Impact of technology on peoples lives

1. Impact Of Internet And Technology On People's
Lives
Jakub Kolodziejski
Student Number : 76185695

2. Assignment 2 Brief
• Digital technology has impacted the lives of consumers and businesses around the world.
With access to the internet and the lowering cost of smart devices, audiences use the
internet to improve their daily lives. In this connected world, access to information is seen
as a necessity rather than a convenience. You will learn how audiences use technology to
find information, to be entertained/informed and to live their lives.
• Following on from your previous assignment, you are developing a reputation as being
knowledgeable in digital marketing. Now, the international interactive media festival South
by Southwest (SXSW) are interested in having you speak at their next conference. They
have asked you to prepare a presentationdocument and short video pitch to give them an
indication of your knowledge of how audiences use technology and its impact on their
lives.

3. Introduction
The internet has revolutionized the computer and communications world like nothing before. This revolution has made the internet
become a worldwidebroadcasting capability. This allows for information to be distributed to everyoneat any moment. It also allows for
businesses to lead successfulcampaigns as they can be advertised, seen and promoted easily through the internet.​
The origins of the internet arerooted in the USA 1950s during theCold War when there was huge tension between the USA and the Soviet
Union. The US needed a communications systemthatcould not be affected by the Soviet nuclear attack.​
In the 1950s, thesecomputers weremainly used by military scientists and university staff. They werehuge and expensive machines, capable
of only carrying out simple communication tasks. Moving forward into the 1960s, theinternet started becoming a way for government
researchers to shareinformation. Fast-forwarding into 1993, Berners-Leecreated the firstwebsite browser called Nexus. However, this
didn’t make a big leap until a team of former students at the University of Illions at Urbana– Champaign, led by Marc Andreessen, created
the Mosaic browser. Thewhole team left the research facility to startNetscape, the company that produced the firstofficial web browser
that many people ever used; Netscape Navigator. Shortly after that, in 1998 Googlewas released and within 6 years, it began to dominate
any other browser created, leading to Google being one of the mostknown internet browsersdueto its convenience, speed, the relativity
of search engine, simplicity, user-friendliness and security.
(UofTCompSci, 2021)

4. Access to the internet
Along with the growing internet access, comes the rapidly increasing internet speeds. In Antonio's
article, he speaks abouthow around a decade ago, the averageUS internet speed topped of
around 5mbps and now during the presenttimes, it has increased to around 100mpbs (Villas-Boas,
2019). This increasewould not havea hugeimpact on people that regularly browsetheinternet,
however for the people that download files, games, apps, this speed allows consumers to be a lot
moreefficient and satisfied with the productivity of their internet connection.
In terms of age groups, in the pie chart to the right(Worldwide, 2021),weclearly see the results we
would mostlikely expect to see. The highestaccess to the internet comes fromMillenials(18-34)
taking over half of the pice chart, then wesee that the smallestamount of access to the internet
comes fromolder generation and boomers. This suggests that older people rather stick to their
traditional ways of obtaining information, for examplethey would choose newspapers and
magazines over using a phone to surf the internet for information about whats going on around the
world. Vice-versa for Millenials, they would prefer to use a phone to easily access information
within a few minutes rather than walk to a storeto wastemoney on a newspaper or magazine.
After the firstweb browser was created by Berners Lee, in 2000, mostof the world was still offline.
Only in the US, half the population was accessing the internet, however, mostof the world was still
unaffected. Max, Hannah and Esteban(Roser, Ritchie and Ortiz-Ospina, 2021)allexplain that during
2000, 93% of EastAsia, 99% South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africawereall still offline. It wasn’ttill 2016
wherethese statistics began rising to 76% of the US with Icelandtopping the ranking with as much
as 98% of the population being online. Ofcourse, poverty plays a big role as in many countries, even
to these years, the statistics remain low due to not having the financial supportand foundation
to uphold stable network connections to allow internet access or file sharing. Regardless, the
overarching trend globally continued to grow as the years havepassed and this is reflected in the
graph.​

