I was born in the 1980’s and the process of digitalization in many aspects of life has been present from the start. Starting from the early 90’s and the first portable car phones that had a battery in the size of a 1000-page book. I also remember using computers for the first time in school, and flabby discs and the first-time having internet access at the library. Yes, at the library, and you had to book a time for it, one hour at a time. Nobody had internet in their homes in the beginning and now we all have it in our pockets in smartphones.
In my working experience, it is interesting to look back on the progress of digitalization in all the different jobs I have worked in. Starting in the mid 90’s and going in to today the 2020’s. The change in those decades is very big. The change has been from a “paper” office to a digital office really. Ok, we had fax machines already 80-90’s, but I would call that digital progress very reluctantly. A fax machine is really like going from posting letters to posting letters still, just without the postman. Before the term office supplies was paper, pencils, stablers ext. Now it is computer supplies, like keypads, mouses, computer screens ext. I also remember using a card slide to make bankcard payments to customers, something that sounds like the age of dinosaurs to younger generation now. If someone had told me in the 90’s or even in the beginning of the 2000’s that by 2023 you can pay for your shopping with remote payment with your phone, a ring or keychane, it would have sounded little bit like science fiction. Yet, here we are.
I personally do think that digitalization is good, and we need to move forward. And that a person needs to stay with the times, and not get stuck in the bast. It does also bring about new issues like privacy, GDPR and information security generally. When everything is “online”, it is also easy for someone to use it for a bad purpose. There are still matters in terms of the problems that we might not even yet be able to recognize, like the extent of cybercrimes utilizing the new digital world. We need to as a civilization to be vigilant in terms of making sure the laws and regulations will be up to date to the digitalization progress as well.
Open digital society can be difficult to navigate some times. When everything is easy to do in different digitalized platforms, you easily lose sight of the security aspect of it and forget to also be careful with the information you give and where and to protect your personal information. It is not a bad thing to have, if not a large one, but a small foil hat on just to keep your actions in check. To make sure you recognize the possible information danger spots as well as know how to use digitalization to make your life easier without jeopardizing your personal information and data. Fact is that criminals will also use and benefit from the digitalized world.
As with everything, the good has to be taken with the bad. The good thing about the good things in digitalization is that we can use it to prevent the bad as well.
Self-assessment
I have used the chat GPT already, and it is interesting tool for sure. The benefits are little variable. It can give helpful ideas for sure, but it is not very useful in terms of source materials for example. You also have to be very specific in what you ask, and know if the answer is completely nonsense. I do think that AI based programs/platforms ext. will be the future, as it develops in quit a fast base. The good it can be used for, in different areas of society, business and development in general, is very real reality all ready. Will it change things, yes for sure it will. It will change industries and job descriptions, but it will also bring many new job descriptions to the table. With this, as with digitalization as a whole, the aim should be to use it for the benefit of us and recognize the changes early on so that we have the foresight deal with them and make development plans with that in mind and also to develop our personal skill set and realize the change that is coming. If your job today is still to push papers around in an office, know is the time to realize that job will most likely not be here anymore in a year.
The videos where all very interesting, especially listening to them from now, after the pandemic and digitalization speed up that camo from that. Especially the big data-video and making a note how the importance of it has not changed.
I commented on blogs
blogi.savonia.fi/liisaarpiainen/home/
fearless-tiinalab.wordpress.com/
Digitalised working environment 