The rapid development of digital technology brings about a very significant change in our way of thinking and living. Those changes can in turn bring with them positive and negative effects into our lives, very rapidly. It seems like a long time ago when using the word “globalization” in our sentences makes us look intelligent. Now, hearing someone saying it in a class gives me a secondhand embarrassment. Not because globalization itself didn’t happen, but because it happened so fast, most of us probably didn’t even realize it. The driving forces behind the globalization are the advances of transportation and communication technology, but nothing is perhaps more profound than the rapid development of the internet.
Before we delve deeper into the impacts of technology, e-business, and e-commerce in general, we need to get accustomed with the basics. Modernization is a process in which a society tries to renew, assimilate, or even replace their old values entirely with a new one that have the characteristics of a modern society. Modernization is often met with resistance from old tradition, which is why it can also be defined as a shift from traditional society into a modern society.
Modernization involves a wide range of processes and is relativistic in nature, e.g. depending on space (place) and time dimensions. Time dimension, for example, in the late 2009 to early 2010s, one would definitely say that Facebook was the pinnacle of modern social media and therefore “being modern”. However, not long after, Twitter came along, Instagram, Whatsapp, etc., now TikTok is the jam, and it’s becoming harder and harder to say which one represents the modern social media, even when Facebook (the company) itself owns two of the mentioned above. Because everything is changing rapidly, what we believe is modern today could turn obsolete or “traditional” in just a few years. Remember the time when if you have a MySpace or a Friendster account, you’re a cool person?
Space dimension is dependent on the society that’s in the process of modernization. For example, in some places in Indonesia, internet is still considered to be a luxury. Not because it’s a new thing, but because the network development hasn’t completely reached their location, or it has, but very minimalistic in scale or just the bare minimum. Some people might have never experienced the speed of a 4G or maybe even a 3G connection. On the other hand, in other parts of the world like most developed countries, high-speed internet is probably as natural as breathing.
Modernization also encompasses a transformation from a relatively traditional or pre-modern society which includes the technology and social organization, into a more economical and political that are the characteristics of stable western countries. The manifestation of modernization itself covers modern lifestyle aspects such as mechanization, mass media and digital technology, and therefore, we can’t separate modernization from technology development.
The Impacts
If I were to summarize the impacts of the development digital technology, e-business and e-commerce into a single word, it would be the “shift”, because almost every change in the digital technology has also changed the environment in one way or another.
PERSPECTIVE SHIFT
Modernization is, more often than not, putting more emphasis on rationality. It’s not an outrageous thing to say that today’s youth are more rational than people who were born in the 70s or 80s. In the globalization age, humans tend to put forward their common sense before anything else, and therefore their minds will try to get rid of things that are difficult to process using common sense or logic, such as beliefs in things that are considered to be myth, superstition, mystical, or even religions. There are even cases where some people will use technology to (dis)prove those beliefs. Modern society tends to believe in real things that can be perceived by their five senses and processed by their brains.
In the old world, people could live their whole lives without ever having to change their perspective on things. Some still do, but it’s getting harder in an era where people’s opinions can be shared, viewed, and therefore critiqued by people from other parts of the world and cultures with their own set of social values. And when that happened, usually the most likely option is to either become a Global Homogeneity or developing a Local Cultural Maturity.
For example, one of the hot topics in Indonesia a while ago was the issue of the normalization of LGBT community. It is a big issue in Indonesia because about 96% of our population are comprised of Muslims (86.7%) and Christians (10%), both are pretty outspoken in their rejection of the LGBT community. However, like I mentioned before, there’s a shift in our perspective whereby more people are now detaching their life’s choices from the myth, superstition, mysticism, and even religion. This can be seen by how a lot of developed nations in the world have been allowing same-sex marriage for years now, normalizing and supporting the LGBT community. It has even come to a point where if you post something anti-LGBT on certain social medias (especially ones that are popular in those countries), you’ll probably get a lot of heat coming your way.
Now we can start to see that there’s this universal shift in perspective that is caused by the easy access to information, knowledge, social values from other cultures, etc. While the example I give above will probably have polarized views in countries like Indonesia, in which people can get a rock thrown at them for either saying it a good or a bad change, there’s definitely a good change due to technology development such as social media. Let's take a look at exhibit B, the Black Lives Matter campaign has been one of the main focus of social issues in the United States for a while, and for a good reason. That country has a dark history with racism and slavery. What makes it worse is the fact that it’s still happening to this day and age. The African-American community in the US has been facing injustice and unfairness for decades just because of their skin color. They’ve been lynched, violently arrested, brutally beaten, and shot to death for something so trivial. Technology can now bring these dark aspects of their society to light. People around the world can see how terrible and wrong it is, show their support, and force a change for the better.
