of ICT

As human being we are always connected with lot of essential things in our
everyday life. By the use of ICT gadgets in our lifestyle, many time-consuming calculation
and tough tasks has become easier and social contacts has been increased. ICT has
affected lives by improving timely distribution of information through the media and
improved communications in homes and work places through social networks, emails,
etc. ICT has extremely enhanced the quality of human life. For example, writing a letter
could take few days to arrive to the receiver but by the writing an e-mail reaches in just a
minute. ICT provides each facility on 24 hours X 7 days with the wider knowledge and
information. ICT affects various fields of daily life some of them are discussed below:

As Home and Domestic Activities: We can connect and control domestic equipment’s
(such as washing machine, refrigerator, cell-phones, laptops etc.). Carry out net banking,
online shopping, read newspapers online, watch TV programs, impart education and
connects ourselves to our family, friends, or relatives while we are at long distance by
using the e-mail, messenger, call-conference, or video-conference.
As Social Networking: There are many social networking sites available like
FACEBOOK, ORKUT, TWITTER, and LINKEDIN which allows users to communicate and
stay connected with each other across the globe regularly. All these sites have helped to
narrow the physical distances between people. Social Networking provides facilities such
as faster communication speed, effective sharing of information, paperless environment,
etc.
As Education/E-Learning: E-Learning is an electronic learning, in which the learner
uses a computer to learn a task, skill, or process at that time teacher teaches through the
computer online. Students can learn by watching videos, e-books, discussion groups,
bulletin boards, blogs and e-learning in a collaborate environment. Students can also ask
question to their teacher using emails. Educational institutes use projector or digi-class to
teach students.
As Health: When we get sick, we don't like to go outside even to visit the doctors. Today,
we had a solution using ICT gadget to contact with our doctor and describe our problems.
It is helpful to medical students to learn about disease, medicines, and surgeries. Doctors
can demonstrate major surgical operations to medical students by the use of ICT. Doctors
can operate critical patient in guidance of many specialist surgeons through video-
conferencing.
As Shopping/Commerce: Online shopping involves E-commerce. It draws on such
technologies as electronic funds transfer, online transaction processing, Inventory
management system and automated data collection systems. It makes buying and selling
activities easier, more efficient and faster by using computers, internet and shared
software. ICT helped companies to make more money and spend less on their business.
Online shopping helps customers to choose range of items from different countries
without reaching the place to buy whatever they want at any time. Pay for the items on
the internet with a safe internet payment option. Product advertising is also possible
through ICT.
As Banking: Banking helped us to buy things using E-commerce. It carries out electronic
transactions through Debit/Credit cards, net banking and Air/Rail tickets booking at
anyplace at any time with the same banking account. We can save our time, access
accounts for loan applications, transactions and update our cash flow at any time.
Banking is facilitated with virtual/digital money (Bit currency) so it introduces an eco-
friendly world.
As Employment/Jobs: ICT increases the number of employments in our society. People
can work as Web developer, IT network administrator, etc. who have skills in ICT. It gives
new job opportunities for many people to become successful self-employer to work from
their home. Helps massive dissemination of hiring opportunities and aids in developing
new genre of soft and hard skills where applicants could possibly be hired.

Impacts of ICT on our Everyday Life

The Positive Impacts of ICT

▪ Daily routine Management: We can store and manage our daily schedule
information using ICT gadgets. We can also integrate the domestic equipment’s to
use and control together. We can also use net banking, online payments and
online trading for purchasing daily needed items. It will save our time to go market
and purchase things.

▪ Social Relationship: ICT provides the facility to make contacts and maintain
relationships with people around the world in our daily routine. With the use of
 internet and communication channel, we can connect to people via e-mail, social
networking websites and cell phones. It saves time and works inexpensively. There
are bulletin boards, discussion groups services available to communicate with a
large number of people at the same time.

▪ Information Sharing: Now information is just right on our fingertips. We can

access any information anywhere and anytime. Information, news, views, etc. can
be shared by people all around the globe with the use of e-mail, discussion groups
on the Internet such as Google Groups, Yahoo! Groups etc. By the sharing of
information, it develops global awareness such as cultures, religions, ideologies
and lifestyles. These create an environment of openness and increases mutual
respect. It even produces a vibrant view of ideas, concepts and social evolution on
arts, science, inventions, and exposes various social, cultural and regional
variations of traditions and beliefs.

▪ Communication: We can communicate each other without boundaries. It

becomes quicker because we can send an instant message in a fraction of time
with the low cost which saves costs and man power for delivery. For that E-mail,
teleconferencing, and video-conferencing are available. By the use of video
conferencing technique, we can get feel to communicate with someone face to
face which is beneficial for meeting or communicating together.

▪ Usage of Free time: ICT can be used to access new frontier of entertainment. We
can play games, launch of digital TV, chatting, watch videos, listen songs, watch
or listen to the news, pick up on individual news items, and many more. Certainly,
there is no idle time with the presence of ICT. You can view, listen and review past
events, history and even have a eye-view of the future research and development.

▪ Children’s Education: New ways of learning are possible through ICT such as e-
learning, distance learning, on-line materials, virtual learning and interactive multi-
media. Students can be part of these various learning and teaching from all over
the world. For the impossible experiments, we can use simulations and virtual
reality. If students and teachers logged at same time at the same pace makes a
virtual classroom for e-learning. This is a smart investment four our children’s
future.

▪ Self-Employment: ICT gadgets help us out to do our jobs easier. We can create
our own business shops without the heavy overheads of place, purchasing of items
and sales in market, and make advertising campaigns with the use of multimedia
application. This increases sales and encourages the small businesses. We can
use net banking, online payments as the payment option.

