essay about technological advancement

Technological Advancement Essay

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Searching for a technological advancement essay? Look no further! This simple essay on breakthrough technologies describes all the benefits and drawbacks of the issue.

Introduction

Why write about technology advancement, breakthrough technologies in various sectors, technological advancement essay faq.

Technological advancement has taken major strides in bringing liberation to the divergent human wants and gratifications. After keen observation, I have come to realize that technological advancement plays a critical role in solving the major crisis of food shortages in the modern world. In the state of Virginia during the 17th century, human labor was imperative due to the pressing need to grow enough food to serve the people in the community during the winter spell hence the need to hire slaves from Africa to work on their farms (Brush, 1988).

This has since changed partly due to the technological advancements over the years that have led to the replacement of human and animal labor with more efficient energy sources as wind power, hydroelectric and steam energies that ultimately led to a significant increase in productivity. Thus, the thesis statement for this essay is to analyze the impact of technological advancement on people’s lives from ancient times to the present modern world.

It is evident that technology is the backbone of the industrial revolution process that has occurred over the years and leads to a total overhaul from crude systems to modern efficient machinery. With this in mind, we cannot overlook the role that technology has played on the social and economic fronts of many societies hence the need to have a deeper insight and research on this particular topic. The transformation brought about by technological advancement has helped many societies in Africa and the world at large to alleviate poverty and improve their standards of living through the increased food supply and significant growth in the economy and this integrates with the research question: Is technology liberating?

The three academic disciplines from which this research has drawn insight from include: agriculture, sociology and communication sectors.

Technology Advancement in Agriculture

In the ancient world, the main source of power was human labor obtained mainly from slaves. In North America for example, during the early 17th century, most whites purchased slaves as a chief source of labor to work on their farms but with the emancipation proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln during the civil war of 1863 that declared all slaves to be set free from bondage, their masters had no choice but to source for another alternative source of labor.

This act spearheaded the advancement of the agricultural revolution, which was also boosted by the industrial revolution that led to the development of more efficient agricultural machinery that required very few workers and resulted in higher farm production. Examples of some of the medieval technologies used in the ancient world included: water wheel, four-field crop rotation system, the horse collar and selective breeding of livestock with good traits.

In 1750, engineer John Smeaton working on the water wheel significantly increased its efficiency hence boosting its productivity. It was during this period that technological advancement, revolution, and innovation in agriculture were at its peak and it led to the emergence of new farm machinery like cultivators, combine harvesters and mowers that were pulled by oxen, mules, and horses. These machines were later powered by steam energy than a more efficient diesel fuel that led to a remarkable increase in farm output (Kedar, 2009). Previously, the land was prepared by a man using traditional mattocks and hoes made from raw materials obtained locally like wood and scrap metals.

With the mechanization of agriculture, farmers could now make use of the machinery like combine harvesters and petrol powered tractors to prepare large acres of land within a short period with minimum input on human labor to clear, plow and plant on their expansive farms. Technology has led to hybridization, selective breeding and inbreeding in livestock to obtain or maintain all the good qualities in their animals as high milk production, quality wool production, quality meat production, and other desirable animal traits.

Robert Bakewell and Thomas Coke doing their research on selective breeding crossed Lincoln and Longhorn sheep, to produce a hybrid that exhibited all the good qualities of both Lincoln and Longhorn and was referred to as New Leicester variety. This has helped in alleviating the crisis of food shortages through maximization of farm output.

Technology Advancement in Everyday Lives

Technology has been indispensable in bettering the social lives of many people in society. Technological advancements have led to the development in infrastructure and social amenities which has in turn positively impacted on the general livelihood of many individuals. It was until the Roman era in the 18th century that good roads were constructed, during those days, slaves were also used to carry loads and farm produce from the farms to storage warehouses and vice versa. They also used canoes and boats to carry farm products from North America between the Appalachian Mountains and Mississippi River during the early periods of the 19th century.

During this period, the transport system was still archaic and underdeveloped and people found it difficult to navigate from one region to another or carry heavy luggage over long distances because of poor roads and crude modes of transport. The canals preceded the construction of railroads that marked the beginning of the industrial revolution and from there we had significant developments in the transport sector with the construction of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869 and the subsequent construction of tarmac roads, sea canals and subway systems (Butler, 1996).

These developments made it easier for people to move around hence positively impacting on their social lives by enhancing communication, trade, and farming. This indirectly led to improved living standards as a result of the increased food supply by farmers and the development of business firms. Farmers could now effectively carry their farm inputs and fertilizers to the farm and farm products to the market without difficulties. Businesses also thrived because of the efficient transport system and in no time firms began proliferating from every sector of the economy. This enabled them to diversify their economic activities as they no longer depended on the agricultural sector for their daily provision but also ventured into the business sector within the community.

With the recent development in infrastructure, it paved the way to the development of social amenities as schools, hospitals, public toilets, shops and market centers that increased in number as more and more investors joined the market. These amenities played a critical role in the development of the economy and elevating the living standards of the people in the community as they could now easily access all the essential resources. Hence technology played a vital role in liberating the lives of many from the bondage of hunger and scarcity to a point of abundance and stable food supply.

Technology Advancement in Communication

Communication is the act of conveying information from one person to another either face to face or by means of a communication medium. According to Scruton (1996), during the ancient times, slaves used to communicate through hymns, quilts or underground railroads while others used drums to convey coded information since most had originated from Africa and drum beating was their cultural way of communicating. These primitive modes of communications were not very reliable as the information could at times be distorted or misinterpreted by the recipient leading to a communication breakdown.

During the ancient period, people used to communicate through messages carved on stone pillars but this type of communication had limitations as the recipients had to travel miles to receive them and the message could only be read within a certain reading range. Others like the American Indians used smoke to convey a particular message to the community while others used bonfires lit on hilltops but such signals were limited to conveying specific information like looming danger, war or victory.