There will probably come a time where all of us have to make a choice between being a part of the Global Homogeneity, or to stick to our local culture values. Or, maybe it’s already happening without us even realizing.
From my experience, human in general has an innate desire for a connection. This connection doesn’t have to come in the form of real social contact. It can be as simple as having the same taste in food, fashion, music, movie, comedy, sports, etc. with another person online. It’s simple, yet at the same time can be profound. This is probably why there are many successful “Reaction Channels” on YouTube, even though when you think about it, their content is “only” about them reacting to something. So, why do a lot of people watch them? Why do I watch them? I can’t speak for everyone else, so I’m just going to say this based on my experience, but watching someone else watch what I like, and seeing them liking or enjoying it can be somewhat relieving. It’s nice to know that someone else likes something that I like. It’s reaffirming that we’re not alone in this world. However, there’s the other side of the coin. When someone, they could be a friend, a spouse, a celebrity, anyone, that we think we have a connection to makes a dramatic change in their life or the ideology that they believed in, it could also in turn affect us. Again, we desire a connection, and when we don’t want to lose that connection, sometimes we’ll make the same change in order to preserve that connection. That’s why it’s also important to have a strong sense of self, because not every change is good, and with the vast array of choices of social media and a wide range of “characters” that occupy them, we can easily get lost, quickly.
LIFESTYLE SHIFT
When it comes to the impact of technological advancements, this is probably the one aspect that’s been affected the most. Technology affects the way we communicate, learn, and think. Some of us could probably still probably remember how college students would occasionally write a letter to their parents to let them know how they’re doing in college, or to ask more money. I personally still remember how in my first year of middle school I used to write letters to my crush, along the embarrassment that comes with it. I also remember how since my third year, I’ve never written a single letter to anyone on a piece of paper anymore (except for school work) because I’ve got a mobile phone. However, one big change that I noticed as people shift towards mobile communication is that we socialize less and less by the day. Some studies have even shown that we’re negatively affected by mobile communication when it comes to being sociable and making face-to-face contact.
As technology keeps bringing more and more conveniences, we can see that we as a living being are moving less and less. In today’s world, some of us could live most of their live never having to go outside of the house. We can get almost anything online, from food, daily necessities, clothing, to electronics, etc. with a tap of our finger. This wouldn’t have been possible without the advancement of digital technology, especially the internet and its accompanying smartphone.
Another area is learning. It’s been forever since I hold and read a real physical book. I’m sure a lot of people are still reading conventional books, and those books do hold a certain value to them that can’t be found on e-books. However, as our technology is rapidly growing, so does our knowledge, and therefore the need to find, learn, and do things quickly. There’s simply an undeniable benefit to having the ability to learn things in the digital format, such as lookup. We don’t have to manually open a book and turn a page by page looking for something when we can simply type a keyword and let the computer does the turning and finding in a fraction of a second. We can quickly find a tutorial on YouTube on how to edit a photo without having to try and learn the function of every single button and menu on Adobe Photoshop.
That being said, there’s also the danger of people taking things that they learn, read, hear, or watch from the internet, out of context. Whether it’s intentional or not, it’s bound to happen. Some people are too lazy to read the whole article and instead they only read the headline. Some people don’t have the necessary knowledge to understand the information given to them, so they draw the wrong conclusion. Some people are too smart for their own good that they bend (read: manipulate) the information to fit their personal agenda. It’s part of the bargain, I guess.
Mobile technology can decrease direct communication and relations between people. We’ll often find that we don’t having enough time for ourselves because we feel like we’re always in contact with someone. There is also the risk of losing our privacy, because anyone can find us anywhere, at any time of the day. All of these things impact how humans act today. Without technological advancements, our way of life would not be as complex. Technological influences shape the way humans act today.
CULTURE CHANGE
Technology is a byproduct of culture, hence when there’s a dramatic change in technology, it could be used as an indicator that the culture is also in the process of changing, or vice versa. Perspective and lifestyle shift give way to a cultural change because culture is the way of life (lifestyle), general customs, social values, norms and beliefs (perspective) of a particular group of people at a particular time.
Culture shift (to be differentiated with culture change) usually refers to the process of new or unique items — can be a person, a product, an idea, or ideology — interacting with and becoming part of an existing (foreign) culture. In terms of human experience, it can be described as a form of psychological disorientation likened to frustration that may be the result of a combination of many elements within the new environment or the lack of elements from the old culture, in the process of adjusting to the new culture.