▪ Paperless Environment: ICT mostly uses its gadgets to store and retrieve
information instead of paper. Use of ICT involved less papers, thus it saves the
trees and makes our environment healthy.

▪ Developing Health Literacy: With the immediate feedback from doctors, we

become well sooner. Health literacy deals with the need for people to access and
use high quality information about disease and medicines through internet health
care services available in ICT gadgets.
Negative Impacts of ICT

▪ Reduced face-to-face interaction: Now days, people mostly like online

communication rather than real conversations so people tend to become more
individualistic and introvert. Other limitation is that we are not able express our feeling
or what we are actually want to say by the use of e-mail or social networking sites.
Thus, we required face to face communication with them to express our real feeling.

▪ Social Disconnect: Although the internet has reduced physical distances between
people, but that doesn’t mean they brought all closer together and emotional distance
is increased in some aspects. People always busy with their own virtual world and
passing a day. They forget the real world with family and friends and they becoming
a formality. Children too are spending more time in virtual world and they adopt wrong
thoughts thus rising cybercrimes and extra marital affairs with the use of ICT gadgets.

▪ Reduced physical activity/health problems: Users may accept a more sitting

lifestyle by the use of ICT gadgets. This can lead to health problems such as
headache, obesity, heart disease, diabetes, repetitive strain injury or eyestrain, wrong
posture/position, neck pain, physical and mental stress, etc. because of continuous
use. Children gets stretch by playing internet games, watching cartoon which may
stop them to go outside and they feel afraid to talk with other children. In this kind of
lifestyle there is lack of physical exercise, increases our health risk.

▪ Cost: Many ICT gadgets are expensive. So, they are cost effective to purchase and
to maintain. Poor students cannot get the benefits of e-learning due to the educational
establishments.

▪ Job loss: Job losses may occur because of manual operations being replaced by
automation.

▪ Security/loss of privacy: Each ICT gadgets are integrated by specific technology

and uses Internet connections. Data must be reserved as secure data so it needs to
protect from virus attacks and other forms of malware are released daily. Use of social
networking website risk of personal data loss. When we use net banking, online
payment then there is a risk of losing our money by fraud people. They can transfer
our money to their account.

ICTs have an impact on almost everybody that has access to them and that the
internet has changed society and how we live. ICT brings people from different parts of
the world together to communicate with each other across the world. It gives an
opportunity to improving communication, to meet new people online and establish a
friendship, to share the personal information online, increasing opportunities for
education. Undoubtedly ICT gadgets have really made peoples life simple and
entertaining but Information, Media, and Technology Skills are needed for the use of ICT.
ICT can have positive impact on our lives but still we have to be careful when using it
because we may suffer from some negative impact by using them. We have to be wise
in using the ICT gadgets. Thus, ICT is the new technologies of the digital age have been
accessible in our everyday life with a confusing blend of guaranteed benefits with some
problems.
Learning Resource:
1. Videos to watch:

a. Benefits and Issues of Information Technology

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLeaL7e1EeI
b. Technology in our daily life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMS728YNHmo
c. How does technology improve our lives?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7FMfQJw6Jk
d. The Positive and Negative Impacts of Technology To Human Values | Science
Technology And Society
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb3Cr25orWM

2. Articles to Read:

a. Applications of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Everyday Life; The

Scientific World; March 03, 2020
https://www.scientificworldinfo.com/2020/03/applications-of-information-and-
communication-technology.html
b. Mansi Bosamia; Positive and Negative Impacts of Information and Communication
Technology in our Everyday Life; ResearchGate; Conference Paper – December 2013
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325570282_Positive_and_Negative_Impacts
_of_Information_and_Communication_Technology_in_our_Everyday_Life

Activities / Assessment:

1. Create a 10-minute Vlog that showcases how ICT impacts your daily life. Be creative
in producing your content and in showcasing the main story of your Vlog, then publish
your Vlog in your Channel. The video length excludes your intro and end credits. Make
a transcript of your Vlog then include it in your email submission bearing the title of
your Vlog.

2. Experimental Research: Observe a member of your family, a co-worker or anyone

among your peers. Study their behavior on how they manage and use ICT in their
daily routines. Spot the positive and negative impacts of their activity in utilizing
devices and/or the technology they have at hand then make a short article of about a
minimum of 500 words. Prepare and present a short presentation of your findings
during our virtual class meeting.
Post your Vlog link in our FB incognito page and submit your article to [email protected].
Deadline of Submission: Tuesday, February 22, 2022 until midnight only.
 LESSON 3: Introduction to Digital Evolution

The evolution of ICT

The development of ICT has been characterized by rapid technological progress

that has brought prices of ICT products down rapidly, ensuring that technology can be
applied throughout the economy at low cost. In many cases, the drop in prices caused by
advances in technology and the pressure for constant innovation have been bolstered by
a constant cycle of commoditization that has affected many of the key technologies that
have led to the growth of the digital economy. As products become successful and reach
a greater market, their features have a tendency to solidify, making it more difficult for
original producers to change those features easily. When features become more stable,
it becomes easier for products to be copied by competitors. This is stimulated further by
the process of standardization that is characteristic of the ICT sector, which makes
components interoperable, making it more difficult for individual producers to distinguish
their products from others. Unless the original producer can differentiate its product from
the copies (for example, by bundling its product with services or other features that are
not easily duplicated), or otherwise find a way to maintain a dominant position in the
market, it will be forced to compete solely on price or move to other market segments.
This process tends to cause prices of the commoditized goods or services to fall,
and innovation to move elsewhere in the value chain. This does not necessarily mean
that every single component of the commoditized product becomes a commodity. A
producer of a component of the overall product can maintain or create a proprietary
advantage by enhancing some elements or subsystems of that component. This can
“decommoditise” those elements or subsystems of the commoditized product, creating
new opportunities at a different stage of the value chain.

