The advent of information technology (IT) has affected society on an immense scale. On an inter-personal level, social relations have been greatly affected. For example, in the past, to send birthday wishes one would send dedicated birthday cards or at least make a phone call. With the arrival of Facebook and mobile phone texting, wishes are not as sincere anymore as they are easily dispensed with the click of the mouse or typing of the keyboard. Going online to chat with friends and to read blogs every night is a ritual among people my age. No doubt it is a way to keep in touch with many friends at once with this new found interconnectedness, but it also means that those who do not subscribe to technology are neglected and forgotten. IT may reduce social isolation for people in rural areas, with prospects of opening a world of global contacts and new relationships. It is however, also isolating because people now maintain virtual friendships in virtual communities from the confines of their rooms.
The Internet, an invention of humans, has turned into the inventor – today we have come to rely on the Internet to programme our social behavior. People depend on it as the solution to their everyday lives. Find an answer on Google. Find instant love with an account and profile – it is why the online dating industry is booming. Get a coveted job by buying a degree for US$50 and you can get a prestigious certificate from a university of your choice, if online advertisements are to be believed. Morals have also been altered. Take Google’s new Mail Goggles for example. It restrains one from sending off angry or embarrassing emails and regretting it later by flashing five mathematical sums which he has to answer before the email gets sent. This points to the diminishing of good old-fashioned self-control and self-respect for others.
Governments around the world recognize that computing power is global power. Technology has also become an important tool for economic reasons, and for elites to maintain their position of authority.
One observes that the Singapore state has many investment stakes in the Asian telecommunications industries. This is because with the world becoming increasingly wired, lots of money can be made in providing communication services. SingTel has stakes in mobile companies in Thailand, India, the Philippines, Australia and Pakistan among others; and SingTel’s parent company is Temasek Holdings, which the sovereign wealth fund of the Singapore state.
In North Korea, the authoritarian communist regime utilizes television and radio as a means to maintain its position of power, and to repress and indoctrinate the population with propaganda. All domestic radio and television are controlled by the state. Radio and television receivers are locked to government-specified frequencies. Content is supplied almost entirely by the official Korean Central News Agency, which fawns daily coverage of “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il. The country’s poverty or famines are never mentioned. After a deadly munitions train explosion in April 2004 in Ryongchon, the KCNA reported that citizens displayed the “spirit of guarding the leader with their very lives” by rushing into burning buildings to save portraits of Kim before searching for family members. The international press was barred from the scene, where more than 150 died and thousands were injured.
Technology is also a means of maintaining inequality. As power lies more in information and knowledge, and less in production, large multinational corporations produce designs, programmes, patents and copyrights that allow them to direct and profit from the production in developing countries. This allows for the immense proliferation of wealth of MNCs while developing countries languish in poverty because cheap labour is exploited by the power elite.
References
Committee to Protect Journalists. 2 May 2006, “North Korea tops CPJ list of ’10 Most Censored Countries’ ”, http://www.cpj.org/censored/index.html
Tan Weizhen. 27 October 2008, “Is the Net minding your manners?”, The Straits Times, pg B10, Singapore Press Holdings
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