If we look back 40 to 50 years ago, technology nowadays looks very advanced and sophisticated that it may amaze people from the past. People of the past might not believe their eyes if they see television with color, screen that can be touched, wireless charging, cloud storage and many more today’s technologies that seem unimaginable for them. These technologies show us that how much digital technologies have improved over these past decades. We can say that we are very comfortable with today’s technologies and we may not need any major improvement in the future. But believe me, various researches and developments have been done by scientists and engineers nowadays to make our technologies more advanced than now in the future. It is not impossible if someday we will witness flying cars, teleportation machine and augmented reality glasses are wandering around us and we act like nothing spectacular happen because it will be a normal life for us. We have to know that technology development will not stop and it will be moving forward day by day and thus, we have to keep up with its pace to make sure we will survive living in the future world.
Firstly, let us talk about features of future technology that may be become reality in the future. There are many ideas on how future technology will look like. The features of future digital technology are; tactile virtual reality, internet for everyone, heart-monitoring t-shirt, AI scientist, smart needles in medical field, artificial neurons on silicon chips and your brain print as password. For (Science Focus, 2019). Furthermore, with the vast use of wearable devices such as smart watches and fit band, technology like heart-monitoring t-shirt might be one of the technology that people will use widely in the future. Not only that, medical field nowadays also starting to benefit the use of digital technology in their devices. With the use of AI scientist to predict and analyse what diseases a human body has and sophisticated tools such as smart needles to recognise cancer also silicon chips to predict the possibilities of getting dangerous diseases, it is not impossible that these technology will take place in society to provide many advantages to human kind. It is true that some of these technologies already exist in this era. However, for sure in the future, these technologies will become vital and necessary in our everyday lives.
One of the most important thing that we will be discussing is the issues that digital technology are facing currently. There are several current issues related to digital technology such as; i) phishing, ii) digital preservation, and iii) digital literacy. Phishing is an action where someone especially scammers attempt to acquire our personal information such as usernames, passwords and credit cards details for mischievous reasons by pretending to be reliable organisation in digital platform like email and short message service. The second one, digital preservation is being discussed on how digital preservationists find ways to maintain digital content nowadays to be relevant in the future so that it will not become vulnerable to eradication. Lastly, this famous issue of digital literacy shows us about how people nowadays be able to adapt with digital knowledge, skills and manners to make sure they can survive with future era of digital technology (Haris, 2016). In all, these issues whether they are good or bad, are very important to be tackled so that these insignificant issues can be mitigated in the future.
Moreover, the second matter is future issues related to digital technology. There are five of the future issues of digital technology which are; i) artificial intelligence and machine learning, ii) automation and robotics, iii) crypto-currency and blockchain, iv) internet of things, and v) big data. For AI and machine learning also automation and robotics, the big issue that is related to these two is there will be a potential that they will replace human workers. Human will lose their job and there will be greater possibility that AI and robots will take over more complex job such as doctors and engineers. Correspondingly, for crypto-currency such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, there will be major security problem that might be involving hacker and fraud that will risk the economy in the digital world. Lastly, internet of things need more secure and safer big data management that will be lead by AI so that security breach will not be happening (Lovatt, 2019). In brief, as we are moving towards the future, the use of AI and automation in our everyday lives will be necessary and this will need bigger data management also safer security protection.
However, it is not completed if we do not anticipate what are the effects of digital technology in the future. So, what the future effects of digital technology that will be happened? In this case, I will divide the effects into three aspects which are society impacts, economic impacts and environmental impacts. Digital technology in the future will affect society in term of adoption, adaptability and living pace. Society will need to adopt and adapt to the changes to digital technology that will be occur in the future. Everything will use digital device and living pace will be faster. If our society do not take the adaptation to the digital technology as something serious, they will be definitely left behind. Moreover, digital technology will affect our economy. World Bank and International Monetary Fund will need to reorganise their policy in order to keep up with economic activities that mostly will happen digitally. Human jobs will change drastically in order to give room for AI and automation and this will lead to faster and harder economic race (Mühleisen, 2018). Additionally, digital technology will destruct the environment to make sure manufacture and production of digital devices takes place as usual. Besides, data infrastructures such as server farms will need bigger consumption of energy and will produce more greenhouse gas emissions in the future. Not only that, dismantling and disposing process will cost us our environment, the ‘e-waste’ will lead to greater pollution, contamination and toxic waste all around the world (Selwyn, 2018). To sum up, digital technology will affect us in both positive and negative impacts, but it is more important if we can see the disadvantages of the digital technology so that it will never cost us our relationship among human, our economy and our lovely environment.
In conclusion, we will never be able to disallow the development of technology. Not before, not now and never in the future. It is because technology development especially digital technology will be evolved time by time, day by day. Accordingly, it is our responsibility as a human and the resident of this world to make sure the digital age transformation will bring us more advantages and will not harm us with its drawbacks in the future so that we can experience living in better and futuristic world.
References
Haris, A. R., 2016. Issues In Digital Era. Selangor, Malaysia: Universiti Teknologi MARA.
Lovatt, C., 2019. 5 Big Technology Challenges For Enterprises In The Future. [Online]
Available at: https://blog.cutover.com/technology-challenges-enterprises-future
[Accessed 23 December 2019].
Mühleisen, M., 2018. The Long and Short of The Digital Revolution. FINANCE & DEVELOPMENT, 55(2).
Science Focus, 2019. Future technology: 22 ideas about to change our world. [Online]
Available at: https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/future-technology-22-ideas-about-to-change-our-world/
[Accessed 23 December 2019].
Selwyn, N., 2018. EdTech is killing us all: facing up to the environmental consequences of digital education. [Online]
Available at: https://www.aare.edu.au/blog/?p=3293
[Accessed 23 December 2019].
Farhan's: Digital Technologies in the 21st Century 