Personal computing devices

Early in the life of the digital economy, many manufacturers of computing hardware
used proprietary hardware components, which meant that the computers of different
manufacturers operated on entirely different standards. When the architecture of personal
computers was largely standardized thirty years ago, however, many market participants
started competing on price. That, combined with rapid technological progress, resulted in
substantial drops in the price of personal computing hardware. In the period that followed,
the most successful manufacturers succeeded in large part because their products
integrated best with other products or because they developed the strongest marketing
and distribution strategies, rather than primarily because the hardware they produced was
distinguishable from those of their competitors. As mentioned above, this cycle has been
paralleled at various points throughout the evolution of the digital economy, resulting in
substantial changes in the digital value chain over time.
A relatively recent development is the advent of innovative integrated packages of
hardware and software, such as smartphones and tablets (and increasingly, connected
wearable devices). Designing, manufacturing and selling these devices has allowed
companies to improve their position in the value chain and on the market. There appear
to be two major trends that confirm the growing importance of devices. The first trend is
the diversification of devices. Consumers initially accessed the Internet almost exclusively
through personal computers. Now the industry has designed a wide variety of devices
providing access to the web, such as smartphones, tablets, and connected TVs. The
second trend is the growing specialization in devices of businesses formerly specialized
in software or other parts of the value chain. Several businesses have launched their own
tablets or other devices. These devices allow them to establish a closer relationship with
their customers, allowing them to collect more detailed information so that they may
provide customized service with even more relevance and added value.
Over time, hardware devices have both multiplied and diversified in terms of
features and technical characteristics. As shown in figure below, the number of mobile
devices connected to the Internet keeps rising, forming an interconnected infrastructure
colloquially referred to as the Internet of Things. After a long period of personal computer
commoditization, hardware has regained

Total fixed, mobile and broadband access paths

Subscription (millions)

Source: OECD (2013a), OECD Communications Outlook 2013, OECD Publishing, Paris,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/comms_outlook-2013-en

importance in the value chain. At the same time, the price of devices continues to fall over
time. Devices connected through the Internet operate within certain standards that
accelerate their commoditization, if only because individuals own more and more devices
that must be synchronized around the same set of content and data. In addition,
connected objects and devices facilitate sales of intangible goods and services (for
example, a connected car becomes a point of sale for services based on geo-location,
including driving assistance). For this reason, a number of businesses now use hardware
devices as loss leaders in their business model, aimed at expanding the market of
customers for goods and services available through those devices, or at otherwise
leveraging their growing network of end users. Assuming these trends continue, it
appears that for many businesses, revenue from connected devices may ultimately flow
primarily from the operation rather than the continued sales of these devices.

Telecommunications networks

As the Internet turned into a major business phenomenon and adoption rates
accelerated, the network component providers, infrastructure intermediaries, and Internet
service providers (ISPs) that powered and operated the infrastructure of the
telecommunications networks that form the Internet became central to the digital
economy. The interconnection of networks initially gave birth to a specific economy
organized around the status of such infrastructure providers as the primary points of
contact with the ultimate end users, through peering points, data centers, and the data
routes that form the Internet backbone.
The strength of ISPs, however, has traditionally been primarily in providing network
access rather than in providing services across these networks. As a result, unless the
ISPs could leverage their control of access to telecommunications networks, they had
difficulty maintaining their status as the sole access point to the end user against
competition from third-party businesses that provided content and services directly to
users over the Internet. The providers of this content (sometimes called over-the-top
(OTT) content), were able to deliver services more responsive to demand. Thus, while
ISPs remain privileged points of contact with end users and have in general been able to
maintain high profit margins, leveraging control of network access was not possible in
most cases because ISPs were generally operating in increasingly competitive markets
due to sector regulation and were essentially local in their reach (although some ISPs
operated across borders, and many, such as mobile network providers, still do).
In contrast, OTT content providers could offer a unified experience to users at
scale, since their reach was global, unlike network providers whose reach was limited to
the length of their network. As a result, providers of OTT content increasingly took on a
direct relationship with the end users. The development of open-source software
accelerated the pace of innovation on top of the networks. As a consequence, while the
success of OTT content providers has increased aggregate demand for networks, in
markets where there is sufficient competition, prices have declined. While a compelling
hardware device or new network service can still give a particular firm a short-term lead
and introduce new business models (such as “app stores”, for example), experience has
shown that no single player in the value chain can entirely control access to customers
as long as there is sufficient competition.

Software

The World Wide Web, initially made of websites and webpages, marked the
emergence of Internet-powered software applications. Software has therefore been
regarded from the beginning as an important component of the value chain. Even some
software, however, is becoming commoditized. This commoditization has, once again,
been driven by standards, starting with those of the Internet: the Hypertext Transfer
Protocol (HTTP), the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and later Extensible Markup
Language (XML) data formats, email exchange protocols such as Simple Mail Transfer
Protocol (SMTP), Post Office Protocol (POP), and Internet Message Access Protocol
(IMAP). On top of these standards, communities of open-source developers needed to
accelerate the speed to market and constantly iterate newer versions of their software. In
order to innovate at this pace, they chose to share their source code rather than redevelop
it. Although some major software vendors have countered the process of commoditization
with innovation and differentiation, large-scale differentiation and advanced positions
have become increasingly difficult to sustain.
As growing competition in the development of operating systems, databases, web
servers, and browsers reduced profits in many companies’ core business, it also created
new opportunities. Just as commoditization in the hardware market cut profit margins for
traditional manufacturers while creating new opportunities for low-cost low-margin
manufacturers, growing competition in the software market has forced software
companies to become more creative and more responsive to consumers’ needs, all of
which benefited the consumer.