In this digital era, however, this can still happen without us ever having to visit and/or directly experience another culture from another far away place. Perhaps not in the way that the “normal” culture shift happens, but more in the form of the supplanting of local products, ideas, or even ideologies through the use of technology, especially social media.
Social media allows us to easily see, learn, and to a point, experience other people’s cultures and experiences. While culture shift through social media may take longer, in my opinion, it is actually easier to occur and “smoother” in nature because it doesn’t have that phase where someone may feel homesickness, hyper-irritability, bitterness or resentment towards their host country, social anxiety, and other negative feelings because they’re not actually there. They’re in their home, using and/or watching other TikTok users from another country.
That being said, it can also be dangerous because like I said very early in this article, sometimes we don’t realize the change. And what’s worse, sometimes we don’t have the appropriate filter for it, so we could be taking in and assimilating other cultures with no limits, without knowing whether it’s a good thing for us.
On a more business-related note, in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic, the film industry, and especially theater chains are faced with hard decisions. The theater chains are bleeding money just to keep their businesses afloat. The studios aren’t in a much better shape either and they need money to keep making more movies to make more money. But with theaters being closed, some are forced to release their movies on streaming platforms. While on the outset it may seem like the pandemic is the one to blame, the theater industry has been in a rough shape long before the COVID-19 hit them hard. Slowly, but surely, people are bringing the theater experience into their own homes (read: streaming).
While I personally like the theater experience, I also can’t deny that economically, streaming is the way to go for the general customers. For example, in the US, average ticket prices for the last few years are around $15 a ticket, for ONE movie, that’s excluding popcorn and beverages. Meanwhile, Netflix subscribers can enjoy ANY number of movie or shows they like to watch for a whole MONTH, for only $9 - $18 (depending on the subscriber’s choice of plan). Granted, most people don’t have a giant projection and Dolby surround system in their homes, but I don’t think most people care. As more and more people around the world has easy access to high-speed internet, we will probably see the start point that is the end of theater industry.
The rapid change in technology — either by improvements or new innovation — that is disruptive enough is usually followed by a change in the business model, voluntarily or involuntarily. The rate in which the change of the business model takes can be slow or swift depending on how quick the customers’ cultures adapt to the change in technology.
CIVILIZATION SHIFT
When there’s a dramatic change in our way of life, communicate, and think that affects us globally; or when we start to think as a species rather than a collection of individuals of different race, ethnicity, and religion, I think it’s an indication that we’re in a civilization shift. Do the fast-growing and rapid advancements of technology have the ability to trigger such a phenomenon? I'm not equipped with the required knowledge to answer that question, but I do think we’ve seen the signs in the last decade or so.
Humans usually evolve to accommodate change in the environment. Evolving isn’t limited to biology, we evolve in the way we think as well. The change in the environment will eventually force us to change our way of thinking. One of the important elements of our environment is technology.
Nowadays, we don’t move a lot, but we do move a lot of data and information. Even in the event that some of us do move a lot, e.g. couriers, drivers, pilots or delivery service workers, our transportation systems and technology are now getting more efficient by the day, not just in terms of the engineering, but in the devices that helps us navigate as well. We’re slowly moving all the burden of computation to computers, from something as simple as computing the average grades of our students, finding the best or fastest route to take, analyzing big data to detect customers’ consumption and buying patterns, to solving the hardest mathematical problems.
As CPUs are getting faster and faster, AIs are getting smarter and smarter, we are getting relatively lazier and lazier to do even the most basic tasks. And not because for the lack of trying. Automatization has been on the rise for a while now. The fear, of course, is that once AIs are getting sentient, people are going to get replaced by machines that are able to do things faster, more efficient, more accurate (less errors) and tireless compared to their human counterpart. This may be good news for business owners who are looking for more productivity, but it’s bad news for the human workers. Now, if only everything in the world was free or at least cheap, and we can leave the heavy workloads to machines while we sip our tea, sit in our yard and watch the sun sets. That’s the utopia. That’s the civilization shift that we should be aiming for. We’re not there, yet, but I don’t think we should rush ourselves (by way of technology) to get there. A good balance is needed in order to maintain a stable society and civilization. While developing technology to help the survival of the human race is important, it’s equally important to develop and improve the human part of the equation. At the end of the day, what’s the point of a great technology in unqualified or even the wrong hands? What’s the point if only a handful of people can afford to use it? What’s the point if we use it to fight each other in an endless cycle of hate?
We need to heal our society in order to heal our planet, and us to survive.
