Today, all of us are leading a distressful life in an otherwise peaceful world. We are always on our phones and other gadgets.
It is 2020, and it is Quarantine period. During this quarantine period , all of us are highly cautious and concerned about our well- being. Have you ever wondered why this could have happened?
I personally believe that these are the cries of our mother earth.
“Nature is always hinting at us. It hints over and over again. And suddenly we take the hint” -Robert Frost
In this world of advanced technology, we were all leading a life of comfort and happiness. Everything is just a click away on our phones. We listen to music,play games, watch movies and television shows on our gadgets. We run behind the latest technologies available in the market so as to make our lives more and more comfortable, but somewhere, something has gone wrong and that led us to our present situation.
Are we giving nature the respect it deserves ? We need to respect nature!!!
All of us have already forgotten life in the past and how it helped us evolve into our personality . Each time we cross our limits, mother nature mourns for itself and these mournings are reflected to the world as Nippah virus, Flood, Corona virus and many more to come.
In the past such disasters were less common, but, in the present times the attack of such disasters are experienced frequently. In the earlier times, people loved and worshiped nature and even a religion called Paganism existed then. We treated nature with care, and love.
But, what is happening to our present society? This is a question to all of them out there who are reading this.
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The elderly frequently keep telling us about how they had spent their youthful days fruitfully and how it formed the building stones for their lives ahead. They keep telling us many things such as how much kilometers they used to walk to their school, how they studied along with working in the fields to support their families etc.
Ironically, in the present world children are born with mobile phones in their hands. According to me, this is a very bad thing to do and follow as it is obvious that it will lead to serious problems- health wise, morally, emotionally and psychologically in their future lives. People of our generation have already given themselves to the electronic world.
We were not given phones at our young age, but, still we turned out to be ardent worshipers of our electronic gadgets. We have come down to the extent of texting the person sitting next to us in next room. We even forget the existence of such a person sitting next to us. If such dreadful is our situation, just imagine the situation of our next generation who are given electronic gadgets at their tender ages. The importance of face to face communication, the value given to our lives, etc is getting degraded day by day just due to our blind addiction to the recent technologies. And this needs to stop.
We need to regulate our dependence on the internet and technological devices and learn to respect nature, treat it with care and love. We need a healthy balanced ecosystem. We should protect and preserve our environment, bring back greenery into this world.
We often hear ourselves saying that robots are devoid of feelings and incapable of experiencing emotions.
But with the passage of time and progress in society, haven’t things changed and improved? Innovations have changed the society. Technology has improved SO much and made lives infinitely better.
Isn’t it often said that the early human which existed about two million years ago didn’t have feelings and as the time passed by they were exposed to different situations and in trying to adapt to them they developed the feelings like hunger, pain, fear, love and so on ?
So eventually shouldn’t that happen with robots too ? Maybe if 100 years from now, robots would have feelings and emotions like us?
Today, Robotics is a budding field.
People are making different robots for different tasks and needs.
Modern scientists are trying to bond human DNA to the coding in its central operating device which is said to be,”The brain of the robot”, but many vital information is yet to be gathered, conclusions are yet to be made. Many other biological process can be followed up in robots but someday in the future wouldn’t it be possible ?
The creators are trying their level best to make robot’s sensors and actuators as precise as the neuron in human body.
We can see Andro-humanoid like Sophia is a major success in this trails and modern science is at its peak. Cutting edge technology is changing the world.
In the future, Epidemic and Pandemic situations could be handled in much appropriate and easy way with the help of robots. But we need to be careful too. To not overuse and misuse technology.
Aritificial Intelligence, and research in fields like Machine learning, and neutral networks is helping scientists discover new things .
Through techniques like machine learning and neural networks, firms across the globe are investing in teaching machines to ‘think’ more like humans.
Electronic commerce is better known to us as ‘e-commerce’. It is one of the largest sectors of the electronics industry. It essentially involves the purchase-both buying and selling of products via electronic means such as internet or other e-services. It will be an understatement to say that e-services are simplifying our lives in a trillion ways. Technology has changed our lives in unimaginable ways. Need to buy grocery? Or stationary? Or order food ? Or books? or shop clothes ? We have numerous applications available to us on our phones(and other electronic gadgets) and products are just a click away away from being available to us. Add to this, Cash/Card on delivery has changed the way we purchase products online.
Thus, the e-commerce industry is a rapidly growing one.
E-commerce actively utlilizes mobile commerce, e-fund transfer, internet marketing and transaction processing.