Content

Content gained attention at the end of the 1990s, when content production,
consumption and, above all, indexation appeared to drive the digital economy’s growth.
It saw the rise of first content portals and then search engines as the main gatekeepers
to accessible content on the Internet. Today, many major players in the digital economy
are content providers.
The definition of content in that regard is quite large: it includes both copyrighted
content produced by professionals, enterprise-generated content, and non-copyrighted
user-generated content (such as consumer reviews or comments in online forums). The
importance of content flows from the fact that it is important to attract an audience and
provoke interactions between users. In addition, more content updated more frequently
increases a website’s visibility in search results. Content has hence been a driving force
behind the advertising industry: it has become a key asset to attract an audience and
monetize it with advertisers. Content has also become a way to advertise in and of itself,
with classification into three categories: owned content (content distributed by the brand
on its own channels), paid content (content distributed by other media in exchange of a
payment by the brand), and earned content (content willingly created and shared by
customers without direct payment by the brand, such as customer product reviews,
videos, and social media sharing).
Content is more and more often produced by users, resulting in greater volumes
of content. The success of sites predicated on massive online collaboration by users,
such as Wikipedia and YouTube, has proven that an entire experience can be built around
content primarily generated by individual users. Further, the emergence of the social
networking phenomenon, and the success of major applications in which links and
interactions between users matter more than any primary content put forward to attract
an audience show the same path. Even advertising relies increasingly on user-generated
content, through the concept of earned content, one of the pillars of content marketing.
The sophistication of techniques designed to customize services, including cookies
(technical tools used by businesses to collect user data, notably for commercial purposes
such as behavioral advertising), targeting and retargeting, and collaborative filtering, is
also relevant. The amount of content available online has become so vast that relatively
few businesses have succeeded online by offering premium content, unless they can
leverage that content through a service that prevents competition on volume.

Use of data

Users of applications provide businesses with access to substantial amounts of

data, which are often personal and are used in a variety of ways that continue to be
developed. Collected data can be used not only to customize the experience, but also to
generate productivity and quality gain at scale, through controlled experimentation.
Personal data is acquired in multiple ways; it can be: provided voluntarily by users (for
example, when registering for an online service); observed (for example, by recording
Internet browsing activities, location data, etc.), or inferred (for example, based on
analysis of online activities). The chart below, which is non-exhaustive, provides
illustrations of the ways in which data is collected, stored, analyzed, and used. Capacity
to collect useful data is increasing as the number of Internet-connected devices
increases. Businesses of all sorts make use of user data, as it allows them to tailor their
offerings to customers. As increasing amounts of potentially useful data are collected,
more and more sophisticated techniques must be developed in order to collect, usefully
process and analyse that data.

Personal data

Source: OECD, based on World Economic Forum (2011), Personal Data: The Emergence of a New
Asset Class. www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_ITTC_PersonalDataNewAsset_Report_2011.pdf.
Cloud-based processes

As a result of the standardization and commoditization of different individual

resources, such as hardware, network infrastructure, and software, some businesses
have been able to combine those resources and make them available through the Internet
as services.
Centralized hosting of software resources dates back to the 1960s, when
mainframe providers conducted a service bureau business, also referred to as time-
sharing or utility computing. Such services included offering computing power and
database storage to banks and other large organizations from their worldwide data
centers. Cloud computing at scale is the result of several trends related to both technology
and business models: growing availability of high-capacity networks, low-cost computers
and storage devices as well as the widespread adoption of hardware virtualization,
service-oriented architecture, and utility computing. As a result, value has migrated to
new proprietary applications that are not stand-alone software products, but Internet-
based applications that combine executable code, dynamically updated databases, and
user participation. Although the term “cloud computing” has become commonplace, these
applications have also at various points been referred to as “infoware”, “computing on
demand” or “pervasive computing”.
The X-as-a Service (XaaS) acronym has been introduced to refer to the trending
transformation of software products from goods to services. The Internet essentially
accelerated a transition from traditional software business to XaaS models. A website is
essentially a software application providing a service delivered over the Internet rather
than provided locally or on-site. The service can be about providing access to content (as
a portal), or about providing access to executable code performing certain features. Thus,
the expansion of the Internet brought a new class of centralized computing providers,
called application service providers (ASP). ASPs provided businesses with the service of
hosting and managing specialized business applications, with the goal of reducing costs
through central administration and through the ASP’s specialization in a particular
business application.
As of today, many business-to-consumer (B2C) applications are also delivered as
software as a service: search engines, social networking applications are mainly used
through a web browser, without any need to download any executable code beforehand.
Although applications continue to be downloaded and installed locally, this is done
primarily when there is a frequent need to use them offline. Even some locally-installed
applications, however, require an Internet connection to provide full functionality. The
growing popularity of smart phones and other devices that use frequently interrupted
mobile Internet connections, however, has made downloading applications prominent
again.
Focusing on value created through cloud-based processes is particularly useful to
analyse the ultimate development of the Internet of Things (discussed below), which
refers to the Internet as a network connecting individuals, content, and things in everyday
lives. At the center of this complex network of interconnections are powerful software-
powered processes whose resources can only be stored and executed in the cloud.

What is digital revolution?