Communication then developed to more elaborate form which included writing on portable materials like reeds and papyrus. This medium of communication was much more reliable than the earlier archaic communication system. With the emergence of technological advancement and innovations, the transmission of signals from one person to another through a more sophisticated medium like communication cables took center stage. In the early 1830s, the electrical communication system made significant progress in this industry as people could now get in touch through electronic devices like a telephone.

In the year 1833, scientists Carl Friedrich and Wilhelm Eduard Weber researching on the electric transmission devices, made use of the principle of “electromagnetic technology” that later acted as the fundamental basis or a prerequisite for the innovation of telephones (Williams, 1993). Subsequent experiments done by Alexander Bell and Thomas Watson worked to optimize its efficiency and could now be used for commercial purposes. This was later followed by other technological developments and innovations by telecommunication engineers and scientists that led to the production of the carbon microphone, telephone exchange, data storage devices, wireless phones, and computers.

At this point, we can only appreciate the technological advancements that the communication industry has taken overtime to come up with sophisticated and very efficient gadgets that can serve multiple purposes other than communication. Such progress in technology has acted as a remedy to the many communication snarl-ups that people in the ancient world had to contend with but now people can freely share information, ideas, thoughts, opinions, photos, video clips on very many communication platforms using the sophisticated devices and handsets.

For example, use of the internet on computers and mobile phones to share information and ideas across the globe hence making the world a small village and enabling the free flow of information that is objective and informative. Hence this technology could be used to positively impact the lives of people by making them more informed and educated.

In conclusion, technology has had quite a significant impact on people’s lives over the years by making life more bearable through the production of efficient systems that require little labor but produce a significantly high output. One significant finding from the above research is that African culture and tradition has been greatly revolutionized over the years from the archaic, crude and barbaric practices to sophisticated and more efficient processes through technological innovations and advancement. The introduction of western culture has worked to raise the living standards of many African communities that were previously languishing in hunger and poverty.

• What is technological advancement? Technological advancement implies the emergence and development of technical devices that affect various spheres of peoples’ life. It affects economic, political, social, and other sectors.
• How does technology affect the advancement of science? Modern technologies make it easier to share information and knowledge, allow scientists from different countries to interact effectively, and also involve the development of new methods of analysis.
• How does the advancement of technology affect society? Modern technologies influence various spheres of public life. They have significantly changed the labor market, transport and communications. People’s daily lives have become easier and more efficient.
• How do I start an essay about technology It is a good idea to start your technology advancement with a hook. One option is to use a quote, like the following one by Albert Einstein: “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” One more option is to use an exciting fact like the following one: Over 6,000 new computer viruses are created and released every month.

Brush, S. G. (1988). The History of Modern Science. A Guide to the Second Scientific Revolution, 35 (10), 5-8.

Butler, G. (1996). A History of Information Technology and Systems. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Kedar, S. (2009). Database Management Systems . Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Scruton, R. (1996 ). The Art of Communication Over the Years. The New Criterion, 15 (30), 9-13.

Williams, T. (1993). A Short History of Technology: From the Earliest Times . New York: Dover Publications.

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Essay on Technological Advancement

Students are often asked to write an essay on Technological Advancement in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Technological Advancement

What is technological advancement.

Technological advancement refers to the development of new and innovative technologies that improve our lives, making things easier and faster. It encompasses a wide range of fields, such as communication, transportation, medicine, and energy.

How does technological advancement impact our lives?

What are the benefits of technological advancement.

Technological advancement brings numerous benefits to society. It enhances productivity, leading to economic growth and improved living standards. It also creates new jobs and opportunities, especially in the tech industry. Additionally, technological advancements improve education and access to information, enabling people to learn and stay informed.

What are the challenges associated with technological advancement?

While technological advancement offers many benefits, it also presents challenges. One concern is the potential loss of jobs due to automation and artificial intelligence. Another challenge is the digital divide, where certain populations lack access to technology and its benefits. Ethical considerations also arise, such as privacy concerns and the potential misuse of technology.

250 Words Essay on Technological Advancement

What is technological advancement.

Technological advancement refers to the development of new and improved technologies that make people’s lives easier, more convenient, and more efficient. It involves the creation of new products, processes, and systems that address various challenges and improve the way people live and work.

Benefits of Technological Advancement

Technological advancement has brought many benefits to society. It has improved communication, transportation, healthcare, and education. For example, the internet has made it possible for people to connect with others around the world instantly. Mobile phones have made it easy for people to stay in touch with friends and family members who live far away.

Challenges of Technological Advancement

While technological advancement has many benefits, it also comes with some challenges. One challenge is that new technologies can be expensive, and not everyone can afford them. Another challenge is that new technologies can sometimes be harmful to the environment. For example, the use of fossil fuels to generate electricity releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which contributes to climate change.

The Future of Technological Advancement

It is likely that technological advancement will continue to accelerate in the years to come. This will bring both benefits and challenges. It is important to be aware of both the potential benefits and challenges of new technologies so that we can make informed decisions about how to use them.

Technological advancement is a complex and ever-changing field. It has the potential to improve people’s lives in many ways, but it also comes with some challenges. It is important to be aware of both the benefits and challenges of new technologies so that we can use them wisely.

500 Words Essay on Technological Advancement

A transformative power: technological advancement, communication and connectivity.

The advent of the internet has revolutionized communication and connectivity. Social media platforms, instant messaging, and video conferencing have made it possible to stay connected with friends and family across vast distances. The world has become a smaller place, fostering global collaboration and understanding.

Medical Breakthroughs

Technological advancements have also led to significant breakthroughs in healthcare. Medical imaging techniques, such as X-rays and MRI scans, have enabled early detection and more accurate diagnosis of diseases. Advanced treatments like robotic surgery and targeted drug therapies have improved patient outcomes and enhanced the quality of life for millions.

