Technology has been playing a vey important role in our life, right from the days of the first Industrial revolution in later part of 18th century.
Earlier signs of advent of technology was basically into the production of goods. Goods were produced by skilled craftsman by hand painstakingly. The production of goods shifted from skilled craftsman to mass production by use of machines in factories.
The early examples are of textile & iron making. Prior to the Industrial revolution, the textile business was performed in homes by individual spinners & weavers & in small workshops. In the mid 18th century, the innovations like flying shuttle, the water frame & the power loom enabled spinning the yarn and thread , weaving the textile much easier. The second sector that adopted the technology was iron industry. The technique was smelting of iron ore with coke ( a material made by the coal). This method was not only cost effective, but helped in producing higher quality material.
Since then the world has seen three industrial revolutions. The first industrial revolution was centred around the use of steam energy.
The second industrial revolution utilized the benefits of various inventions like the gasoline engine, airplanes, chemicals & fertilizers. In early 20th century, Henry Ford was mass producing Ford cars.
The third industrial revolution ( starting from 1950s) is the Digital Revolution. This brought semi conductors, main frame computing, personal computing ( Better know as PC) Internet, Cloud & hand held devices (Eg: Mobile phones). Things that used to be analog, moved to digital technologies. The shift from analog to digital technology disrupted global communication & industry. Electronics & Information technology began to automate production & global supply chain.
The impact of the three industrial revolutions is seen in the profound change & societal transformation. The life changed from all about farm centred to factory centred, This led to urbanization & population density in & around the industrial hubs.
The digital technology has changed the life style & life view completely. With advent of smart phones, immense opportunities have evolved & digitization has touched each & every one’s life. Now we can not imagine our life without digital technology.
The Demonetization in November 2016, in fact forced the use of digitization. The digital wallets, Epay solutions, mobile banking became popular & slowly every one started adopting and accepting this as the new normal for the monitory transactions. The one who used to refuse even the bank cheques as payment mode, quickly started adopting & accepting payments thorough wallets & mobile payments. With penetration of Smart phones & 4G technology, mobile banking has become very popular replacing some of the wallets. The IMPS, Neft payments have become new normal replacing physical issue of cheques & demand drafts. This has reduced the usage of ATM’s drastically.
The Corona Pandemic is a blessing in disguise for the reinforcement of the digital world & its benefits. In just a span of last 12-18 months, the digitization has deep rooted in life. The E commerce industry has become a part of our life style. The one who were hesitating to order to E commerce platforms are using various platforms to not only order goods, but grocery, food, medicine, services, auto hire etc.
As per a report, millions of Indians have taken to stock trading for the first time during the last 12-18 months through digital platforms. Of the 1.36 billion population of India , only about 3.7% invest in stock market. There is abundant opportunity in India in the filed of digital platforms for stock trading, stock market related training content creation & stock broking. As a comparison, in the US, more than 50% of the population either directly or indirectly participates in the market.
One more important aspect that has strongly stood out is the work from home model & learn from home model. This has opened up the tremendous opportunity for the online coaching & creation of the digital content. The platforms like Skype, Zoom, MS teams have enabled the digital connect. The success of this model has led to rethinking on the large commercial infrastructure that was created & under creation & is bound to disrupt this market.
Digital marketing: Is the marketing utilizing the internet & online based technologies such as desktop computers, mobile phones & other digital media & platforms to create, promote & market products & services. This is popularly known as online marketing.
The mobile applications (apps) that enable services like food ordering, travel & holiday booking, commuting (Ola, Uber etc) , movie ticketing have gained popularity & become part of our daily life.
To conclude, the technology has played as an enabler to facilitate, ease & lead a comfortable enriched life style, provided we do not become slave to the technology but master to use of it.