Belisle (2006) poses the question of whether digital knowledge will ‘open new horizons for the human art of thinking and creating knowledge’ (2006, p.55). In light of technological advancements, discuss the possible changes to the role of the individual in thinking and creating knowledge.
Scholars interpret and define knowledge in different ways, some define it a learnt education and other interprets knowledge as intelligence. Knowledge in the true sense can be understood as the continuous process which commences at birth and ends when one passes away from the world. In accordance to Belisle, knowledge has definition beyond the scope of transmitted and acquired learning. In the broader sense knowledge can be defined as the awareness and understanding of facts, truths or beliefs which is the result of individual’s perception, learning and reasoning abilities. In the present day, knowledge can be seen as a function of both education and real life experiences which one gains in his journey of life (Belisle, Asselin, LeBlanc & Gauthier, 2018).
There has been a paradigm shift in today’s world as to how one acquires and gains knowledge, digital medium have taken over the traditional medium of print, newspapers and magazines and created an ecosystem of knowledge in an engaging way for the individuals. The main focus on the essay is to understand the usage of digital technologies as a function of knowledge and also to identify the negative impact of the visual aids and dependence on digital technology on health and socio-culture of an individual(Collins & Halverson, 2018).
Internet started developing in the early 1960s, but it was only in 1983 it came into existence and people started getting used to the concept of Internet. Within a decade, Internet started expanding its wings in business organization and changes the entire ecosystem of how businesses works, people interact with each other, consume information, acquire knowledge and many more. This digital revolution was ably supported by the research and development in the smartphone markets and companies like Apple, Samsung, Lenovo, Nokia, and LG began to leverage the space in creating digital products which are in reach of the customers, handy and easy to use. Thus, it can be said that it was both the internet and smartphones which changed the entire ecosystem of the world, for Better (Thagard, 2018).
Friendster, Facemash were some early forms of social media which failed to create an impact in the lives of the individual, it was the year 2004 when Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, that a wave of social media platforms was created in the world. Numerous platforms were developed to improve how people can better use the internet and expand their horizon of knowledge. Twitter, Linked In, Instagram, Blogs, Wikipedia are some of the platforms harbingered better opportunities for an individual to learn and grow (Chattell, 2016).
The world has a population of over 7 billion, and the internet penetration is over 54%, which makes over 3.5 billion people as the active Internet users. As fascinating as it sounds, internet has a huge role to play in the way people learn and gain knowledge. Internet has turned the world into one global city, and has given access to any person who has internet or even owns a basic smartphone. The highly engaging platforms coupled with visual aids are the main drivers of thinking and creating knowledge (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2016).
As mentioned in the earlier section, knowledge is a factor of adaptive learning and experience, technology makes it easier for an individual to access to million and billions of article and portals which can help him in understanding and developing his knowledge about a topic at great depth. Technological advancement has helped the individual to not only access to large quantities of data in a fraction of second; it has made the learning more fun and engaging. Knowledge portal and Social media platforms are focusing on creating engagement with the users, they are coming up with different strategies to get the user to the social media platforms and make them privy to the vast amount of knowledge available at absolute free of cost. This has been further fuelled by digital advancement such as Kindle (Audio Books), using blogs as a source of information in an engaging way and with the use of visual aids(Fuchs & Bock, 2018).
Knowledge is a function of learning from one’s own life experience, advancement in technology has made it really easier for the users. For instance a person in a Chartroom and sit and talk with a person of different nationality, culture, ethnicity, language at just a click, the amount of knowledge he can acquire just by talking to one person over Internet is equivalent to the same person reading ten books and still not able to acquire knowledge. Acquiring and gaining knowledge in the earlier days used to be an added cost for the user, but in the present day of technological advancement the costs have shrunken with a huge margin and the knowledge acquisition has expanded leaps and bounds (Kovarik, 2015).