Education and Knowledge Access

Technology has democratized access to education and knowledge. Online learning platforms and digital resources have made it possible for individuals to learn at their own pace, regardless of their geographic location or socioeconomic status. Access to vast amounts of information has fostered a culture of curiosity and lifelong learning.

Industrial and Business Evolution

Challenges and ethical considerations.

While technological advancements have brought immense benefits, they also pose challenges and raise ethical considerations. The rapid pace of change can lead to job displacement and the need for continuous upskilling. Moreover, the increasing reliance on technology can result in privacy concerns, data security breaches, and the spread of misinformation. Navigating these challenges and addressing ethical implications requires careful consideration and responsible action.

Technology’s Impact on Society

Technological advancement is a continuous journey, marked by both challenges and opportunities. It has transformed the way we live, work, and communicate, and its impact will continue to shape our future. As technology advances, it is essential to embrace its benefits while addressing its potential drawbacks responsibly and ethically. By doing so, we can ensure that technological advancements contribute to a more equitable, sustainable, and prosperous world.

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Promises and Pitfalls of Technology

Politics and privacy, private-sector influence and big tech, state competition and conflict, author biography, how is technology changing the world, and how should the world change technology.

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Josephine Wolff; How Is Technology Changing the World, and How Should the World Change Technology?. Global Perspectives 1 February 2021; 2 (1): 27353. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/gp.2021.27353

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Technologies are becoming increasingly complicated and increasingly interconnected. Cars, airplanes, medical devices, financial transactions, and electricity systems all rely on more computer software than they ever have before, making them seem both harder to understand and, in some cases, harder to control. Government and corporate surveillance of individuals and information processing relies largely on digital technologies and artificial intelligence, and therefore involves less human-to-human contact than ever before and more opportunities for biases to be embedded and codified in our technological systems in ways we may not even be able to identify or recognize. Bioengineering advances are opening up new terrain for challenging philosophical, political, and economic questions regarding human-natural relations. Additionally, the management of these large and small devices and systems is increasingly done through the cloud, so that control over them is both very remote and removed from direct human or social control. The study of how to make technologies like artificial intelligence or the Internet of Things “explainable” has become its own area of research because it is so difficult to understand how they work or what is at fault when something goes wrong (Gunning and Aha 2019) .

This growing complexity makes it more difficult than ever—and more imperative than ever—for scholars to probe how technological advancements are altering life around the world in both positive and negative ways and what social, political, and legal tools are needed to help shape the development and design of technology in beneficial directions. This can seem like an impossible task in light of the rapid pace of technological change and the sense that its continued advancement is inevitable, but many countries around the world are only just beginning to take significant steps toward regulating computer technologies and are still in the process of radically rethinking the rules governing global data flows and exchange of technology across borders.

These are exciting times not just for technological development but also for technology policy—our technologies may be more advanced and complicated than ever but so, too, are our understandings of how they can best be leveraged, protected, and even constrained. The structures of technological systems as determined largely by government and institutional policies and those structures have tremendous implications for social organization and agency, ranging from open source, open systems that are highly distributed and decentralized, to those that are tightly controlled and closed, structured according to stricter and more hierarchical models. And just as our understanding of the governance of technology is developing in new and interesting ways, so, too, is our understanding of the social, cultural, environmental, and political dimensions of emerging technologies. We are realizing both the challenges and the importance of mapping out the full range of ways that technology is changing our society, what we want those changes to look like, and what tools we have to try to influence and guide those shifts.

Technology can be a source of tremendous optimism. It can help overcome some of the greatest challenges our society faces, including climate change, famine, and disease. For those who believe in the power of innovation and the promise of creative destruction to advance economic development and lead to better quality of life, technology is a vital economic driver (Schumpeter 1942) . But it can also be a tool of tremendous fear and oppression, embedding biases in automated decision-making processes and information-processing algorithms, exacerbating economic and social inequalities within and between countries to a staggering degree, or creating new weapons and avenues for attack unlike any we have had to face in the past. Scholars have even contended that the emergence of the term technology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries marked a shift from viewing individual pieces of machinery as a means to achieving political and social progress to the more dangerous, or hazardous, view that larger-scale, more complex technological systems were a semiautonomous form of progress in and of themselves (Marx 2010) . More recently, technologists have sharply criticized what they view as a wave of new Luddites, people intent on slowing the development of technology and turning back the clock on innovation as a means of mitigating the societal impacts of technological change (Marlowe 1970) .

At the heart of fights over new technologies and their resulting global changes are often two conflicting visions of technology: a fundamentally optimistic one that believes humans use it as a tool to achieve greater goals, and a fundamentally pessimistic one that holds that technological systems have reached a point beyond our control. Technology philosophers have argued that neither of these views is wholly accurate and that a purely optimistic or pessimistic view of technology is insufficient to capture the nuances and complexity of our relationship to technology (Oberdiek and Tiles 1995) . Understanding technology and how we can make better decisions about designing, deploying, and refining it requires capturing that nuance and complexity through in-depth analysis of the impacts of different technological advancements and the ways they have played out in all their complicated and controversial messiness across the world.

These impacts are often unpredictable as technologies are adopted in new contexts and come to be used in ways that sometimes diverge significantly from the use cases envisioned by their designers. The internet, designed to help transmit information between computer networks, became a crucial vehicle for commerce, introducing unexpected avenues for crime and financial fraud. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, designed to connect friends and families through sharing photographs and life updates, became focal points of election controversies and political influence. Cryptocurrencies, originally intended as a means of decentralized digital cash, have become a significant environmental hazard as more and more computing resources are devoted to mining these forms of virtual money. One of the crucial challenges in this area is therefore recognizing, documenting, and even anticipating some of these unexpected consequences and providing mechanisms to technologists for how to think through the impacts of their work, as well as possible other paths to different outcomes (Verbeek 2006) . And just as technological innovations can cause unexpected harm, they can also bring about extraordinary benefits—new vaccines and medicines to address global pandemics and save thousands of lives, new sources of energy that can drastically reduce emissions and help combat climate change, new modes of education that can reach people who would otherwise have no access to schooling. Regulating technology therefore requires a careful balance of mitigating risks without overly restricting potentially beneficial innovations.

