Our society is more connected today than ever, leading to the popular saying that we live in a “global village”. But has technology made our personal lifestyles easier than before? With social media now setup to work with mobile applications, we use the internet to accomplish sweeping tasks from opening the door to our house and looking into work documents whilst in bed. The advancement in technology has also increased the chances that government can learn how to improve public services. Through utilizing its counterparts in the private sector, government can be more innovative at providing large scale public transportation, education and entertainment all because of technology.
To increase government efficiency and productivity, government has been reinvented with IT to respond rapidly to citizens’ concerns. And to be guardians of today’s network, local governments have a greater responsibility to protect their citizens through integrated community fire and emergency response facilities and equipment.
Technology has increased the public and private training and retraining efforts that have increase organizational learnings. There are bad nuts, as others are using technology to increase productivity, there are others who are interested in testing the waters and shutting down communications, stealing personal information and even online robbery has been the cases in banks and several other online financial platforms. There are online shoplifters and pickpockets. Even when one strives for isolated networks, someone would find a way-with dumb drives, software upgrades or a complex targeted hack to get into seemingly secured networks.
However, the challenge is not just the hackers, but our systematic detachment from family and friends and even our jobs because of overdependence on technology and its related platforms. During the first catastrophic system failure on the coveted Blackberry mobile devices in 2011, millions of people were not receiving emails. The related effect of this hiccup was the turbulence among users unable to get work and business going. This is an instance of being controlled by technology. Another popular example was the system glitch that occurred at the Denver Marriott on New Year Eve 2012, when over 300 guests could not return to their rooms from midnight to about 3:00am when hotel personnel attempted to fix the plastic room key which stopped working. These are instances when our mastery is limited over technology – when they fail us, they master us.
Technology has several good uses as discussed, but still have the potential of being used by others against us. The dependence on technology is increasing as people are more technical and are learning and developing complex machines and equipment to the extent that others are stranded or call the police for having locked their keys in the car. Sometimes fire alarms go off unintendedly taking firemen from duty running to extinguish a false alarm. These are moments when our mastered arts and crafts turn our lives around. The increasing communication and entertainment apps have taken most employees attention from work; looking on their fancy screens every other minute. These are the challenges and therefore the need to master our technology before it masters us.
Reference
Brynjolfsson, E. (1993). The productivity paradox of information technology.Communications of the ACM, 36(12), 66-77.
Buchanan, D. A., & Huczynski, A. (2004). Organizational behaviour: an introductory text (p. 28). Harlow: Prentice Hall.
Heeks, R. (2005). Implementing and managing e Government: an international text. Sage. Public Technology Institute.
Shark, A. R. (2012). Seven trends that will transform local government through technology.
Society for Human Resource Management Knowledge Center. (n.d.). Glossary of human resource terms.
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