5. Digital devices used by audiences
Research has shown that the main electronic devices used to access the
internet aredesktop PC's, laptop's, mobile phones and tablets. As seen
on the global stats counter, mobile smartphones aretaking the lead with
desktop PC's having 12% fewer users worldwideand finally tablet users
being as low as nearly 3%(Desktop vs Mobilevs Tablet Market Share
Worldwide| StatCounter Global Stats, 2021). Upon further reading, I
found out that mobile phones have such high statistics becauseof the
ever-changing development of technology, allowing consumers to get
hold of morepowerfulhandheld devices at much cheaper prices. This
leads me to believe that along with the increaseof mobile phone and
desktop PC users, theaccess to the internet has also increased because
of these facts.
As a part of this research, I haveconducted my own survey asking
my audience which digital devices they useto consumemedia. My
answers reflectotherwise, showing thatthere aremore desktop PC users
than mobile phone users, which does not back up my provided
primary research. However, my survey cannotbetaken into professional
practice or supportmy primary research dueto the low variety of
responses. I am morethan confidentthat if I wereto receive responses
of over a billion differentpeople worldwide, my answersstatistics would
drastically changewith mobile phones overtaking PC and laptop
users. Unfortunately, I haveno way to provemy statement about this

6. How customers search for information
Do (TransactionalQueries): When consumers undergo a "Do" query, they areoften certain about what they are trying to
achieve and wherethey are trying to land using their search keywords in a search engine. This reflects on consumers looking
to purchasing any products or booking any services. This query is valuable for E-commercewebsites becausetheir website
will be the one that the consumer will be led to upon performing a transactionalquery.
Know (InformationalQueries): Internetconsumers performa "Know" query when they wantto find out information or learn
about anything in particular. These informational queries can really vary between simple questions with simple answers, to
moredifficult and complex questions which haveno specific answer, but rather lead the consumer to articles, blogs and
anything that’s as related as possibleto the informationalquery. Mostof the time, when a consumer searches for information
with a "Know" query, their firstresultis often a video and then below it are any other websites or articles. This further leads
to platforms such as YouTube, to be one of the second leading search engines on the internet. Maryamspeaks about10
important YouTubestatistics, and one that stands out specifically is that YouTubeis the second – most popular search engine
after Google(Mohsin, 2021). Statistics also show that62% of businesses use YouTubeas a channel platformto upload content
about their business and promoteit which helps a business grow reputation and recognition(Stateof Social 2019, 2019).
Go (NavigationalQueries) : Consumers performthe"Go" query when they arespecifically looking for a websiteor a location.
For example if a user searches for Amazon, itwould come up with Amazon and any other relevant websites such as eBay.
Navigational queries often lead to specific brands or websites which the consumer is trying to access. These navigational
queries usually begin with informationalqueries, then they further lead to transactional queries once the consumer has
reached a satisfaction of their results. For example, you may performa "Know" query aboutthe best budget phone, once you
are satisfied with the information you gathered, you performa "Go" query, you land directly on the Samsung websiteto find
any good phones and finally you performa "Do" query, you land on Amazon and see a better offer on Amazon for the same
phone you justsaw on the Samsung website.