Nations around the world have taken very different approaches to governing emerging technologies and have adopted a range of different technologies themselves in pursuit of more modern governance structures and processes (Braman 2009) . In Europe, the precautionary principle has guided much more anticipatory regulation aimed at addressing the risks presented by technologies even before they are fully realized. For instance, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation focuses on the responsibilities of data controllers and processors to provide individuals with access to their data and information about how that data is being used not just as a means of addressing existing security and privacy threats, such as data breaches, but also to protect against future developments and uses of that data for artificial intelligence and automated decision-making purposes. In Germany, Technische Überwachungsvereine, or TÜVs, perform regular tests and inspections of technological systems to assess and minimize risks over time, as the tech landscape evolves. In the United States, by contrast, there is much greater reliance on litigation and liability regimes to address safety and security failings after-the-fact. These different approaches reflect not just the different legal and regulatory mechanisms and philosophies of different nations but also the different ways those nations prioritize rapid development of the technology industry versus safety, security, and individual control. Typically, governance innovations move much more slowly than technological innovations, and regulations can lag years, or even decades, behind the technologies they aim to govern.

In addition to this varied set of national regulatory approaches, a variety of international and nongovernmental organizations also contribute to the process of developing standards, rules, and norms for new technologies, including the International Organization for Standardization­ and the International Telecommunication Union. These multilateral and NGO actors play an especially important role in trying to define appropriate boundaries for the use of new technologies by governments as instruments of control for the state.

At the same time that policymakers are under scrutiny both for their decisions about how to regulate technology as well as their decisions about how and when to adopt technologies like facial recognition themselves, technology firms and designers have also come under increasing criticism. Growing recognition that the design of technologies can have far-reaching social and political implications means that there is more pressure on technologists to take into consideration the consequences of their decisions early on in the design process (Vincenti 1993; Winner 1980) . The question of how technologists should incorporate these social dimensions into their design and development processes is an old one, and debate on these issues dates back to the 1970s, but it remains an urgent and often overlooked part of the puzzle because so many of the supposedly systematic mechanisms for assessing the impacts of new technologies in both the private and public sectors are primarily bureaucratic, symbolic processes rather than carrying any real weight or influence.

Technologists are often ill-equipped or unwilling to respond to the sorts of social problems that their creations have—often unwittingly—exacerbated, and instead point to governments and lawmakers to address those problems (Zuckerberg 2019) . But governments often have few incentives to engage in this area. This is because setting clear standards and rules for an ever-evolving technological landscape can be extremely challenging, because enforcement of those rules can be a significant undertaking requiring considerable expertise, and because the tech sector is a major source of jobs and revenue for many countries that may fear losing those benefits if they constrain companies too much. This indicates not just a need for clearer incentives and better policies for both private- and public-sector entities but also a need for new mechanisms whereby the technology development and design process can be influenced and assessed by people with a wider range of experiences and expertise. If we want technologies to be designed with an eye to their impacts, who is responsible for predicting, measuring, and mitigating those impacts throughout the design process? Involving policymakers in that process in a more meaningful way will also require training them to have the analytic and technical capacity to more fully engage with technologists and understand more fully the implications of their decisions.

At the same time that tech companies seem unwilling or unable to rein in their creations, many also fear they wield too much power, in some cases all but replacing governments and international organizations in their ability to make decisions that affect millions of people worldwide and control access to information, platforms, and audiences (Kilovaty 2020) . Regulators around the world have begun considering whether some of these companies have become so powerful that they violate the tenets of antitrust laws, but it can be difficult for governments to identify exactly what those violations are, especially in the context of an industry where the largest players often provide their customers with free services. And the platforms and services developed by tech companies are often wielded most powerfully and dangerously not directly by their private-sector creators and operators but instead by states themselves for widespread misinformation campaigns that serve political purposes (Nye 2018) .

Since the largest private entities in the tech sector operate in many countries, they are often better poised to implement global changes to the technological ecosystem than individual states or regulatory bodies, creating new challenges to existing governance structures and hierarchies. Just as it can be challenging to provide oversight for government use of technologies, so, too, oversight of the biggest tech companies, which have more resources, reach, and power than many nations, can prove to be a daunting task. The rise of network forms of organization and the growing gig economy have added to these challenges, making it even harder for regulators to fully address the breadth of these companies’ operations (Powell 1990) . The private-public partnerships that have emerged around energy, transportation, medical, and cyber technologies further complicate this picture, blurring the line between the public and private sectors and raising critical questions about the role of each in providing critical infrastructure, health care, and security. How can and should private tech companies operating in these different sectors be governed, and what types of influence do they exert over regulators? How feasible are different policy proposals aimed at technological innovation, and what potential unintended consequences might they have?

Conflict between countries has also spilled over significantly into the private sector in recent years, most notably in the case of tensions between the United States and China over which technologies developed in each country will be permitted by the other and which will be purchased by other customers, outside those two countries. Countries competing to develop the best technology is not a new phenomenon, but the current conflicts have major international ramifications and will influence the infrastructure that is installed and used around the world for years to come. Untangling the different factors that feed into these tussles as well as whom they benefit and whom they leave at a disadvantage is crucial for understanding how governments can most effectively foster technological innovation and invention domestically as well as the global consequences of those efforts. As much of the world is forced to choose between buying technology from the United States or from China, how should we understand the long-term impacts of those choices and the options available to people in countries without robust domestic tech industries? Does the global spread of technologies help fuel further innovation in countries with smaller tech markets, or does it reinforce the dominance of the states that are already most prominent in this sector? How can research universities maintain global collaborations and research communities in light of these national competitions, and what role does government research and development spending play in fostering innovation within its own borders and worldwide? How should intellectual property protections evolve to meet the demands of the technology industry, and how can those protections be enforced globally?