Technological breakthroughs have revolutionized communications and the spread

of information. In 1875, for example, the invention of the telephone breached distance
through sound. Between 1910 and 1920, the first AM radio stations began to broadcast
sound. By the 1940s television was broadcasting both sound and visuals to a vast public.
In 1943, the world’s first electronic computer was created. However, it was only with the
invention of the microprocessor in the 1970s that computers became accessible to the
public. In the 1990s, the Internet migrated from universities and research institutions to
corporate headquarters and homes.
All of these technologies deal with information storage and transmission. However,
the one characteristic of computer technology that sets it apart from earlier analog
technologies is that it is digital. Analog technologies incorporate a combination of light
and sound waves to get messages across, while digital technology, with its system of
discontinuous data or events, creates a universal model? to represent information that is
expressed by almost anything using light and sound waves.
To use an analogy, a digital world is a world united by one language, a world where
people from across continents share ideas with one another and work together to build
projects and ideas. More voluminous and accurate information is accumulated and
generated, and distributed in a twinkling to an audience that understands exactly what is
said. This in turn allows the recipients of the information to use it for their own purposes,
to create ideas and to redistribute more ideas. The result is progress. Take this scenario
to a technological level all kinds of computers, equipment and appliances interconnected
and functioning as one unit. Even today, we see telephones exchanging information with
computers, and computers playing compressed audio data files or live audio data streams
that play music over the Internet like radios. Computers can play movies and tune in to
television. Some modern homes allow a person to control central lighting and air-
conditioning through computers. These are just some of the features of a digital world.

What is the relationship between the

digital revolution and the ICT revolution?

The digital and ICT revolutions are twin revolutions. To understand their
relationship, let us look at the history of voice telephony. According to Robert W. Lucky,
the crux of [Alexander Graham] Bells invention of the telephone in 1875 was the use of
analog transmission—the voltage impressed on the line was proportional to the sound
pressure at the microphone. The growth of the telephone was relatively slow; it was not
until the 1920s that a national telephone network was established in the US. In the late
1940s, an alternative to analog transmission of voice was considered with pulse-code
modulation (an encoded signal of pulses). This marked the start of digitization in
telecommunications.
However, it was only in 1961 that the first digital carrier system was installed.
Digitization meant the widespread replacement of telephone operators with digital
switches. In 1971 the first fiber optic cables suitable for communications were made,
leading to efforts to send communications signals via light waves. (Light wave
transmission systems are inherently digital.) By about 1989, ones and zeros had become
the language of telephone networks in the US. Digitization was a critical development
because with digital transmission noise and distortion were not allowed to accumulate,
since the ones and zeros could be regularly restored (i.e., regenerated) by a succession
of repeater sites along the transmission line. The outcome was clearer communications
over longer distances at lower costs.
Today, voice is translated into data packets, sent over networks to remote
locations, sometimes thousands of kilometers away, and, upon receipt, translated back
to voice. Even television is not immune to digitization. In the near future, television signals
and television sets will be digital. It will also be possible to use the television to surf the
Internet. The digital TV will allow people from different locations to chat with each other
while watching a program. With everything becoming digital, television, voice telephony,
and the Internet can use similar networks. The transmission of hitherto different services
(telephony, television, internet) via the same digital network is also known as
convergence.
 Cairncross observes that once the infrastructure and the hardware, be it a
computer or a telephone or another device, have been set in place, the cost of
communications and information exchange will be virtually zero. Distance will no longer
decide the cost of communicating electronically. This explains why, for example, a three-
minute transatlantic call that costs $0.84 today would probably have cost nearly $800 in
today’s money 50 years ago!

What are the main characteristics of digital technology?

Media Integrity: Data stored in analog formats cannot be reproduced without

degradation. The more copies made, the worse the copies get. Digital data, on the other
hand, do not suffer such deterioration with reproduction. For instance, movies, videos,
music and audio files in digital format can be copied and distributed with a quality that is
as good as the original.

Media Integration: One of the major limitations of many conventional technologies is

their inability to combine media types. Telephones, for example, can send and receive
only sound. Similarly, you can watch television and expect a character to answer a
question you pose. However, with digital data, it is easy to combine media. Thus, phones
with video, or interactive sound with pictures, become possible. Hence the term
multimedia.

Flexible Interaction: The digital domain supports a great variety of interactions, including
one-on-one conferences, one-to-many broadcasts, and everything in between. In
addition, these interactions can be synchronous and in real time.

Transactions: The ability to combine the transactional capability of computers and

computer networks with digital media is another interactive advantage of the digital
domain. Placing an order and finalizing a transaction becomes as easy as filling in an
electronic form and clicking a button. Movies-on-demand (where you pay for movies that
you choose to watch on your TV screen) is just around the corner.

Tailoring: Software developed for digital communications and interaction is designed so

that users may tailor their use of the tool and the media in a manner not possible with
conventional analog technologies.

Editing: The conventional alternatives for manipulating text, sound, images, and video
are almost always more cumbersome or limited than the new digital tools. Years ago,
Francis Ford Coppola said that the day would come when his young daughter will take a
home video camera and make films that would win film awards. Coppola’s prediction is
fast becoming a reality. Computers with the right software and minimal hardware can do
today what thousands of dollars’ worth of film and video editing equipment did in the past
decades.

Emerging and Potential Future Developments

The rapid technological progress that has characterized the development of ICT
has led to a number of emerging trends and potential developments that may prove
influential in the near future. Although this rapid change makes it difficult to predict future
developments with any degree of reliability, these potential developments are discussed
below.
• Wearable Computer Systems

Wearable computers are entire systems that are carried by the user, from the CPU
and hard drive, to the power supply and all input/output devices. Such systems are
under development here at the (MIT) Media Lab, where we are also working to create
prototypes of uniquely affective wearable systems. The size and weight of these
wearable hardware systems are dropping, even as [their] durability is increasing. We
are also designing clothing and accessories (such as watches, jewelry, etc.) into which
these devices may be embedded to make them not only unobtrusive and comfortable
to the user, but also invisible to others.
Wearable computers allow us to create systems that go where the user goes, whether
at the office, at home, or in line at the bank. More importantly, they provide a platform
that can maintain constant contact with the user in the variety of ways that the system
may require; they provide computing power for the all-affective computing needs, from
affect sensing to the applications that can interpret, understand and use the data; and
they can store the applications and user input data in on-board memory. Finally, such
systems can link to personal computers and to the Internet, providing the same
versatility of communications and applications as most desktop computers.