7. What consumers buy online
There are arguablefactors that affectthese statistics, such as the channels the consumer buys from, the
company reputations, the prices, navigation of the website/app, the valuethe consumer receives for their
money and many more. For example, taking a look at Amazon, it’s a massively known company across theUS
and UK. Allison, in her blog(Schrager, 2021), explains how Amazon has grown over timeand that by 2018, it had
taken half of the online market and 5% of the US total retail sales. To put things into perspective, the majority of
the things you need would be on Amazon for a competitive price, compared to in-storeprices. Amazon also
offers PrimeDelivery, which ensures nextday delivery for customer satisfaction, and this eliminates problems
such as customers notwanting to wait for long delivery times. Amazon also has a high reputation due to its
convenienceof shopping online or through their mobile app, as the navigation around the app and websiteis
really user friendly and easy to use. Due to channels like these for online shopping, it grabs moreconsumers
attention due to the ease and speed of shopping online and getting their items delivered within a few days.
Things people buy online vary fromtechnological items, food shopping, all the away to things such asvehicles.
Online shopping has become a lot more convenientfor people to buy things as they can find almostanything
they wantonline, as compared to going to the storejustto find out that the item they wantis currently out of
stock or is not even sold in their local store. According to Khalid's blog(Saleh, 2021), themostfrequently brought
goods online, are consumer electronics, leading 69% of the online sales while things such as food shopping and
pet supplies are the less frequently purchased goods online with only 20% sales. This is demonstrated in the
picture to the left. This suggests that when it comes to household goods, office, pets, sportand food supplies,
consumers prefer looking for competitiveprices in storerather than online. Vice versa for consumer electronics,
books and clothing. Consumers seemorecompetitive prices and a wider availability of stock online. This is also a
clear indication that consumers buying onlineis a rapidly growing trend. Even though Khalid's blog demonstrates
that there areup to 20% of buyers thatbuy groceries online, Sucharita(Kodali, 2020), an analystwith
Forrester Research, would arguethatonline groceries shopping is having a really difficult time catching on
to becoming a normalthing. In fact, she explains that mostcompanies that havebroughttheir way into online
groceries haveactually mostly losta lot of money.​ This supports my previous statementof how consumers
prefer looking for competitive prices in storewhen it comes to groceries, rather than online.

8. Online video consumption
Online video consumption has boomed over the pastfew years. As well as this, video marketing has gained
huge growth and marketing streaming has increased their marketing sizeexponentially. Due to this, loads of
data analytics companies havepartnered with marketers and organizations to help them achieve their
goals.​ Statistics show that, in the US, 83.8% of all people consumed videos online. 78% of these users watch
videos weekly and 55% of these users view videos daily. By 2019, 80% of the internet traffic was created by
videos. With the addition of the ever-growing internetspeed, it adds to the increasing number of data
consumption daily. Due to this rapid increase in video consumers online, streaming services such as Netflix,
Apple TV, Amazon haveexperienced an enormous growth challenging traditional television as the main
sourceof entertainment platformfor its consumers.
Many factors affectthis growth. Oneof the many reasons arethe age groups. In thegraph(Statista, 2021),
we can see that the biggestimpact on the growth, in terms of age groups, aremillennials (aged between 18-
34). This suggests that Millenials are morelikely to be in the digital world than the older generation people,
for example, older people would rather get newspapers and find out information fromany paper form
evidence rather than the internet which is entirely due to the era in which they grew up in and got used to
working with throughouttheir years. In thegraph, wealso see that the highest statistics areon online TV
shows, which supports my research abouthow online streaming services havegrown rapidly to a point of
challenging traditional television.​
In Maryam's artcle, speaking about YouTube (Mohsin, 2021), wefind out that 500 hours of videos are being
uploaded to Youtube every minute worldwide, that’s 30,000hours uploaded every hour and 720,000 hours
uploaded every day. Youtube is also one of the leading search engines for online video consumption.
Another factor that plays a big role in the growing video consumption is the advertisement of videos which
the consumers aremorelikely to click on, rather than reading articles or reading other web pages for
information due to convenience. In the pictureto the right, I Googled "how to fix a broken PC" and as we
see, the firstfew results that fit on the page without scrolling down, areonly videos. It was only till I scrolled
further down, whereI was able to find actual articles, blogs, troubleshooting pages and more. This is a clear
indicator of why video consumption has had such a dramatic increase over the years.