These conflicts between countries sometimes appear to challenge the feasibility of truly global technologies and networks that operate across all countries through standardized protocols and design features. Organizations like the International Organization for Standardization, the World Intellectual Property Organization, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, and many others have tried to harmonize these policies and protocols across different countries for years, but have met with limited success when it comes to resolving the issues of greatest tension and disagreement among nations. For technology to operate in a global environment, there is a need for a much greater degree of coordination among countries and the development of common standards and norms, but governments continue to struggle to agree not just on those norms themselves but even the appropriate venue and processes for developing them. Without greater global cooperation, is it possible to maintain a global network like the internet or to promote the spread of new technologies around the world to address challenges of sustainability? What might help incentivize that cooperation moving forward, and what could new structures and process for governance of global technologies look like? Why has the tech industry’s self-regulation culture persisted? Do the same traditional drivers for public policy, such as politics of harmonization and path dependency in policy-making, still sufficiently explain policy outcomes in this space? As new technologies and their applications spread across the globe in uneven ways, how and when do they create forces of change from unexpected places?

These are some of the questions that we hope to address in the Technology and Global Change section through articles that tackle new dimensions of the global landscape of designing, developing, deploying, and assessing new technologies to address major challenges the world faces. Understanding these processes requires synthesizing knowledge from a range of different fields, including sociology, political science, economics, and history, as well as technical fields such as engineering, climate science, and computer science. A crucial part of understanding how technology has created global change and, in turn, how global changes have influenced the development of new technologies is understanding the technologies themselves in all their richness and complexity—how they work, the limits of what they can do, what they were designed to do, how they are actually used. Just as technologies themselves are becoming more complicated, so are their embeddings and relationships to the larger social, political, and legal contexts in which they exist. Scholars across all disciplines are encouraged to join us in untangling those complexities.

Josephine Wolff is an associate professor of cybersecurity policy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Her book You’ll See This Message When It Is Too Late: The Legal and Economic Aftermath of Cybersecurity Breaches was published by MIT Press in 2018.

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The present and future of AI

Finale doshi-velez on how ai is shaping our lives and how we can shape ai.

Finale Doshi-Velez, the John L. Loeb Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences. (Photo courtesy of Eliza Grinnell/Harvard SEAS)

How has artificial intelligence changed and shaped our world over the last five years? How will AI continue to impact our lives in the coming years? Those were the questions addressed in the most recent report from the One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence (AI100), an ongoing project hosted at Stanford University, that will study the status of AI technology and its impacts on the world over the next 100 years.

The 2021 report is the second in a series that will be released every five years until 2116. Titled “Gathering Strength, Gathering Storms,” the report explores the various ways AI is  increasingly touching people’s lives in settings that range from  movie recommendations  and  voice assistants  to  autonomous driving  and  automated medical diagnoses .

Barbara Grosz , the Higgins Research Professor of Natural Sciences at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) is a member of the standing committee overseeing the AI100 project and Finale Doshi-Velez , Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science, is part of the panel of interdisciplinary researchers who wrote this year’s report. 

We spoke with Doshi-Velez about the report, what it says about the role AI is currently playing in our lives, and how it will change in the future.  

Q: Let's start with a snapshot: What is the current state of AI and its potential?

Doshi-Velez: Some of the biggest changes in the last five years have been how well AIs now perform in large data regimes on specific types of tasks.  We've seen [DeepMind’s] AlphaZero become the best Go player entirely through self-play, and everyday uses of AI such as grammar checks and autocomplete, automatic personal photo organization and search, and speech recognition become commonplace for large numbers of people.  

In terms of potential, I'm most excited about AIs that might augment and assist people.  They can be used to drive insights in drug discovery, help with decision making such as identifying a menu of likely treatment options for patients, and provide basic assistance, such as lane keeping while driving or text-to-speech based on images from a phone for the visually impaired.  In many situations, people and AIs have complementary strengths. I think we're getting closer to unlocking the potential of people and AI teams.

There's a much greater recognition that we should not be waiting for AI tools to become mainstream before making sure they are ethical.

Q: Over the course of 100 years, these reports will tell the story of AI and its evolving role in society. Even though there have only been two reports, what's the story so far?

There's actually a lot of change even in five years.  The first report is fairly rosy.  For example, it mentions how algorithmic risk assessments may mitigate the human biases of judges.  The second has a much more mixed view.  I think this comes from the fact that as AI tools have come into the mainstream — both in higher stakes and everyday settings — we are appropriately much less willing to tolerate flaws, especially discriminatory ones. There's also been questions of information and disinformation control as people get their news, social media, and entertainment via searches and rankings personalized to them. So, there's a much greater recognition that we should not be waiting for AI tools to become mainstream before making sure they are ethical.

Q: What is the responsibility of institutes of higher education in preparing students and the next generation of computer scientists for the future of AI and its impact on society?

First, I'll say that the need to understand the basics of AI and data science starts much earlier than higher education!  Children are being exposed to AIs as soon as they click on videos on YouTube or browse photo albums. They need to understand aspects of AI such as how their actions affect future recommendations.

But for computer science students in college, I think a key thing that future engineers need to realize is when to demand input and how to talk across disciplinary boundaries to get at often difficult-to-quantify notions of safety, equity, fairness, etc.  I'm really excited that Harvard has the Embedded EthiCS program to provide some of this education.  Of course, this is an addition to standard good engineering practices like building robust models, validating them, and so forth, which is all a bit harder with AI.

I think a key thing that future engineers need to realize is when to demand input and how to talk across disciplinary boundaries to get at often difficult-to-quantify notions of safety, equity, fairness, etc. 

Q: Your work focuses on machine learning with applications to healthcare, which is also an area of focus of this report. What is the state of AI in healthcare? 

