Are You Ready For The Super-Connected World?
Homes today are packed with all sorts of devices to make life easier. Technology such as cookers, washing machines, hair dryers, radios, TVs, and even electricity are taken for granted. Even though each one represented a major step forward in its time.
Technology
Each iteration of products has improved performance and helped embed them in our lives to the point where they are almost unseen.
There is little doubt that technology in its quest to make life easier has been time saving and hugely beneficial in the home and at work.
It allows more leisure time and has a positive effect on people and society, as recent generations enjoy the luxury of greater choice and freedom.
But another change as fundamental as anything previously encountered is taking place as technology connects to the internet.
The difference this time is that personal smart devices, computers and machines in every home and workplace are connecting to the internet; and with each other via the internet.
Connectivity
Such connectivity leads to a shift in human behaviour as evidenced in how we now shop, buy music, watch TV, see films, and use social media.
The new connected world is linking all the devices we use in everyday life and collecting more data and details about us than at any time in history.
Information gathering in this way is changing what we do and how we do it as we are marketed to on an individual basis driven by the detail of our personal habits and preferences.
The era of super-connectivity where the decisions we make and what we choose is directly influenced by businesses that analyse and manipulate our data.
The effect of technology has been talked about for many years but the difference now is that the internet acts as a conduit of connectivity for every smart device on the planet.
And as a result whole industries are disrupted as newspapers struggle to survive against on-line offerings, traditional TV audiences drop with the spread of on-demand viewing and the luxury of ad-free box-sets.
Book sales suffer too from the sale of ebooks and the spread of tablets, music sales migrate from hard products to downloads and streaming, and the behaviour of consumers is changing beyond prediction.
Digital technology is driving connectivity like never before and the results affect everyone and everything.
Until now such intense connectivity has been scarce and available only to those immersed in technology but everything is getting smarter, quicker, more affordable, easier to use, and more connected.
As a result, super-connectivity is coming our way and with it the end of the world we know and the start of one we don’t.
SO, smart devices and smarter machines and computers are creating a new world and the only choice we have is to connect and learn.