9. Consumer Trends
(Khan, 2021)
(GlobalBluetoothdeviceshipments2025 | Statista,
2021)
With the consumer trends constantly changing, consumer demands change too, meaning that companies and businesses have to adapt
better strategies with their marketing to find out what will appeal to their consumers more than their competitor's products. Luckily, for
all the businesses and companies, there are many consumers data available to analyze due to consumers being signed in and having an
account on countless websites such as YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Instagram and many more. All these types of internet platforms share
user data without the users knowing about it. This data helps develop a product that would most likely appeal to a wider audience, or the
data can be used to develop things that loads of users use such as artificial intelligence and voice assistance.​.​
One final trend I will be discussing is Bluetooth. Robert explains that It was first created in 1994 to replace RS-
232 telecommunications(Triggs, 2021), whereas now it has been improved and implemented in countless ways which help people use
things in comfort and convenience. For example, now we have Bluetooth headphones, speakers, mp3 car players, picture sending
devices, printers and many more, the list goes on. This is a constantly growing trend due to consumers having an easier life with Bluetooth
devices and this is reflected in Statista's graph showing the growth in Bluetooth shipments over time (Global Bluetooth device shipments
2025 | Statista, 2021).
Another trend is the huge leap in AI technology. Since the first-ever AI created back in 1951, the Ferranti Mark 1, being the first stored-
program computer(BBC - A History of the World - Object : Ferranti Mark I computer logic door, 2021), we now have things such as
face detections, self-driving cars, fingerprint sensors, eye scanners. This development of artificial intelligence has had a negative and a
positive impact on people's lives. Positive due to the increase in peoples workflow, allowing companies and businesses to replace humans
with machines that are capable of doing much more at a faster pace and with extreme precision. Another reason why it has had a
positive impact is due to the increase in security for things such as phones, accounts, safes and many more that require things such as
fingerprint scanners or face detections. However, loads would stand on the negative view on artificial intelligence progress dueto things
such as people being put out of employment.​
Voice assistance is one of the main consumer trends when it comes to the technology that people use. Some prefer to stay away
from voice assistance on their mobile smartphones or devices such as Alexa dot or laptops and computers, however, voice assistance has
also come a long way since it was first created in 1922. It all started as Radio Rex. This was simply a toy dog that would reactto the
word "Rex" due to the frequency that is in the vowel of the word Rex. This is further described in Alan's blog(Team, 2021). It has
now evolved into devices such as Amazon Alexa Echo Dot, Siri, Google Assistant and many more voice assistance services which cando
things such as setting reminders, answer your questions, find information for you, and many more. This development leads to
consumers satisfaction due to the convenience of saving time on going onto a web browser and typing in their question, or setting alarms
and reminders manually; consumers can simply say it out loud and the voice assistant does the rest for them

10. Summary
To summarizeeverything in this presentation, it is clear how much of an impact technology has had on consumers lives. In my slidespeaking about access to
the internet, it is morethan evident that the amountof consumers accessing theinternet has dramatically grown. Itis backed by severalstatistics and many
blogs and articles. The reason for this growth is fueled by the improvementand development of the internet speed, internet browsers, easeof access to the
internet on any device, and the content available on the internet.​
With the 3 key ways – go, do and know, consumers, can search for information aboutanything they need to, whether it's information about a business or a
company, or simply how to fix something. The combination of digital devices being used, and the trend of artificial intelligence and voice assistance, allows
consumers to search for information easier than ever and in mostcase scenarios, theresults fromvoice assistancewill show information fromthefirstpage of
searching whatthe consumer asked. This can be a big entry point for businesses to gain their recognition with the right advertisement. Another way that
businesses can gain an audience is through the use of videos. This is because videos are proving morepopular due to how much media is being consumed daily
at an up-trend and due to videos being at the top of the results of every search engine as discussed in my slide about the consumption of digital media. This
leads me to believe that morebusinesses will haveto start adapting their marketing strategies to the useof videos to stay ahead of their competition. This also
leads me to believe that in order to set up a successfulcampaign and achieve a successfulbusiness, itis really valuable to stay relevantwith the social media
aspect of marketing, whether that’s through the use of advertising or adding interactions on platforms such as Instagram,YouTubeand Facebook, to reach out
and connect to their audience and targetmarket. ​
The development of digital devices used has had a bigger impact on people's lives sincethey are now capable of having all the information they need, in a
small compact smartphonethat fits in your pocket. What's even moreimpressiveis that there has recently been an increasingly higher number of smartphone
devices offering high-quality specs and allowing a much better user experience, whether it's to access the internet or gaming or connecting with others, all at
lower prices than ever. This has a really big impact on people's lives becausepeople can now haveall the information they need, along with voiceassistanceall
in their pocket at a cheap price. This causes consumers to bestuck in the digital world for much longer periods. People would see it as a positive thing as it is
becoming moreeffortless to find out anything you wantand while yes I agree with this fact, I would still personally arguethat this is slightly worrying since
people aremore often glued to their screens. I personally seethis nearly every time I would go out to any friends or work, everyonearound meis constantly
stuck to their phone, whether it's for texting someoneelse, watching funny videos online or playing games or looking for information, it is becoming
increasingly difficult to interact with the people around me unless it is through the use of a digital device.

