Contemporary Issues in Information Technology: Impacts and Ethics

This report delves into the multifaceted impacts of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) since the advent of the Internet. It meticulously examines both the positive and negative consequences of ICT across various domains, including communication, globalization, cost-effectiveness, and cultural shifts. The report also explores the ethical responsibilities of computer professionals in ensuring the responsible use of emerging ICT applications, particularly concerning data privacy and security. Furthermore, it analyzes the specific impacts of ICT on business operations, societal structures, and cultural dynamics, highlighting both the advancements and potential drawbacks associated with technological integration. The report concludes by summarizing the key findings and emphasizing the critical need for ethical considerations in the ongoing evolution of ICT.

Running head: CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Contemporary issues in Information Technology
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
The positive and negative impacts of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs)
since the invention of the Internet and the responsibilities of computer professionals to ensure
ethical use of emerging ICT applications in the future..............................................................2
The impact upon business..............................................................................................6
The impact upon society................................................................................................6
The impact upon culture.................................................................................................7
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................7
References..................................................................................................................................8

2CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Introduction
The concept of Information Technology has impacted on the entire world in such a
way that manual working and everything that was followed up in a traditional and manual
way started to utilise Information Technology for easing out all the manual procedures. These
are not just impacting upon the regular lives of people but were also impacting a lot on the
business organisations as it was seen that organisations were taking up Information
Technology systems to perform the different business operations. This is because there are
numerous advantages that would be brought about with the utilisation of ICT and at the same
time it was also found that there were several advantages related to every aspect of the human
lives that made the society, businesses and culture be under the influence of Information
Technology (Avgerou and Walsham 2017). This is why the following report is formulated to
investigate the influence of Information and Communication Technology, be it positive or
negative. It would be analysed about its impact since the invention of internet. This would
also justify how the computer professionals are responsible to ethically use the emerging
technology in the future. In addition, the impact of ICT in the society, business and culture
would also be analysed in this particular report.
The positive and negative impacts of Information and Communication
Technologies (ICTs) since the invention of the Internet and the
responsibilities of computer professionals to ensure ethical use of emerging
ICT applications in the future
The impact of ICT has on the human lives are manifold and they do not bear only
positive impacts but also has a negative impact along (Luo and Bu 2016). The following
section will justify the positive and the negative impacts of ICT over all the possible areas of
impacting the human lives from the perspective of the responsiveness and level of

3CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
understanding that ICT professionals have over the ethical usability for the emerging
application of ICT in future:
The positive impacts
Communication: ICT increases the speed and time of communication that causes the
saving of money in a much easier and quicker way for moving the information around in the
most efficient way possible.
Globalisation: The impact of ICT is such that the ways by which communication
used to happen within a limited area has changed completely. There is no bound limit for
communicating through to various advanced options available including the ones that helps in
in communicating through videos while the people are on the run saving time, money and
space. It has helped making the countries we lot closer together then it seemed but this is also
allowed the economy of the world to become a singular interdependent system that would
provide singular help to either a person focusing on career or a person focusing on business.
Cost effectiveness: The impact of ICT has made it easier for sending an email as it
seems more of like a free service, however it still is not but it gives the impression of a cost-
effective low cost or no cost at all service. However it is extremely cheaper than a phone call
itself as well (Chugh, Wibowo and Grandhi 2016). The automation of business practices has
also show become much cheaper than it used to be given the latest influence of ICT. Even the
restructuring of business organisations have also become easier to implement for any
organisation in an extremely cost effective way.
Availability: The possibility of an automated business being every time on the best
possible service and accessing the clients at any given time is possible only through the
influence of ICT.

4CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Bridging cultural gaps: The possibility of accessing Technology with a much bigger
access health in the bridging of cultural gaps as it allows people from different communities
to Converse with one another and exchange their views and ideas (Burbules 2018). This gives
a better perspective to the world in how people can help in engaging into conversations
without accessorizing cultural taboos.
Availability of jobs: The probability e of having better jobs was represented by the
ICT with the availability of new jobs and interesting perspectives.
Education system: The education system has become a lot more advanced with the
utility of ICT given the traditional approaches being replaced by the new and much advance
educational procedures that helps a created education opportunity to be available to the next
generations as well.
The negative impacts
Education system: The education system has made it easier for the education being
available to the next generations but it does not allow the same for the previous generations
as it has been found that most of the education and learning should not be available to the
previous generations as ICT keeps on developing further.
The lack of job security: There are wide varieties of exports available who are
educated in ICT but they face several problems since the subject keeps on having advanced
changes every time (Soomro, Shah and Ahmed 2016). The individuals have to keep on
changing their skill sets every other time if they want to be upgraded enough to have their
jobs secured.
Cultural overriding: The availability of internet have made it easier for people to
explore cultures vividly and contribute in to one another's conversations, but it is also argued
that there has been influences of one culture over the other the influence of culture has

5CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
overridden the traditional forms of one culture. For example, it is easily found that the culture
of United States is easily available to the world and this is also been influencing cultures from
all over the world to be influenced taking up their forms (Dutta, Geiger and Lanvin 2015).
Lack of privacy: The influence of ICT has made communication extremely easier
and quicker but it has fall short of providing secured environment to every user all around the
world. The intersections of mobile phones to hacking of emails, every people are worried
about the varied amount of privacy threats that people face more often.
Reliability on technology: The availability of Technology has made it even difficult
for every person around to not be relied on technology. For example, people rely more on
their mobile phones to make them remember important dates and phone numbers (Arkorful
and Abaidoo 2015). People have started relying more on the technology-based systems to
remember the important dates and times and even phone numbers. This is a problem as if the
situation does not permit a person to use cell phone or any other technological dependency,
they have they cannot remember any important numbers in need.
The information reliability: Since cyber world is a place where everyone is provided
with the access to internet and share any kind of information it becomes difficult to
understand which information is reliable enough for people to take in in as every information
is available as an open source (Talebian, Mohammadi and Rezvanfar 2014). Good sources
like Wikipedia is also recognised by trustworthy references but it is editable as well.
Responsiveness of Computer Professionals in the future of ICT technologies
The ethical use of ICT is challenged in many ways regarding the responsive sense of
professionals of ICT given the reports in the latest times. There have been various reports
about preaching of information in a business or breaching of individual data. The more
people have been utilising the advanced technologies, the more privacy is coming at stake.

6CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
For example, there have been a new technology of big data introduced that helps the
identification of patterns within huge amount of data and information collected to decipher
them in the quickest way possible (Kolberg and Zühlke 2015). However, they have been
various incidences where organisations have been not responsible enough in handling this
huge amount of data leading to breaching of data by unethical hackers
The impact upon business
Information and Technology has helped the larger and smaller businesses in various
aspects as it has been found that the communication process has improved in a huge way
provided the availability of different traditional procedures and aspects on business (Barr et
al. 2017). The processes have become much faster in implementing and realising the benefits
of as it has become much more responsive and allows a frequent flow of communication
systems. However, the impact has also been negative in several ways as the businesses have
also faced several threats regarding the privacy and security issues of business data during the
ICT influence.
The impact upon society
The social impact of ICT has transformed it entirely and it has also help in sustaining
into different developmental goals as well. The society is able to achieve various forms of
achievement based on the infrastructure that is previously could not have. But the society is
heavily influenced by ICT as well since the negative impact have also been up on the society
and the people living in them as well.
The impact upon culture
Culture has also been influenced by ICT since it has been found that people from
different culture could easily communicate with each other clearing all the tab use that people

7CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
have about people coming from different cultures (Martin 2017). However, other than that it
is also influence the society into having influences of one over another and it has made the
people following a specific culture be influenced by other and take up their cultural activities
as well.
Conclusion
Therefore, it can be concluded that in the above report the impact of ICT over society,
business and culture has been identified where not just the negative impacts have been
formulated but also the positive impacts have been identified. This proves that the
information and technology influence has made a huge impact over the human lives and all
the day to day activities that they go through generally. The ethical use of Information and
Technology has also been described by stating the responsiveness and responsibility sense in
the ICT professionals as well.

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References
Arkorful, V. and Abaidoo, N., 2015. The role of e-learning, advantages and disadvantages of
its adoption in higher education. International Journal of Instructional Technology and
Distance Learning, 12(1), pp.29-42.
Avgerou, C. and Walsham, G. eds., 2017. Information technology in context: Studies from
the perspective of developing countries: Studies from the perspective of developing countries.
Routledge.
Barr, N., Vania, D., Randall, G. and Mulvale, G., 2017. Impact of information and
communication technology on interprofessional collaboration for chronic disease
management: a systematic review. Journal of health services research & policy, 22(4),
pp.250-257.
Burbules, N., 2018. Watch IT: The risks and promises of information technologies for
education. Routledge.
Chugh, R., Wibowo, S. and Grandhi, S., 2016. Environmentally sustainable information and
communication technology usage: Awareness and practices of indian information and
communication technology professionals. Journal of cleaner production, 131, pp.435-446.
Dutta, S., Geiger, T. and Lanvin, B., 2015. The global information technology report 2015.
In World Economic Forum(Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. P80-85).
Kolberg, D. and Zühlke, D., 2015. Lean automation enabled by industry 4.0
technologies. IFAC-PapersOnLine, 48(3), pp.1870-1875.
Luo, Y. and Bu, J., 2016. How valuable is information and communication technology? A
study of emerging economy enterprises. Journal of World Business, 51(2), pp.200-211.

9CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Martin, W.J., 2017. The global information society. Routledge.
Nguyen, T.H., Newby, M. and Macaulay, M.J., 2015. Information technology adoption in
small business: Confirmation of a proposed framework. Journal of Small Business
Management, 53(1), pp.207-227.
Soomro, Z.A., Shah, M.H. and Ahmed, J., 2016. Information security management needs
more holistic approach: A literature review. International Journal of Information
Management, 36(2), pp.215-225.
Talebian, S., Mohammadi, H.M. and Rezvanfar, A., 2014. Information and communication
technology (ICT) in higher education: advantages, disadvantages, conveniences and
limitations of applying e-learning to agricultural students in Iran. Procedia-Social and
Behavioral Sciences, 152, pp.300-305.