We get to choose from a very broad range of products online. Online shopping has given us more choices in purchasing products. It can provide flexible personalized product and customer customization. It can also help organizations save a lot of time and help them expand business, ensuring access of products to the whole world, not limiting it to a specific area. Geographical constraints are overcome.
Online stores like Amazon, Flipkart and Myntra are examples of E–commerce websites. Various discount vouchers available on their websites have helped encourage online shopping.
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Brief History of E-commerce : ( The source for the tidbits of history of e-commerce we’ve collected and mentioned below is Wikipedia).
The venture was started in 1971 or 1972 when the ARPANET used to arrange a cannabis sale between students at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This initiative was later called as “the seminal act of e-commerce” by John Markoff in his book ‘ What the Dormouse Said’ . In 1972, Mohammed M. Atalla filed a patent for a secure transaction system over telecommunications networks, utilizing encryption techniques to assure telephone link security. This is considered as a precursor to Internet-based e-commerce. In 1979, Michael Aldrich demonstrated the first online shopping system and in 1981,the first business-to- business (B2B) online shopping system was installed by Thomson Holidays UK. In 1982,’Mintel’ was introduced nationwide in France by France Telecom and was used for online ordering.
Gateshead SIS/Tesco is the first B2C online shopping system and Mrs Snowball is the first online home shopper . This was in 1984. In April 1984, CompuServe launches the Electronic Mall in the US and Canada. It is the first comprehensive electronic commerce service. The first internet based system for e-commerce ,Compumarket was introduced by Sequola Data Corp in May 1989. Here, sellers and buyers could post items for sale and buyers could search the data base and make purchases with a credit card .
In 1995 , Amazon.com was launched by Jeff Bezos which inturn became a revolution in the field of e-commerce. E-bay was founded by computer programmer Purre Omidyar as an Auction Web. It is the first online auction site supporting person-to-person transactions. By 1999, Global e-commerce reached $150 billion and by 2001 had the largest userbase of any e-commerce site. In 2003, Amazon.com posted it’s first yearly profit and by 2015, Amazon accounts for more than half of all e-commerce growth , selling almost 500 millions SKU’s in the US. The Global e-commerce transactions generate $29.267 trillion including $35.516 trillion B2B transactions and $3.851 trillion for B2C sales by the end of 2017.
Though India has the second most user base in the world , the growth of e-commerce is comparatively low in our country . This is because, Indians prefer ‘cash-on- delivery’ system as the most efficient payment method.
E-commerce in India
The e-commerce market in India is estimated to grow from $10 billion every year to between $ 70 – 260 billion every year by 2025* .
In 2017, the largest e-commerce companies in India were Flipkart, Amazon,Myntra, Paytm and Snapdeal.
In 2018, Amazon beat Flipkart and was recorded as the biggest e-commerce in India in terms of revenue.
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Impacts on customers E-commerce is in simple words convenient to customers. It can also grand you with international market and quality products which may not be available in the retailer shops nearby. The detailed information of a particular product is gained by the customer and it also cuts the transaction costs which is made possible by the lack of intermediates. However it also has certain demerits which include the assurance about the quality of the product or- in the case of clothes wrong size chosen is a big problem. The returning of products and the refunding of money spent is also another threat in this field.
Impacts on environment The use of cardboards is a major issue in the case of e-commerce. In 2018, they generated 1.3 million tons of container cardboards in North America which was 1.1 million in 2017**. This shows that as the use of e-commerce increases, the use of cardboard containers also increases and only 35 percent of North American cardboard manufacturing is from recycled content. In Europe, the recycling rate is 80 percent and in Asia ,it is 93 percent. Amazon has reduced usage of packaging material by 19 percent by 2016 since they are the largest users of cardboard boxes.
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Impacts on Traditional retail The frequently referred trend “retail apocalypse” is a major impact caused by e-commerce to the traditional retailer . The rise of e-commerce outlets like Amazon*** , has made the traditional retailing community’s efforts to attract the consumers harder. They are now forced to change their sales strategies. They also use the internet for promotions and advertisements.
Impact on markets and retailers
E-commerce markets are growing at noticeable rates. The online market is expected to grow by 56% in 2015–2020****. In 2017, retail e-commerce sales worldwide amounted to 2.3 trillion US dollars and e-retail revenues are projected to grow to 4.88 trillion US dollars in 2021*****.