11. Summary
Having an online storeor presencealso seems essential for a business to be successful, as proven in my slide about what consumers shop online. Italso entirely
depends on what the business is for, for example, if the online storeis going to be used for groceries shopping, it simply won'tbe as successfulas an online
electronics store. This is mainly becauseof the much wider availability of electronic items online, whereas food shopping can be done in any nearby big food
supermarket. Linking it back to Khalid's blog(Saleh, 2021), 69% of sales areled by electronics, 67% by books and 63% by clothing, meaning that if any business
was being set up for electronics, books or clothing sales, it would miss out on a lot of growth and recognition potential if it would not set up an online store. The
impact this has on consumers is as such that consumers aremorelikely to buy froma business online rather than going into a storebecauseof the ease and
conveniencewithin a few searches and buttons pressed. Furthermore, linking online storeshopping to my discussion aboutadvancing AI's, this leads me to
believe that within severalyears, human developed AI might become so smartand independent that it will eventually starttaking over peoples jobs such as AI
customer service, self-driving trucks acrosstheworld, food deliveries and many more. Articles may slowly startbecoming less relevant while video sourced
information and images will be the go-to for mostconsumers sincethe video consumption is growing and voice assistancewillstart becoming stronger paired
with AI to always havean AI with voice assistanceperhaps on your smartphone, thatcan answer any question you ask it on demand, without leading you to any
websites based on search results, but instead, it would tell u the answer to your questions on the spot. This may make people become less proactivein searching
for information themself since they might be able to justask anything they want and receive an in-depth responsewith any statistics or extra data they may need.​
The impact of technology mainly takes effecton the younger generations which aresurrounded by technology, as that is whatthey grew up using and its what
they will continue using, whether it is to kill time, find information, learn new skills or to simply contacta friend. They will most likely be using the newest
technology around them sinceit’s a lot easier and has a lot moreto offer than whatthe older generation methods haveto offer, and they grew up using social
media platforms as a way to communicatewith each other. For the Millenials, its like second nature to be surrounded by technology, shop online, consumemedia
every day, whereas the older generations would prefer going to the stores and shop in-store, usecash rather than phone apps for payments, contactfriends and
family using older phones or even landline phones.​
In conclusion, I believe that the impact on people that technology has could be starting to shapepositively as long as it's done at the right pace and developed
sensibly and appropriately with certain precautions taken into consideration. Areas, whereI seepositivity, is consumers being able to savea lot of time and
trouble. Things such as smaller, more effectiveand advanced cooking equipment to be able to be left and make a meal for you while you have moretime to work
on your projector work, better voice assistancefor easier communication and easier navigation around the internet and your phone, and I believe this is justthe
beginning of the digital era and that the technology is still very young. However, areas in which I see it becoming dark, are such as AI taking over peoples jobs,
companies replacing humans holding trained professionsand degrees, with machines such as AI buses, AI cars, AI deliveries, self-driving trucks(which arealready
being developed by Tesla) and eventually, AI becoming so big that pretty much everything around the world will be done by machines while humanity will have
no jobs and sit at home and slowly becomecorruptwhile AI begins to dominate the world, although this is very unlikely, there is still a chancethat it may happen.

12. References
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