Adjusting To The New Economy

As “our world shifts to a new highly technical planetary economy” (Kelly, 1999), it is observed that every facet of ones existence is revolutionised to accommodate this new way of life.

In my personal experience, I have known no different, thus the shift from traditional to contemporary methods of communication has not been so noticeable for myself… and for many others among my generation. However, As this weeks reading by Kevin Kelly suggests, the hi-tech developments have restructured human existence and “the geography of wealth is being reshaped by our tools” (Kelly, 1999). So as a consequence, those who take this in their stride and cooperate with the way that the world is maturing will succeed, and those that fail to do so will descend into the distance, be left behind and essentially become forgotten.

Kelly feels that, “the new economy has three distinguishing characteristics: It is global. It favors intangible things – ideas, information, and relationships. And it is intensily linked” (1999). This is particularly true for business for obvious reasons, but also plays a great role in other areas of human existence. For instance, our social world has been entirely remoulded. Gone are the days where a hand written letter was the only way to inform your grandmother of your achievements. “The world of communication now includes all kinds of media—audio, video, rich media presentations, interactive websites, DVD, simulations, and virtual meeting environments.” (Aho, 2005)

Since relocating two years ago, I have developed a large social network with friends and family scattered all over the world. Thus, I rely on skype, e-mail, facebook and sms text messaging – the main forms of digital communication – in order to preserve relations with friends and family.

After gathering quantitative data to record the connections of my personal relationships across social networks, it is evident that I utilize the digital developments immensely, particularly use of my mobile phone. It is clear from the graph below text messaging is the predominant means of communication, which I choose to engage in. There are many factors that explain why I rely on text messaging:

-                Convenience

-                Speed

-                Time to think about response

-                Saving of information and conversation

-                Entertainment

-                Distraction

When comparing the amount of digital communication to face-to-face communication, it is clear that digital interaction prevails. The main reason for the lack of face-to-face communication is due to location. Most of the friends I examined do not live within a reasonable radius to undertake face-to-face interaction on a regular basis. However, I did note that I have a very large amount of text messages sent to my roommate who lives merely meters away from me. I put this down to laziness. Why get out of bed to walk a few meters, knock on a door and wait for a response when I can simply send an sms whilst in the comfort of my bed and achieve the same result?

Digital communication devices are a blessing to the lazy beings of generation Y!  Kelly’s assertion that “Human expression, thought, communication, and even life have been infiltrated by high technology” could not be more correst. I believe many of the repercussions of the invasion of digital networking go unnoticed to the masses as they seamlessly glide into ones life, creating less labor to the modern man.

Reference List:

Aho, K 2005 “Digital Communication for All Students,” THE Journal, 24 May accessed 10.4.2011, http://www.adobe.com/education/solutions/pdfs/dc_for_all_students.pdf

Kelly, K 1999, “This new economy,”New Rules for the new Economy, URL: http://www.kk.org/newrules/newrules-intro.html, accessed 10.8.2011