• Enter the Communication Satellite

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, just as [Michael] Jordan appeared on the scene,
commercial television began to jump over national boundaries. A decade later, NBA
games, especially those of the Chicago Bulls, could be seen in ninety-three countries.
This exposure was made possible by the direct broadcast satellite (DBS). DBS was
to have a much greater impact on the day-to-day lives of people around the world than
did the moon landing. Launched into orbit so it would float in space over the west coast
of South America, the first broadcast satellite relayed information from specialists on
health and education into previously isolated areas…. The experiment was so
successful that private companies stepped in to launch their own satellites. The
companies, as usual, made their profits by selling advertising. Thus, new technology
led the worlds people into a new era of globalization, paid for by new advertising.
The potential profit of [TV] markets skyrocketed in the 1980s when fiber optic cable
carried information in light waves along a silicon wire that had the thinness of human
hair. Compared with the copper wire it replaced, the silicon wire could transmit dozens
of television programs at once instead of one or two … Digital compression
technologies meanwhile increased the possible number of channels on a television
set from dozens to 150 and even 500. A British firm developed the first round-the-
world fiber optic system in 1991.
Now the possibilities were breathtaking. A single direct-to-broadcast satellite could
transmit to earth all of the Encyclopedia Britannica in less than a minute. The contents
could even be picked up and placed before the viewer by a cable relay station whose
cost in 1975 had been $125,000, but in 1980 was less than $4,000 because of the
quick technological advances. Profits promised to have no limit. As cable and satellites
created international television in the 1980s, so did advertising, whose profits for cable
companies shot up more than ten times.
These new systems seemed to resemble magic cash registers as they churned out
the money. They also resembled dynamite as they blew apart governmental regulation
and geographical boundaries. They did nothing less than change some of the
fundamental ways nations officials behaved toward their citizens.
• The Earth Will Don an Electronic Skin

In the [21st] century, planet earth will don an electronic skin. It will use the Internet as
a scaffold to support and transmit its sensations. This skin is already being stitched
together. It consists of millions of embedded electronic measuring devices:
thermostats, pressure gauges, pollution detectors, cameras, microphones, glucose
sensors, EKGs, electroencephalographs. These will probe and monitor cities and
endangered species, the atmosphere, our ships, highways and fleets of trucks, our
conversations, our bodies even our dreams.
Ten years from now, there will be trillions of such telemetric systems, each with a
microprocessor brain and a radio. Consultant Ernst & Young predicts that by 2010,
there will be 10,000 telemetric devices for every human being on the planet. They'll
be in constant contact with one another. But the communication won’t be at our
plodding verbal pace. Fifty kilobits per second is slow, huffs Horst L. Stormer, a Nobel
prize-winning physicist employed by Lucent Technologies Inc. Bell Laboratories and
Columbia University. Machines will prefer to talk at gigabit speeds and higher so fast
that humans will catch only scattered snippets of the discussion.
What will the earths new skin permit us to feel? How will we use its surges of
sensation? For several years maybe for a decade there will be no central nervous
system to manage this vast signaling network. Certainly, there will be no central
intelligence. But many scientists believe that some qualities of self-awareness will
emerge once the Net is sensually enhanced and emulates the complexity of the
human brain.

• Internet of Things

The number of devices connected to the Internet is expanding rapidly, but substantial
room for expansion remains. While Cisco has estimated that between 10 and 15 billion
devices are currently connected to the Internet, that figure represents less than 1% of
the total devices and things that could ultimately be connected (Evans, 2012). Within
the area of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD),
households alone currently have approximately 1.8 billion connected devices. This
figure could reach as many as 5.8 billion by 2017, and as many as 14 billion by 2022
(OECD, 2013a). As increasing numbers of connected devices are developed and sold,
the expansion of machine-to-machine communication appears likely to dramatically
expand and improve the ability of businesses to collect and analyse relevant data.
A major feature of the Internet of Things is the widened ability to collect and share
data through powerful information systems connected to a multitude of devices,
censors, and cloud computing components. The analysis and use of the data collected
and transmitted by connected devices can help individuals and organizations use their
resources more accurately, make informed purchasing decisions, ramp up
productivity, and respond faster to changing environments. As devices increasingly
transmit more detailed data, the processing of this data can be used automatically to
change the behavior of those devices in real time. It can also make training workers
for skilled positions an easier and more cost-effective process. This trend, so far
primarily contained in data-intensive industries such as finance, advertising, or
entertainment, is likely to penetrate more traditional industries in the future.

• Virtual currencies

Recent years have been marked by the appearance and development of “virtual
currencies”, meaning digital units of exchange that are not backed by government-
issued legal tender. These currencies have taken various forms. Some virtual
currencies are specific to a single virtual economy, such as an online game, where
they are used to purchase in-game assets and services. In some cases, these
 economy-specific virtual currencies can be exchanged for real currencies or used to
purchase real goods and services, through exchanges which may be operated by the
creators of the game or by third parties.
Other virtual currencies were developed primarily to allow the purchase of real goods
and services. The most prominent example of this type are the various
“cryptocurrencies”, including in particular bitcoins, which rely on cryptography and
peer-to-peer verification to secure and verify transactions. Many private operators
have chosen to accept payment in bitcoins.