A lot of AI in healthcare has been on the business end, used for optimizing billing, scheduling surgeries, that sort of thing.  When it comes to AI for better patient care, which is what we usually think about, there are few legal, regulatory, and financial incentives to do so, and many disincentives. Still, there's been slow but steady integration of AI-based tools, often in the form of risk scoring and alert systems.

In the near future, two applications that I'm really excited about are triage in low-resource settings — having AIs do initial reads of pathology slides, for example, if there are not enough pathologists, or get an initial check of whether a mole looks suspicious — and ways in which AIs can help identify promising treatment options for discussion with a clinician team and patient.

Q: Any predictions for the next report?

I'll be keen to see where currently nascent AI regulation initiatives have gotten to. Accountability is such a difficult question in AI,  it's tricky to nurture both innovation and basic protections.  Perhaps the most important innovation will be in approaches for AI accountability.

Topics: AI / Machine Learning , Computer Science

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Home — Essay Samples — Information Science and Technology — Impact of Technology — How Technology Has Changed Our Lives

How Technology Has Changed Our Lives

• Categories: Impact of Technology

About this sample

Words: 1130 |

Updated: 9 November, 2023

Words: 1130 | Pages: 2 | 6 min read

Table of contents

Hook examples for technology essay, technology essay example.

• A Digital Revolution: Enter the era of smartphones, AI, and the Internet of Things, where technology is the driving force. Join me as we explore how technology has transformed our lives and the profound impact it has on society.
• An Intriguing Quote: Arthur C. Clarke once said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Let's delve into the magical world of modern technology and how it shapes our daily existence.
• The Paradox of Connectivity: Technology promises to connect us, yet it can also lead to isolation. Explore with me the paradox of our hyperconnected world and how it affects our relationships, both online and offline.
• The Impact on Work and Leisure: Discover how technology has revolutionized our work environments, blurring the lines between office and home. Together, we'll examine the changing landscape of leisure and entertainment in the digital age.
• Looking Ahead: As technology continues to advance, what lies on the horizon? Join me in discussing the future implications of emerging technologies and how they will further reshape our world in the years to come.

The Dark Side of Technological Advancement

• Increased Bullying
• Lack of Privacy
• Constant Distraction

Balancing Technology in Our Lives

Works cited.

• Anderson, M. (2018). The Effects of Technology on Teenagers. Verywell Family.
• Brown, B. W., & Bobkowski, P. S. (2011). Older and newer media: Patterns of use and effects on adolescents’ health and well-being. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 21(1), 95-113.
• Calvillo, D. P., & Downey, R. G. (2010). Mobile phones and interruption in college classrooms: Instructors’ attitudes, beliefs, and practices. Computers in Human Behavior, 26(2), 223-231.
• Clarke-Pearson, K., & O'Keeffe, G. (2011). The impact of social media on children, adolescents, and families. Pediatrics, 127(4), 800-804.
• Livingstone, S., & Smith, P. K. (2014). Annual research review: Harms experienced by child users of online and mobile technologies: The nature, prevalence and management of sexual and aggressive risks in the digital age. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 55(6), 635-654.
• Oulasvirta, A., Rattenbury, T., Ma, L., & Raita, E. (2012). Habits make smartphone use more pervasive. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 16(1), 105-114.
• Przybylski, A. K., & Weinstein, N. (2017). A large-scale test of the goldilocks hypothesis: Quantifying the relations between digital-screen use and the mental well-being of adolescents. Psychological Science, 28(2), 204-215.
• Rosen, L. D., Lim, A. F., Carrier, L. M., & Cheever, N. A. (2011). An empirical examination of the educational impact of text message-induced task switching in the classroom: Educational implications and strategies to enhance learning. Psicologia Educativa, 17(2), 163-177.
• Schulte, B. (2018). The human costs of bringing smartphones to every student. The Atlantic.
• Twenge, J. M., Joiner, T. E., Rogers, M. L., & Martin, G. N. (2018). Increases in depressive symptoms, suicide-related outcomes, and suicide rates among US adolescents after 2010 and links to increased new media screen time. Clinical Psychological Science, 6(1), 3-17.

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Technology over the long run: zoom out to see how dramatically the world can change within a lifetime

It is easy to underestimate how much the world can change within a lifetime. considering how dramatically the world has changed can help us see how different the world could be in a few years or decades..

Technology can change the world in ways that are unimaginable until they happen. Switching on an electric light would have been unimaginable for our medieval ancestors. In their childhood, our grandparents would have struggled to imagine a world connected by smartphones and the Internet.

Similarly, it is hard for us to imagine the arrival of all those technologies that will fundamentally change the world we are used to.

We can remind ourselves that our own future might look very different from the world today by looking back at how rapidly technology has changed our world in the past. That’s what this article is about.

One insight I take away from this long-term perspective is how unusual our time is. Technological change was extremely slow in the past – the technologies that our ancestors got used to in their childhood were still central to their lives in their old age. In stark contrast to those days, we live in a time of extraordinarily fast technological change. For recent generations, it was common for technologies that were unimaginable in their youth to become common later in life.

The long-run perspective on technological change

The big visualization offers a long-term perspective on the history of technology. 1

The timeline begins at the center of the spiral. The first use of stone tools, 3.4 million years ago, marks the beginning of this history of technology. 2 Each turn of the spiral represents 200,000 years of history. It took 2.4 million years – 12 turns of the spiral – for our ancestors to control fire and use it for cooking. 3

To be able to visualize the inventions in the more recent past – the last 12,000 years – I had to unroll the spiral. I needed more space to be able to show when agriculture, writing, and the wheel were invented. During this period, technological change was faster, but it was still relatively slow: several thousand years passed between each of these three inventions.

From 1800 onwards, I stretched out the timeline even further to show the many major inventions that rapidly followed one after the other.

