Today we are living in digital society. Due to rise of digital technology basic fabric of society is almost changed. For example, in India twenty years back, cellular phones were bulky and were a status symbol. Users seldom revealed their cell phone numbers, as incoming calls were also metered or charged. Now sleek cell phones are the norm and each Indian possesses a cell phone. The word “Privacy” is unknown to Indians earlier, now they practice it. Thus digital technology has started shaping the society. Earlier posts like tribal, agrarian and industrial society discussed length and breadth of technology-society association. In this post emphasis will on the digital technology.
Technology has so advanced that by click of a button we get any information we want. Is this means we are far superior than our ancestors? The answer is Yes and No. Internet has become giant virtual library. Internet contains lot of text information and videos which are structured, static and suited for one way communication (author to reader or viewers). We have honed our skills to surf and sift information from Internet. By this reason, yes is the answer. We lack the ability to communicate, leave alone extracting information from fellow humans. This is because human to human interaction is much unstructured, dynamic and two way (author to listener, and listener to author). Communication is complex and lot of training is required to excel [1]. We had fishermen, who observed the cloud and predicted the weather and other vital information required for fishing. In agrarian society humans acted as an information repository.
Today society banks more on man-machine interaction rather than human-human interaction. This may result in assorted individuals (Man, woman, boy and girl) instead of a family (Father, mother, son and daughter) staying in a house. Thus our challenge is to make the digital devices to assist us in improving human-human interaction.
Digital Devices
We come across devices like digital clock, mp3 player, audio compact disc player, Video Compact Disc (VCD) player, Digital Video Disc (DVD) player, computer, cellular phone, Tablet and so on. These diverse devices can be brought under umbrella of digital devices. Analog devices operate on analog signals which are continuous in time as well as in value. Digital signals are discrete in time and can hold only two values i.e. ones and zeros. Dominance of digital devices over analog counter parts is due to the axis of IC fabrication, Computer and Internet.
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| Figure 1. Digital Clock | Image courtesy Wikipedia |