How bitcoins enter circulation and are used in transactions

Source: U.S. Government Accountability Office (2013), Virtual Economies and Currencies, Report to
the Committee on Finance, U.S Senate.

As virtual currencies increasingly acquire real economic value, they raise substantial
policy issues. Some of these stems from the anonymous nature of transactions. In the
case of bitcoins, for example, transactions can be made on an entirely anonymous
basis, since no personally identifying information is required to be provided to acquire
or transact in bitcoins.

• Advanced robotics

The development of new connected and smart robots is changing manufacturing

profoundly. The increased productivity of new automated factories is already making
it possible for some multinational enterprises that had previously moved
manufacturing offshore to take advantage of lower labor costs to consider moving their
manufacturing activities back to where most of their customers are.
Manufacturing will be further changed by the progress in robotics, as robots have the
potential to make factories less labor intensive and force multinational enterprises to
 think about production and distribution at the same time. This trend has the potential
to be felt particularly strongly in already machine-intensive industries, as automation
increasingly centers on artificial cognition, sensors, machine learning, and distributed
smart networks. It will also have a potential impact where automation has been scarce
so far, especially in small factories and workshops, because software can help
improve security and allow humans to work alongside automated systems. Also, as
robots embed more software and are connected to cloud-based resources, it will
become both easier and cheaper to programme them, which could lead to lowered
prices, making them more accessible to small and middle-size operations. These
lower costs have the potential to bring manufacturing activities increasingly closer to
the customers.
In the future, progress in artificial intelligence and the emergence of cognitive
computing may expand the influence of robots beyond the manufacturing sector and
into broader segments of the economy, as well as into household applications such
as assisting the elderly or disabled with manual tasks. As robots learn to do jobs that
previously were solely done by humans, they can potentially generate productivity,
help lower prices for customers, contribute to scaling up operations at a global level,
and create innovation opportunities which will lead to the emergence of new activities
that will require new skills and potentially create new jobs.

• 3D Printing
Advances in 3D printing have the potential to enable manufacturing closer to the
customer, with direct interaction with consumers impacting the design of product
features. As a result, manufacturing could gradually move away from mass production
of standardized products, and instead focus on shorter product lifecycle by adopting
a strategy of constant experimentation at scale. In the healthcare industry, 3D printing
of custom health products such as hearing aid earpieces is already heavily used. In
addition, 3D printing has the potential to reduce environmental impact relative to
traditional manufacturing, by reducing the number of steps involved in production,
transportation, assembly, and distribution, and can reduce the amount of material
wasted as well. Beyond that, it is conceivable that some manufacturers could
eventually transition away from assembling products themselves, and could instead
license plans and specifications to third party manufacturers or even retailers who will
“print” the products on demand, closer to the customers, but at their own risks and
with a very low margin. Alternatively, consumers may be able to assemble products
themselves by using 3D printers, further increasing the possibility of locating business
activities at a location that is physically remote from the ultimate customer.

• The sharing economy

The sharing economy, or collaborative consumption, is another potentially significant
trend within the digital economy. The “sharing economy” refers to peer-to-peer sharing
of goods and services. The sharing economy is not new, but advances in technology
have reduced transaction costs, increased availability of information, and provided
greater reliability and security. Recent years have seen the emergence of numerous
innovative sharing applications using different business models and focusing on one
particular service or product, such as cars, spare rooms, food, or clothes. Most
individuals who participate in the sharing economy do not do so mainly to make a
living, but to entertain relationships with others, to serve a cause that inspires them,
or simply to make ends meet. Because the supplementary income is a net benefit and
often does not involve much quantitative cost-benefit analysis, amateur providers
have a tendency to share their available resources at a lower price than what a
professional might have billed, thus bringing down overall prices, including those of
the professionals. Through time, as certain platforms attract substantial number of
individuals, these platforms become the prime access point for customers on the
online market and have the potential to provide substantial competition for traditional
 e-commerce applications operated by professionals, which may cut their profit
margins further.

• Access to government data

Governments are making progress at making machine-readable resources, notably
data, publicly available in what has been alternatively labelled as open data policy,
open government or government as a platform. There are three main goals assigned
to open government policies:
➢ Accountability: Making government resources available allows the public to have
direct access to these resources in order to track, document, and evaluate public
policy cost, efficiency, and effectiveness. When it comes to accountability, open
government strategies are meant to providing tools for transparency and to
improving democracy as a whole.
➢ Better performance: Opening government resources also is intended to provide
the means for government agencies to better co-operate with one using cross-
agency software applications.
➢ Participation of third parties in government business: When government
resources are made available to others outside government, third parties can
combine these resources with their own to create hybrid applications that allow
better and more personalized service.

• Reinforced protection of personal data

Under most legal systems, personal data supplied by users is protected by privacy
rules and remains the property of those users. Personal data is regarded as an asset
owned by the individual to whom it relates, such that it is considered their choice,
rather than that of the organization that holds it, to use, exchange, or make this
information available. Data protection rules usually specify what constitutes personal
data, how it is gathered, the standards companies must follow with respect to secure
storage and the requirement to notify individuals of the personal data held and their
rights of access to it. In many countries, rules require adequate data security
provisions in regard to transfer of personal data to third countries. Compliance costs
are usually borne by the public authorities, companies and other organizations that
collect data from individuals.
As individuals become more sensitive to the use of their personal data and expect
their privacy to be protected, discussions are ongoing in a number of countries to
strengthen applicable laws and regulate data collection and exploitation by
organizations (OECD, 2012, 2013b). Increasingly, these rules are imposing
requirements as to how and where data is stored and processed. As exemplified by
the bills currently discussed in the European Union, and in several countries, this trend
could lead to a significant change in business models that rely on the use of personal
data. For example, the obligation to make sure an individual has expressed consent
for the collection of anonymous data, notably in cookies, could affect the user
experience while surfing on web pages and make it more difficult to target or retarget
advertising banners or clicks.