The long-term perspective that this chart provides makes it clear just how unusually fast technological change is in our time.

You can use this visualization to see how technology developed in particular domains. Follow, for example, the history of communication: from writing to paper, to the printing press, to the telegraph, the telephone, the radio, all the way to the Internet and smartphones.

Or follow the rapid development of human flight. In 1903, the Wright brothers took the first flight in human history (they were in the air for less than a minute), and just 66 years later, we landed on the moon. Many people saw both within their lifetimes: the first plane and the moon landing.

This large visualization also highlights the wide range of technology’s impact on our lives. It includes extraordinarily beneficial innovations, such as the vaccine that allowed humanity to eradicate smallpox , and it includes terrible innovations, like the nuclear bombs that endanger the lives of all of us .

What will the next decades bring?

The red timeline reaches up to the present and then continues in green into the future. Many children born today, even without further increases in life expectancy, will live well into the 22nd century.

New vaccines, progress in clean, low-carbon energy, better cancer treatments – a range of future innovations could very much improve our living conditions and the environment around us. But, as I argue in a series of articles , there is one technology that could even more profoundly change our world: artificial intelligence (AI).

One reason why artificial intelligence is such an important innovation is that intelligence is the main driver of innovation itself. This fast-paced technological change could speed up even more if it’s driven not only by humanity’s intelligence but also by artificial intelligence. If this happens, the change currently stretched out over decades might happen within a very brief time span of just a year. Possibly even faster. 4

I think AI technology could have a fundamentally transformative impact on our world. In many ways, it is already changing our world, as I documented in this companion article . As this technology becomes more capable in the years and decades to come, it can give immense power to those who control it (and it poses the risk that it could escape our control entirely).

Such systems might seem hard to imagine today, but AI technology is advancing quickly. Many AI experts believe there is a real chance that human-level artificial intelligence will be developed within the next decades, as I documented in this article .

Technology will continue to change the world – we should all make sure that it changes it for the better

What is familiar to us today – photography, the radio, antibiotics, the Internet, or the International Space Station circling our planet – was unimaginable to our ancestors just a few generations ago. If your great-great-great grandparents could spend a week with you, they would be blown away by your everyday life.

What I take away from this history is that I will likely see technologies in my lifetime that appear unimaginable to me today.

In addition to this trend towards increasingly rapid innovation, there is a second long-run trend. Technology has become increasingly powerful. While our ancestors wielded stone tools, we are building globe-spanning AI systems and technologies that can edit our genes.

Because of the immense power that technology gives those who control it, there is little that is as important as the question of which technologies get developed during our lifetimes. Therefore, I think it is a mistake to leave the question about the future of technology to the technologists. Which technologies are controlled by whom is one of the most important political questions of our time because of the enormous power these technologies convey to those who control them.

We all should strive to gain the knowledge we need to contribute to an intelligent debate about the world we want to live in. To a large part, this means gaining knowledge and wisdom on the question of which technologies we want.

Acknowledgments: I would like to thank my colleagues Hannah Ritchie, Bastian Herre, Natasha Ahuja, Edouard Mathieu, Daniel Bachler, Charlie Giattino, and Pablo Rosado for their helpful comments on drafts of this essay and the visualization. Thanks also to Lizka Vaintrob and Ben Clifford for the conversation that initiated this visualization.

Appendix: About the choice of visualization in this article

The recent speed of technological change makes it difficult to picture the history of technology in one visualization. When you visualize this development on a linear timeline, then most of the timeline is almost empty, while all the action is crammed into the right corner:

In my large visualization here, I tried to avoid this problem and instead show the long history of technology in a way that lets you see when each technological breakthrough happened and how, within the last millennia, there was a continuous acceleration of technological change.

The recent speed of technological change makes it difficult to picture the history of technology in one visualization. In the appendix, I show how this would look if it were linear.

It is, of course, difficult to assess when exactly the first stone tools were used.

The research by McPherron et al. (2010) suggested that it was at least 3.39 million years ago. This is based on two fossilized bones found in Dikika in Ethiopia, which showed “stone-tool cut marks for flesh removal and percussion marks for marrow access”. These marks were interpreted as being caused by meat consumption and provide the first evidence that one of our ancestors, Australopithecus afarensis, used stone tools.

The research by Harmand et al. (2015) provided evidence for stone tool use in today’s Kenya 3.3 million years ago.

References:

McPherron et al. (2010) – Evidence for stone-tool-assisted consumption of animal tissues before 3.39 million years ago at Dikika, Ethiopia . Published in Nature.

Harmand et al. (2015) – 3.3-million-year-old stone tools from Lomekwi 3, West Turkana, Kenya . Published in Nature.

Evidence for controlled fire use approximately 1 million years ago is provided by Berna et al. (2012) Microstratigraphic evidence of in situ fire in the Acheulean strata of Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa , published in PNAS.

The authors write: “The ability to control fire was a crucial turning point in human evolution, but the question of when hominins first developed this ability still remains. Here we show that micromorphological and Fourier transform infrared microspectroscopy (mFTIR) analyses of intact sediments at the site of Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa, provide unambiguous evidence—in the form of burned bone and ashed plant remains—that burning took place in the cave during the early Acheulean occupation, approximately 1.0 Ma. To the best of our knowledge, this is the earliest secure evidence for burning in an archaeological context.”

This is what authors like Holden Karnofsky called ‘Process for Automating Scientific and Technological Advancement’ or PASTA. Some recent developments go in this direction: DeepMind’s AlphaFold helped to make progress on one of the large problems in biology, and they have also developed an AI system that finds new algorithms that are relevant to building a more powerful AI.

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• Technology Essay

Essay on Technology

The word "technology" and its uses have immensely changed since the 20th century, and with time, it has continued to evolve ever since. We are living in a world driven by technology. The advancement of technology has played an important role in the development of human civilization, along with cultural changes. Technology provides innovative ways of doing work through various smart and innovative means. 

