The development of technology changes the way people connect with each other. In which way does the development of technology change the types of relationships that people make? Does it have a positive or negative effect on the relationships?
Technology has revolutionized the concept of communication. It has brought many gadgets to facilitate communication into the market. This has led to a considerable change in the type of relationships that people have and largely these changes have been positive, although
there are some negative changes also.
The most significant impact of technology on communication is that the speed of communication has increased manifold and the cost has been cut drastically. In the pre-information technology days, a document often required re-typing on the typewriter before the final version. Sending the letter to someone else required a visit to the post office and a postage stamp. Faster methods such as telegrams had severe limitations in text and remained costly. Computers and the internet have made the process of creating and editing documents and applying features such as spell check and grammar check automatically easy. Email allows the document to be sent to any part of the globe within seconds, making telegrams and even ordinary letters mostly obsolete.
The accessibility of communication has also improved because of the low cost. Relationships have become better because people are connected to each other all the time and there is little chance of misunderstanding because of communication gaps. Finally, technologies such as the internet help spread the net of communication by tracking down old friends, shedding light on new business opportunities, and the like.
On the downside, the possibility of high-quality communication from anywhere in the world to anywhere else at low costs has led to a marked decline in face-to-face communication and an increased reliance on verbal and written communication over electronic mediums. Communication has become concise and short, and the adage “brevity is the soul of wit” finds widespread implementation, though unintentionally. The small keyboards in mobile phones and other handheld devices that make typing difficult have resulted in a radical shortening of words and increasing use of symbols and shortcuts, with little or no adherence to traditional grammatical rules.
To put it in a nutshell, I pen down saying that as every garden has weeds, similarly the effect of technology on communication has a downside. Overall, the positive effects far outweigh the negative ones.