Why are these technological revolutions important?

New technologies transform our lives “by inventing new, undreamed-of things and
making them in new, undreamed-of ways? says the economist, Richard Lipsey.
Imagine what will happen when the cost of a long-distance telephone call becomes
as low as the cost of a local call? Or, when you can get a driving license at a time and
place of your own choosing? Or, when you can bank from the comfort of your own living
room? In some countries, ICT is already making these happen. Many believe that the
current technological revolution may in time exceed the Industrial Revolution in terms of
social significance.
Lipsey, who studies the relationship between technological change and economic
development, suggests that the introduction of new technologies can have the following
effects on society:
✓ Initial productivity slowdown and delayed productivity payoff from the new
technologies
✓ Destruction of human capital (as many old skills are no longer wanted)
✓ Technological unemployment (temporary but serious)
✓ Widening disparities in the distribution of income, which tends to be temporary until
the supply of labor catches up to the new mix of skill requirements
✓ Big changes in regional patterns of industrial location (globalization)
✓ Big changes in required education
✓ Big changes in infrastructure (e.g., the information highway)
✓ Big changes in rules and regulations (intellectual property, antimonopoly, etc.)
✓ Big changes in the way we live and interact with each other

What are some of the consequences of the digital and ICT revolutions?

First, let us look at the effects of the digital revolution. James Beniger explains:
The progressive digitization of mass media and telecommunications content
begins to blur earlier distinctions between the communication of information
and its processing…, as well as between people and machines. Digitization
makes communications from persons to machines, between machines, and
even from machines to persons as easy as it is between persons. Also blurred
are the distinctions among information types: numbers, words, pictures, and
sounds, and eventually tastes, odors, and possibly even sensations, all might
one day be stored, processed, and communicated in the same digital format.
On a societal level, the digital and ICT revolutions make possible better and
cheaper access to knowledge and information. These speeds up transactions and
processes and reduces their cost, which in turn benefit citizens and consumers.
The ability of ICTs to traverse time and distance allows human beings to interact
with each other in new ways. Distance is no longer a consideration. As Giddens observes,
With the advent of the communications revolution, distance has a different
relationship to self-immediacy and experience than it used to have. Distance
isn’t simply wiped out, but when you have a world where the value of the
money in your pocket is affected immediately by ongoing electronic
transactions happening many miles away it’s simply a different situation from
how the world was in the past.

Put another way, so what if two people are located in different time zones? They
can still talk, negotiate, and make deals as though they were face to face. As the
sociologist Manuel Castells has noted, “Technological revolutions are all characterized
by their pervasiveness, that is by their penetration of all domains of human activity, not
as an exogenous source of impact, but as the fabric in which such activity is woven? What
else can go wrong?
 Will all countries and peoples be swept up in the technological revolution?

The revolution will affect some countries earlier than it will others. For ICT to weave
its magic, it must find a hospitable social and political environment. New technologies
threaten existing power and economic relationships, and those that benefit from these old
relationships put up barriers to the spread of the new technologies. Note, for example,
how the music industry has resisted digital audio tapes and Napster. Moreover, laws can
deter (or encourage) the spread of new technologies. For example, the lack of legal
recognition for digital contracts and digital signatures is holding back electronic
commerce.
Debora Spar states that “life along the technological frontier moves through four
distinct phases: innovation, commercialization, creative anarchy, and rules? While
individualism and the absence of government are characteristics of the first three stages,
government—with its rule making and enforcing capability—is a key player in the fourth
stage. This is because
The establishment of property rights is one of the most crucial events along the
technological frontier. It allows the market to unfold in a predictable way, and
gives pioneers a hefty dose of ownership and security. Most important,
perhaps, the creation of property rights also marks the difference between
pioneers and pirates, between those whose claim on the new technology is
legitimate and those whose claim is not.

It is important to remember that technology is shaped by

society as much as it shapes society. Thus, those interested
in harnessing the power of new technologies should help
create the right environment for it to flourish.

Learning Resource:
1. Videos to watch:

a. Digital Evolution: Digital. Social. Global.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXjYXyLuOlA
b. Going digital: Is this evolution or revolution? Part 1 of 6 Introduction
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3TWE-NDroQ
c. Digital Transformation | What is Digital Transformation | Digital Transformation 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=508CR1fd8ws

2. Articles to Read:

a. Neil Gross, The Earth Will Don an Electronic Skin, in Businessweek Online (August 30,
1999). Accessed 28 August 2002.
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/The_Information_Age/The_Digital_and_ICT_Revolution
b. OECD (2013a), OECD Communications Outlook 2013, OECD Publishing, Paris,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/comms_outlook-2013-en
c. World Economic Forum (2011), Personal Data: The Emergence of a New Asset Class.
www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_ITTC_PersonalDataNewAsset_Report_2011.pdf
d. Information and communication technology and its impact on the economy
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325570282_Positive_and_Negative_Impacts
_of_Information_and_Communication_Technology_in_our_Everyday_Life
Activities / Assessment:

1. Write a blog article with concept focusing on digital age revolution, you may opt to
choose on various areas of ICT discussed in the module (Ex. Social Media, Digital
Education, Electronic Communication), but it will be good if you chose an ICT topic
based on your field of study or course. Encourage at least 3 visits from your
classmate to read your blog and make an assessment or comment in your blog
page.
Post your blog link in our FB incognito page and submit your transcript to [email protected].
Deadline of Submission: Friday, February 25, 2022 until midnight only.