How technology is changing our shared lived experiences

Not too long ago, you needed a big budget and a passport to visit the Vatican City or walk the Great Wall of China. Taking in the plans of the Serengeti or seeing Rembrandts “Nightwatch” masterpiece was out of reach for the vast majority of the global population.

But that’s changing, and it’s changing fast. As the median standards of living across the globe are increasing, more of us are able to access services and experiences which before would have been out of reach. However, that’s not true for everyone, and the fact of the matter is this: the vast majority of the planet will never be able to physically visit some of our best and most iconic sites and attractions.

Now, technology is seeking to change that and with the developing world seeing a dramatic rise in access to the internet greater amounts of the global population are being given access, albeit virtually to the great library that is planet earth. But, as with all the best-laid plans of mice and men, not everyone is excited about this. Information means power and that’s not good news for opposition parties in many countries.  But this post is all about the positive impact of technology, so let’s look at just a few of those aspects.

BUT, IS IT ART?

How a nation charts its journey throughout history is captured in many different ways, but beyond the textbooks and archives is the preserve of artists. For far too long the hallowed halls of our greatest artists have been the preserve of only a privileged few, but now we see how technology is changing the way we access art. Now we can browse the digital collections of the Hermitage museum thousands of miles away in Nigeria and vice versa, Italian students can study ancient African art forms too.

DIGITAL MEETING SPACES

Virtual Meeting Rooms are providing much-needed relief from the endless barrage of Zoom meetings of late, but they’re also increasingly being set up and used as a platform for students from all over the world to interact with each other and share skills, like offering language assistance or teaching each other how to play musical instruments. This is technology at its very best and it’s changing the face of education all over the developing world, fast.

CLEANING UP THE PLANET

In what is probably one of the best pursuits of the development of global technology, the way we clean up the planet was always going to feature highly on the list of uses for smart tech, and at the very high point of this is our oceans. The war on plastic isn’t new and neither is oil spills and the ongoing threat or nuclear pollution, but as many as the problems are that the world is facing right now, so too are the solutions.

Far from the conspiracy theories of how the rise of robots is going to bring about a “terminator-Esque” existence, the rise of robot technology is leading the charge when it comes to the pursuit of increased access to goods and services for a greater part of the population.

Image by Gerd Altmann