Advancement in digital technology has huge cost implications, not only it has reduced the cost of gathering knowledge, it has made it extremely easier to scroll through abundance of literature within a few seconds. Moreover, the open platform makes the technology a promising option for any person who wants to acquire knowledge, learn and grow in one’s life. In the early days, people used to send mails and wait for their professors to answer them, meanwhile it was very natural that they would lose the interest, but with the advent of digital technology, this challenge has been tackled in an effective manner. Now it is extremely easier to ask a learned person any question over the internet, and within second his question would be answered with strong credibility. Linked in and Facebook have been doing absolutely fantastic jobs by giving the consumers an option to create like-minded groups and communities who are free to share knowledge and discussion specific topics to widen their horizon of knowledge (Hargreaves, 2003).
Hash tag can be seen as advancement in digital revolution which makes it easier to access any information on the web with just the usage of a hash tag. Hash Tag is simply designed to serve as storage base for a specific topic. This makes it extremely easier for a user to search about a specific topic on the Internet. In the past, the teaching was basically a reflection of mostly text based study, which in the modern times have been replaced by visual and multimedia formats which can be accessible anytime and anywhere. Over the last 20 years, devices have been a key influencer in increasing the penetration of digital technologies; the smartphones have become compact in size, fast in operation and have encompassed wireless technology to further aid the process of knowledge in an individual. The devices have helped the users to consume knowledge on the go, they are not confined in the traditional spaces of classrooms to acquire and gain knowledge. They have vast amount of data freely available on the Internet at free of cost, with added functionality of asking real time question with real time answers and creating groups with like-minded community(Wegerif, 2015).
Another aspect of digital revolution is the creation of the concept of cloud computing, it makes it easier for internet companies to stores data in petabytes. This data which is available on the cloud serves as encyclopaedia for the internet users. It becomes easier for them to store and collect any piece of information in a secure platform, which serve them to revisit their learning. Majorly all the internet companies like Google, Microsoft and even Amazon are focussing on cloud computing not only to analyse data to better market their products, but also help the users privy to vast amount of knowledge on a secure platform(Jan, 2018).
To conclude, it can be said that technological advancement has created a paradigm shifts in the way people consume, access and create knowledge. Print has been replaced by digital and classrooms as been replaced by interactive classrooms. Knowledge has become more interactive and engaging, and a function of visual aid and multimedia formats which makes the entire process extremely enriching of the user. Cloud services which help in storing of data will be the biggest driver of change in technological advancement, implying more sources of knowledge for the users. Devices in the coming future will function at unimaginable high speeds with additional memory to locally store information, thus definitely opening up new horizons of human art of thinking and knowledge.
References
Bélisle, A.C., Asselin, H., LeBlanc, P. and Gauthier, S., 2018. Local knowledge in ecological modeling. Ecology and Society, 23(2).
Chattell, A., 2016. Creating value in the digital era: Achieving success through insight, imagination and innovation. Springer.
Collins, A. and Halverson, R., 2018. Rethinking education in the age of technology: The digital revolution and schooling in America. Teachers College Press.
Fuchs, E. and Bock, A., 2018. Introduction. In The Palgrave Handbook of Textbook Studies (pp. 1-9). Palgrave Macmillan, New York.
Hargreaves, A., 2003. Teaching in the knowledge society: Education in the age of insecurity. Teachers College Press.
Jan, S.U., 2018. Education in the Age of Technology: Contrasting Fortunes. Science, 6(2), pp.55-70.
Kaplan, A.M. and Haenlein, M., 2016. Higher education and the digital revolution: About MOOCs, SPOCs, social media, and the Cookie Monster. Business Horizons, 59(4), pp.441-450.
Kovarik, B., 2015. Revolutions in communication: Media history from Gutenberg to the digital age. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.
Thagard, P., 2018. Conceptual revolutions. Princeton University Press.
Wegerif, R., 2015. Toward Dialogic Literacy Education for the Internet Age. Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 64(1), pp.56-72.
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