Introduction
The 21st century is a time of profound technological disruptions. There are many positive consequences of these disruptions for technology along with some negative consequences too. Democratic campaigning is directly changing by digital technology. In the modern era, technological change is a distinctive factor. Some of the small new technological breakthroughs can have unexpected and huge consequences in changing the world. An innovation that alters the way that industries, consumers and businesses operate is termed as a disruption in technology. Preparing technological disruptions are difficult to prepare because they can appear suddenly. In this essay, a contradiction has been raised regarding the technological disruption and its negative impact on the social lives in the 21st century.
Technological disruptions in the 21st century
As per the viewpoint of García (2019), these technological disruptions are having both positive and negative consequences for democracy. The few examples of digital technology streaming media, self-driving cars, smart phones, and data science and analysis. Excessive use of technologies such as smart phones, televisions, video games and technical toys has a negative impact on the kids. This puts a bad effect on behavior, obesity, sleep problems, violence, and loss of social skills. Children who spend more time on digital devices experience symptoms of strain in the eye. Technologies and digital devices are providing a lot of data that assists people to gain deeper insights into motivation and brain processes under different conditions. In order to maximize focus and creativity, this enables people to design learning and environments to work. A huge ecosystem of innovative business models and e-commerce business tools has been created due to the digital explosion.
Negative consequences of technological disruptions
According to Del Barrio-García et al. (2019), technological disruptions have some negative consequences in the 21st century and many industries are threatened by technological disruption. Some of the industries that have been affected by creative destruction are like different types of travel websites that have eliminated the need for human travel agents. Due to blogs and online media, newspapers have seen a steady decline in recent times. On the other hand, Gordon (2017) advocated that lots of booksellers have to close their stores due to the rapid growth of online bookstores. Different car-sharing applications are giving the traditional taxi drivers a run for their money. One of the things of the past is the radio DJ’s and the software now chooses most of the played music, ads have been inserted and even reads the news. Media streaming has almost more or less the sales of CD and changed the model distribution of the home and music video industries. Supporting the previous opinion Read (2019), say that due to technological advancements, many jobs and industries will be lost. On the other hand, technology has also largely impacted the mental and physical health of the users. Being overly connected with technology can cause psychological issues and can also have negative repercussions by causing vision problems, loss of hearing and neck strain.
Supporting argument
Initially, the discoveries in science do not have the positive and the negative impact but the usage of these technologies and its adverse effect develop the impact. Like the disruptive technologies that developed in the 21st century has created various negative impacts on democracy. According to Gainous, Wagner & Gray (2016), the use of social media has created a negative influence on the change of attitude of common people. The authors in 2010 have used multilevel models and to estimate the change in attitude of the common people by the increasing use of the internet. The result visualizes that social media usage is more profound to the countries with more internet freedom as for example Latin America.
The flow of information via the internet has created substantial effect on people’s feeling about the government and thus creating political instability. On the other hand Jurasz & Barker, (2019), the impact of social media on the section of e-commerce. The social media platforms are used by various people for harassing and using abusive tweets to politicians. For example, evidence from the amnesty international study says about harassing female politicians. The social media platforms are used for sending sexual threats, vulgar tweets and anti Semitic and hateful words. These social media platforms are also used by the opponent parties for delivering fake news among the citizens about the opponent team and thus creating misbalance in democracy among the public. As per Delis, Hasan & Ongena (2019) the e banking procedure of delivering loans has created disruption in democracy. The survey results show that the loans that are given online are hampering democracy as the loans are not refunded to the bank with proper interest. Due to the lack of documents, frauds are increasing in case of online banking. According to Alsayed & Bilgrami (2017), the recent increase in internet banking has increased the financial risk among many users. The phishing attacks have become most common and have become an online identity of theft because the confidential data can be easily stolen from the online portals by the hackers. Smartphone’s have shaped up the mind of the younger generation, video games, social media and various other apps has become the addictive zone. The recent study says that the recreation of the new activities in computers has deteriorated the labor supplies between the age group 21 to 30. The research also views the main problem that is faced by the common people is getting fake news which spread faster on twitter and other portals. As a result the citizens are less informed about many cases and thus delude is created in choosing a public figure (weforum.org, 2018).
While adoption of technology may be disruptive to the well-being of people in the short term especially in relation to the jobs, it also has extended its negativity through centuries and makes the rights of democracy more vulnerable. As per the view of Young (2018), technologies are affecting the economy of a country, different businesses, data security, different crimes and terrorism, over-reliance on gadgets and a few more factors. Disruption of technology has equally supported the advantages and interrupted in the democratic rights of people. In the opinion of Moglia et al. (2018), data security is one of the most important factors which are getting violated by digital technology and lots of data can be stored and collected through digital technology. This consists of private data concerning individuals and organizations. It sometimes gets very difficult to keep all the data safe and important information may go into the hands of criminals, foreign enemies, and terrorists with just a single breach.
The Internet is often considered as the fertile territory of evil forces to operate due to its large scale and international nature that users can enjoy. For instance, using social media by the terrorists in order to promote them and encourage others, using chat rooms for exchanging various data like photos, videos, and other information. Gordon (2017) has mentioned that social disconnection and isolation happens due to the gradual increase in the tendency for people to communicate through social media rather than contacting in real life. Due to the lack of contact in real life, depression and mental illness are found very common in many people nowadays.
Work overload is a primary matter of concern which is found in many workers nowadays who spend their days by keeping up with lots of emails which they are sent every week and some of those require immediate reply or action after reading. In some jobs such as minutes of a meeting, photographs, training videos, and reports where a huge amount of digital data are organized can also cause headaches. As per the opinion of García (2019), the global economy is deeply affected by technology and its use has been connected to the transformation in the marketplace. Progress in technology is supposed to increase the productivity of the economy and potential growth.