Impact on supply chain management
The emergence of e-commerce has provided an efficient way of delivering the benefits of the new supply chain technologies.
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Impact on employment
E-commerce has helped generate new job opportunities due to information related services, software app and digital products-to manage large amounts of information, customer demands, and production processes. Warehouse require more staff to be managed, supervised and organized.
Technology is not something which can be defined in a simple definition. It is something which has transformed man from the lowest degree of a caveman to the highest position of a spaceman. Technology which is being introduced and improved almost everyday is making our lives simpler. Though these technologies have both merits and demerits, they are more or less making the human kind smarter. We people, living in the twenty- first century have experienced all those ‘dreams’ written in early science fictions. Technology thus is outstandingly impacting our lives and has helped us make our life simpler and smarter.
Technologies are not something that happened overnight but it is the end result of many intellectual hard work over the years. The invention of radio, telephone, television, computer, mobile phones etc are the fascinating outcomes of the early and late technologies. And to a great extent these have become our one of our basic necessities. Everything and anything can be known from the extensive range of information from internet just at the ease of a click. These technologies which is developing over years have made India a software super-power.
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Internet as part of technology is being used for business and educational fields, transportation schedule, marketing areas, online shopping . Due to this improved technology important news reach us super-fast. We are very fortunate to witness some of the most fascinating technical advancements like social media which enables us to be more social and it further created many interactive platforms. Social networks, blogs, reviews, conferences are also a result of these awesome technologies,which not only is catching the attention of the youth, but both old and young alike.
Science is the greatest boon man has ever got and technology is the best tool for constructive purposes. This same technology has also improved the health facilities of medical science and also enabled us to dream of life in outer planets. It gave us the vision in robotics and satellite launching. These technology has made our life easy, simple, comfortable and luxurious.
Now let us take a look at the demerits of technology.
Social medias nowadays are the explicit application of technology. Instagram , Facebook , tik tok etc are the platforms where people post personal pictures and videos . Intrusion of privacy is an issue. Misuse of personal pictures is another.
Technology , these days also has replaced the jobs with machines and gadgets which leave people jobless and much more accurately lazy . Over exploitation of electronic gadgets is harmful to the people themselves as it becomes an addiction and leads to many major health issues . As people becomes glued to the electronic gadgets they lose their connection with the nature.
Nature was considered as a mother by our ancient poets ; paganism ; a religion where nature was worshiped , by people. Wordsworth was the greatest example and representation of a nature loving generation . Now in this twenty first century where we witness such a technological boom , there is no more nature worshiping or not even adoring the beauty of nature . This is definitely a crisis that the humanity is going to suffer in the upcoming years . Dante’s ‘ Divine comedy ‘ , an eminent piece of work in the list of Italian literature evidently depicts the picture of hell , his inferno ( 9 circles of hell ) is said to become true in the future years and human race will witness a devastating situation as a consequence of the over booming technology and destruction of nature . Science and technology has also been used as a weapon at times of wars . If this technology reaches the wrong hands then it is a devastating situation for the world economy . These technological developments is also a deviation from our traditional path .
It is high time we do something about this . The youth is always backbone of an economy , if the awareness and precaution is taken by the youth , then the future is secured. Nobody’s control over the other is efficient as much as self control over oneself . One should have self awareness in using all the electronic gadgets and technological application . In this modern world where friends are more influential than family , good and effective peer group must be formed . It is the duty of the present generation to make sure that the technology is used in a positive and informative way without using it negatively or let it manipulate us to assure a promising future.
Machines are more like humans. In the 21st century, humans rely on gadgets to store information that is vital. Data and other documents are stored in those gadgets and people believe that its safer because earlier the documents were manually recorded and most of them are not existing now. It is quite evident that humans relay on machines. Machines have vital role in industrial development. Digital technologies support companies to accelerate according to the trends. Both internet and computers together to connect with our lives seamlessly which make sense of the world.
Technology makes life more easy and informative. Information is available in a way that was unimaginable just a few decades ago. Technology lies behind global development and it provides information on health care, business and technology. Technology has transformed our lives.
People rely on machine’s opinion even for the most important and vulnerable situations and its quite clear that machines are playing a vital role in the world.
Human brain and machines combine to have a great impact to world’s development. Earlier we had a misconception that we all individuals, companies and countries have no facility to foresee anything but technology has changed the way we look at world. Artificial Intelligence has helped us make massive changes in research and development. We can in fact make great changes to the world if we combine both human brain and technology.
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