“Do You Really Know What Technology is?” made by Olivia L.

Technology has changed humanity, it has made our lives more efficient with various examples of diverse tools, one of them is digital communication. Digital communication is a way of communicating that has changed humanity, the ways it’s able to interfere in our daily lives is radical. Digital communication gives us many benefits besides helping people to do simple things, such as talking with friends, playing video games or, scheduling doctor appointments, etc... without needing to head to the place, instead, you can meet people or schedule things on-line. In addition, according to Datagraphic, the benefits of digital communication are that it’s easy, fast, it saves money, time, and you are able to communicate with anyone, even to the ones distant from you.

One of the most famous features of digital communication is the real time communication, it makes our lives easier in many ways. At schools or at work, this type of communication is one of the most used tools to increase productivity, and it is very important to maintain contact with our co-workers, partners, school colleagues, etc.. Another reason is that without this way of communication, people would struggle to get information from people that they trust to boost their production at schools, workplaces and other places where teamwork is required.  As stated by The Ascent, real time communication is when a user communicates digitally at the same time with another user with no delay. At work “Real-time communication allows employees to communicate in real time using a variety of methods.", it improves our efficiency in many ways, such as talking to our peers and acquiring information even if they are not there. The speed of the information that goes through one device to the other is very fast, so people can have such information faster. If you can’t attend something, digital communication is always available anywhere at any time you want to make use of it.

Not only can digital communication help in our work and daily life, it can help students, teachers and parents. The pandemic gave students and educators a new experience at  the school. At first, the protocols prohibited people to go out of their houses, go to school, have social events besides other activities. This impacted a lot in people’s social and professional lives and as time passed by, people were using the internet to have a more active social life, but they used mostly to work and to learn. Digital communication was a very helpful tool to the child's learning process in pandemic times. According to  One Signal “As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded in 2020, schools and universities began relying more heavily on technology to accommodate a lack of in-person learning.” Furthermore, digital communication was very beneficial to maintain contact with teachers and to continue learning in a safer environment, keeping students safe from COVID-19. This method is so efficient that educators are starting to use it, as it is highly rated by children’s parents and very efficient. The site One Signal made a survey to research the opinion of parents and educators of digital communication and the frequency of the use of digital communication in their children's virtual classrooms. Here are the graphics showing the results:

This graphic with the data provided by One Signal shows the frequency of digital communication parents noticed in the school year during pandemic:

This graphic shows us the result of another research made by One Signal, which discovered the most used digital communication app to communicate with parents

As we can see, most teachers have a great opinion on digital communication with parents and students, the most used app or site to communicate with teachers is Email. 

Furthermore, technology’s benefits help us in communication, but it can help us to think with robots too!  Many people think that AIs are super advanced robots that will take control over the world, but it isn’t exactly like this. AI’s are present in our daily lives almost the whole time, for example, when you are scrolling through Tik Tok in the For You page, there is an artificial intelligence personalizing this page according to the videos you like, providing you a more joyful experience. They help us in various ways and are very good to assist sites and make your experience in a virtual site better according to your tastes. As claimed by Tech Target, “Artificial intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems.” It provides us with a lot of benefits, such as personalizing ads, contents, searching things for us and helping us to learn things.

Another benefit of artificial intelligence is that it can be applied to our daily lives outside the screen, through wearable technology. wearable technology is becoming more popular slowly each day, at  each day people are having the chance to know more about the benefits of wearable technology, and how AIs are connected with this. It can not just help people at, for example, their gaming experience but it can assist you when tracking your health. In a research made by Appinventiv, it states that wearable AIs  are very helpful in the gaming area by improving the experience with, for example, VRs headsets (virtual reality), clothes that track your movements, sensors that activate smells according to the game and gloves that make you feel the same thing your character is feeling in their hand. Besides that, wearable AIs can give us benefits such as “offering stats on a patient's health, real-time insights, inference, diagnosis, and reports.” 

One thing that can’t be ignored is the impact AI is creating in classrooms. It is a very good opportunity to introduce technology to students and at the same time it can help their academic process and the quality of their classes. Besides, it can even help students outside the school. Now that technology is getting more advanced, the use of artificial intelligence in school is getting more common. In the words of QuestionPro, “AI has the potential to provide a wide range of benefits for education. One of the most significant is the ability to personalize each student’s learning experience.” An example is Duolingo, an app that teaches you a new language and it uses artificial intelligence to choose the right lesson for you. At the classroom some AIs, such as Chat GPT and Chat Sonic can help the learning process of students by giving detailed texts about the topic being learned or providing easy and fast information.

In addition, technology can offer benefits to humans, but it also can offer benefits to cities! Something that is entering in the wishlists of humans are the smart cities, but what are them and how will they impact the future of society? A smart city as the name says is a city that is smart, it is a idea that people are experiencing a little bit in their daily lives and that is a plan that can help the quality of people's lives and the environment health by taking advantage of technology, for example, having more electric cars with sustainable batteries and clean energy sources, avoiding damaging the environment. According to Nexus Integra, smart cities are connected cities with the goal to be more technologic, sustainable and connected, providing “innovation and technological potential as tools for transformation and improvement of quality of life.” Besides that, smart cities are able to improve management, economy, mobility, environment, energy and health. 

Now that you know that smart cities will make an important role in our future daily lives, you may be asking yourself, why do we need them? Can't we just continue in the way it is? Well as the smart cities provide a lot of beneficial aspects and a better life quality for people it is a wanted way of living. According to TWI Website, smart cities provide a high quality of life and it always helps the economic growth of the city. Besides that, it can cut costs, reduce waste, manage energy and it also increases safety, so it would be a big step to technology, environment and managing the cities.

We saw all the benefits smart cities can give us, but there is a more important benefit that smart cities can provide specifically for the environment. In addition, smart cities can increase the people's quality of life, but it can also increase the environment's health mostly by the management of energy, for example, buildings with a lot of plants and solar panels that produce their own electricity from a clean source. The site Smart City states that one of the benefits of a smart city for the environment is less air pollution, which can be measured with sensors that send messages to authorities that will act to reduce the pollution. “Smart street lights can bring significant energy savings to cities, as they require less energy to operate. Smart cities can maintain the safety and security of citizens while using less energy.”

Is technology the bad guy? You will say it! Many people have different opinions about what is the role technology plays in society, so it is important to know more about it and use relevant facts to conclude your opinion about technology impacts. Technology is a revolutionary thing that changed a lot of our daily lives through the years, and helped humans to achieve big and small things, such as going to the moon or doing your homework. From communication and transport to healthcare and connectivity, technology has enhanced our lives for the better. Furthermore, as stated by Simpli Learn technology has given humans big opportunities and helped us to know more about everything. So now, it is your choice to open your eyes and see clearly what technology has to offer us.