The ever-present fake news problem is also there due to the high use of social media. According to Alsayed & Bilgrami (2017), it is found that fake news through social media spreads faster than true news. In many cases, this has not only made citizens less informed but also made the public figures dismiss the truth as fake. One of the most notable incidents is the 2016 election of the US when it is assumed that fake news on Facebook helped to elect Donald Trump as the new president. Adding to this, real-life events are no longer experienced by many people. With the use of social sites media is uploaded, concerts of music are videoed on mobile phones and different events are being photographed now. As digitized machines are replacing humans, society continues to become more depersonalized.
Opposing argument
In contrast to previous arguments, this part has analyzed those concepts that strongly oppose the statement of negative consequences on democracy due to technological disruption in the 21st century. In the 20th century, technologies like social networking and electronic commerce were not developed at such a high rate as in 21st century. The disruption is remembered to be a positive force so the disruptive technologies are not breakthrough but it is an innovation of new techniques that signifies and alter the way of many industries, customers and the business operators. The disrupted technologies made the service more accessible and affordable and thereby making them applicable to a huge span of population. The disruptive technologies are like e-commerce, online new sites for registering complaints and other forms of the GPS system.
According to Chesney & Citron (2019), disruptive technologies have a positive effect on democracy as by using the online portals the distortions in the policy debates and the online manipulation of elections can be stopped. As per the concern of Shufutinsky et al. (2018), the practice in case of analyzing the conflicts of democracy and the resolutions will be changed by the disruptive technology. The advancement and the emerging of the new innovations of technology in the third decade of the 21st century have composed a good relationship between the society and the government. On the other hand, the viewpoint of Persily (2017), the innovative tools to call up the common people or the voters through social media that has been designed improved the way voting campaign by micro targeting them. As for example, the use of innovative social technologies during the 2016 election campaign has helped Barrack Obama in reaching a huge number of citizens at a time. In distinction to others Rukasha & Bankole (2019), focused on disruptive technology like electronic commerce has a positive impact on corporate governance and on the retail sectors. E-commerce has become the fastest option to carry out business transactions and has come out one of the safest means for all the common people including globalization on the market place. The introduction of e-commerce has brought many changes in the manner of functions incorporate institutions and has provided a positive impact on the ethics of various organizations.
The e-banking, online selling, purchasing and online payment these all has simplified the way of living for all the common people. Differently, Anvari & Norouzi (2016) highlighted the impact of e-commerce on the economic development of the country. The development and the application of the diffusion of internet, e-commerce has created a global effect on the economic zone of some countries. The Internet is profoundly affecting most of the business as millions of people conduct research on various new portals that are opened from the government for purchasing and selling the products. This made economic benefits for the government and also created opportunities for all common people to transact across the borders.
At the same time Wolf, Sze & Beyene (2019), focused on the smart voting keys that have positively affected the democracy by creating various issues. The voting systems and the information technology have come up with the idea of a new electronic voting system. The proper democracy has some fundamental criteria like fair government leadership election by authorized voting. The smart electronic voting system explored the authentication of the voting so that the common people do not face any challenges. As advocated by (Atkinson, 2018), the greater digital innovations of the new technologies have helped in holding the connectivity among all people. Not only these disrupted technologies are also creating a path for disruption in politics and also broadcast by taking the test of stability in a democratic system. The catalytic change in the technology by the invention of new modes and the models has engaged the citizens in new policymaking. The shifting of the parties, the campaign, to communicate with the voters, economic build-up and most importantly the authentication in election system these all positively affected by the disrupted technology.
Final decision
The previous arguments deal with the analysis of both the positive and negative aspects of disruptive technology and about its impact on democracy. In the opinion of (Jurasz & Barker, 2019), the technology may improve the political responsiveness but at the same time it may raise up the challenges to all the traditional practices for all plural republics. The other concerns that play with this democratic technology are that the political ruler is using the social network as an echo-chamber. It can be said that at the broad this social networking is diminishing the capacity of all the groups that are created. It confuses common people as the citizens are not able to understand the interest as well as the perspective by weakening the social togetherness.
The positive and negative news that are advertised in social media is increasing the risk of conflict between various age groups by hindering democracy. According to Makvand & Fernández (2017), the challenges faced by social media in case by increasing the spread of disinformation or the theories of conspiracy and by increasing its effect on common people. The generation of expanding the capacity of data with the combination of processed power may create structural hazards to the function of democratic societies. The automation in the business has created a threat among the whole sectors by replacing the efficient methods and the machines. As per Atkinson, (2018), this structural change has created a threat among the workers because the capacity of technologies is delivering high risk of obsolete among the employees. From these all viewpoints, it can be decided that disrupted technologies of the 21st century might have some useful or productive effect but in contradiction, it has a more negative impact on both the public and in government.
Conclusion
From all the above points it can be concluded that the disruptive technologies of the 21st century have more negative aspects rather than the positive aspect. The disruptive technologies like new social websites, e- portals and electrical banking this may save the time of people but at the same time increase the risk factors. The automated generated pins and OTP can be easily hacked by other persons by increasing the chance of economic insecurity. The web portals or the social sites that are used by the politicians in voting campaigns sometimes deliver fake news among the citizens resulting in conflict between two parties. The automated machines that are recently developed are used in many workplaces by obsolescing manual workers. Thus, technologies have started creating dilemma among the workers. The manual workers are being terminated for the usage of these technologies and thus creating an unemployment situation which is a democratic hurdle.
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