Despite the numerous impactful innovations and inventions of past technological revolutions, those of the IT revolution have been the most transformative in our society. Technology such as smartphones, computers, and the internet have transformed almost every aspect of society especially psychologically and sociologically.
Being transformative is not always a completely positive thing. For example, the technology of the IT revolution has drastically changed how humans interact with one another, thus creating certain psychological side effects. In our hyperconnected world, it is hard to pull away from the temptation of social media and the false feeling of human connection it provides. Psychologists have studied the effects technology has had on human behavior and concluded that although social media makes people think they are performing a sort of social act, they actually end up feeling even more alone. As a society, humans are becoming more and more reliant on technology, especially when it comes to relationships. Across the globe, people have begun to replace real human interaction with false virtual interaction which has left humans out of touch with what it means to participate in real social interaction.
Privacy is another aspect of society that has been transformed by the IT Revolution. Today, digital privacy is becoming more and more of a pressing issue in today’s increase of technology. It has become common practice today for companies to analyze and record user’s data or interactions with their websites in order to infer characteristics and personal information about those users. For instance, a few years back there was a case in which the popular store chain, Target mailed coupons for various pregnancy products to a teenager that had not shared the news yet. Target was able to achieve this certainly private information about the teen by simply recording the girl’s search and purchase history of products on their website. They were able to then analyze this data and come up with an accurate prediction of the teen’s personal situation. This example of companies obtaining personal data through people’s interactions online has become one of the most pressing privacy issues today.
Technology and the IT Revolution have also done an immeasurable amount of good in the world. For example, SMS is transforming how we handle disaster relief. It allows for victims and people looking to aid victims to share information about location and other things in order to determine where the damage was most concentrated to then focus aid there. The IT Revolution and the technologies it has brought has made an incredible impact on human behavior, way of life, and simply society as a whole.
Paige Rosynek 
Your introduction is very strong! I love how you open your post by stating a point of view. I agree that we have gotten worse at human interactions. In the second paragraph you say “it is hard to pull away from the temptations of social media and the false feeling of human connection it provided.”. This is such a strong statement because we do rely on social media to give us confidence and feel like we are cared about. Many people of our generation base who they are off of how many likes they got or how many followers they have. I can see why psychologists have found that we are more lonely. We isolate ourselves from the world around us to stare at other peoples world through a phone. I like how you touched base on the positive things the IT revolution has given us. SMS saves many people’s lives and helps notify people on what is going on. By sharing the positives and negatives in your article I understand your point of view really well and trust why you feel that the IT Revolution caused the biggest impact on human life.
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I like the way you describe how digital privacy is an issue for the IT revolution. Companies like Google providing the means for economic benefit due to data mining our searches is a double edged sword. On the one side they benefit our productivity by increasing speeds; but on the other side, gain more and more of our information and make more money if we are able to search more efficiently. Google is continually refining its algorithms to make its systems function better and systematize everything with the goal to make humans more productive, but the result may be us losing basic knowledge and skills, our brains changing at a neural level, and us becoming dumber. As we search for efficiency in business and industry we start to make the machine smarter than the human user. Do you think Target’s marketing without respect for privacy is the wave of the future? Do you think their leaders know of or even care of potential damage they create?
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