Discuss how technology and ICT have evolved over ...

Discuss how technology and ICT have evolved over the past and present century shaping up society and how society has influenced the progress of technology and ICT.

ICT is constantly changing and advancing as scientists and engineers are creating and developing new technologies for us to use and enjoy. This topic has been examined by various researchers from time to time. A major change brought by the ICT boom is the transformation of the industrial economy into a knowledge and network economy, and clearly this concept is being adopted by many countries, thus by various governments, the corporates and the citizens.
An important aspect of ICT is that it facilitates and encompasses the networking of people, ideas and innovation together, thus it leads to a power shift and social change, i.e. people are living in a different way from the past years . The impact of ICT on the society can be felt at the global, regional, national and even at the local level. ICT brings about various factors such as openness, democratization, connectivity, accountability, decentralisation and accessibility from various place around the world. While many researchers and experts in this field continuously admit that ICT is bringing a lot of progress it is also bring a lot of regress. Some examples of the ICT applications in the every day life at the local level include such as the local government services that are provided online so that they will be more accessible .This is better known as e-governance. Other examples include market information and opportunities, online employment opportunities; such as searching for vacancies and applying for various post from home and so on. Smart communities and schools are also being 'seen' as time goes by. A form of these smart schools could be seen in a very easing learning way such as e-learning. At the regional and the global levels, ICT facilitates cooperation and growth by easing the government-to-government, people-to-people contacts and sharing of education and other practices.
Apart from all the above beneficial issues that many researches point out, many of them also highlight other issues that are not well known as the above. The biggest of these issues is the "digital divide" – the gap between those who have access to technology (telephones, computers
and, increasingly, the Internet) and related services and those who do not have access to these resources. This digital divide exists at all the levels of society, e.g. the rural poor in India vs. the urban educated; least developed countries vs. most developed countries.
To understand the processes and impacts of a globalization technology like the Internet, one must account for the historical development of that technology, the process of technology transfer in general, and the local cultural dynamics in unique regions. The Internet will diffuse differently in different regions and among different sectors within those regions.
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