Electronic appliances, gadgets, faster modes of communication, and transport have added to the comfort factor in our lives. It has helped in improving the productivity of individuals and different business enterprises. Technology has brought a revolution in many operational fields. It has undoubtedly made a very important contribution to the progress that mankind has made over the years.

The Advancement of Technology:

Technology has reduced the effort and time and increased the efficiency of the production requirements in every field. It has made our lives easy, comfortable, healthy, and enjoyable. It has brought a revolution in transport and communication. The advancement of technology, along with science, has helped us to become self-reliant in all spheres of life. With the innovation of a particular technology, it becomes part of society and integral to human lives after a point in time.

Technology is Our Part of Life:

Technology has changed our day-to-day lives. Technology has brought the world closer and better connected. Those days have passed when only the rich could afford such luxuries. Because of the rise of globalisation and liberalisation, all luxuries are now within the reach of the average person. Today, an average middle-class family can afford a mobile phone, a television, a washing machine, a refrigerator, a computer, the Internet, etc. At the touch of a switch, a man can witness any event that is happening in far-off places.  

Benefits of Technology in All Fields: 

We cannot escape technology; it has improved the quality of life and brought about revolutions in various fields of modern-day society, be it communication, transportation, education, healthcare, and many more. Let us learn about it.

Technology in Communication:

With the advent of technology in communication, which includes telephones, fax machines, cellular phones, the Internet, multimedia, and email, communication has become much faster and easier. It has transformed and influenced relationships in many ways. We no longer need to rely on sending physical letters and waiting for several days for a response. Technology has made communication so simple that you can connect with anyone from anywhere by calling them via mobile phone or messaging them using different messaging apps that are easy to download.

Innovation in communication technology has had an immense influence on social life. Human socialising has become easier by using social networking sites, dating, and even matrimonial services available on mobile applications and websites.

Today, the Internet is used for shopping, paying utility bills, credit card bills, admission fees, e-commerce, and online banking. In the world of marketing, many companies are marketing and selling their products and creating brands over the internet. 

In the field of travel, cities, towns, states, and countries are using the web to post detailed tourist and event information. Travellers across the globe can easily find information on tourism, sightseeing, places to stay, weather, maps, timings for events, transportation schedules, and buy tickets to various tourist spots and destinations.

Technology in the Office or Workplace:

Technology has increased efficiency and flexibility in the workspace. Technology has made it easy to work remotely, which has increased the productivity of the employees. External and internal communication has become faster through emails and apps. Automation has saved time, and there is also a reduction in redundancy in tasks. Robots are now being used to manufacture products that consistently deliver the same product without defect until the robot itself fails. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technology are innovations that are being deployed across industries to reap benefits.

Technology has wiped out the manual way of storing files. Now files are stored in the cloud, which can be accessed at any time and from anywhere. With technology, companies can make quick decisions, act faster towards solutions, and remain adaptable. Technology has optimised the usage of resources and connected businesses worldwide. For example, if the customer is based in America, he can have the services delivered from India. They can communicate with each other in an instant. Every company uses business technology like virtual meeting tools, corporate social networks, tablets, and smart customer relationship management applications that accelerate the fast movement of data and information.

Technology in Education:

Technology is making the education industry improve over time. With technology, students and parents have a variety of learning tools at their fingertips. Teachers can coordinate with classrooms across the world and share their ideas and resources online. Students can get immediate access to an abundance of good information on the Internet. Teachers and students can access plenty of resources available on the web and utilise them for their project work, research, etc. Online learning has changed our perception of education. 

The COVID-19 pandemic brought a paradigm shift using technology where school-going kids continued their studies from home and schools facilitated imparting education by their teachers online from home. Students have learned and used 21st-century skills and tools, like virtual classrooms, AR (Augmented Reality), robots, etc. All these have increased communication and collaboration significantly. 

Technology in Banking:

Technology and banking are now inseparable. Technology has boosted digital transformation in how the banking industry works and has vastly improved banking services for their customers across the globe.

Technology has made banking operations very sophisticated and has reduced errors to almost nil, which were somewhat prevalent with manual human activities. Banks are adopting Artificial Intelligence (AI) to increase their efficiency and profits. With the emergence of Internet banking, self-service tools have replaced the traditional methods of banking. 

You can now access your money, handle transactions like paying bills, money transfers, and online purchases from merchants, and monitor your bank statements anytime and from anywhere in the world. Technology has made banking more secure and safe. You do not need to carry cash in your pocket or wallet; the payments can be made digitally using e-wallets. Mobile banking, banking apps, and cybersecurity are changing the face of the banking industry.

Manufacturing and Production Industry Automation:

At present, manufacturing industries are using all the latest technologies, ranging from big data analytics to artificial intelligence. Big data, ARVR (Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality), and IoT (Internet of Things) are the biggest manufacturing industry players. Automation has increased the level of productivity in various fields. It has reduced labour costs, increased efficiency, and reduced the cost of production.

For example, 3D printing is used to design and develop prototypes in the automobile industry. Repetitive work is being done easily with the help of robots without any waste of time. This has also reduced the cost of the products. 

Technology in the Healthcare Industry:

Technological advancements in the healthcare industry have not only improved our personal quality of life and longevity; they have also improved the lives of many medical professionals and students who are training to become medical experts. It has allowed much faster access to the medical records of each patient. 

The Internet has drastically transformed patients' and doctors’ relationships. Everyone can stay up to date on the latest medical discoveries, share treatment information, and offer one another support when dealing with medical issues. Modern technology has allowed us to contact doctors from the comfort of our homes. There are many sites and apps through which we can contact doctors and get medical help. 

Breakthrough innovations in surgery, artificial organs, brain implants, and networked sensors are examples of transformative developments in the healthcare industry. Hospitals use different tools and applications to perform their administrative tasks, using digital marketing to promote their services.

Technology in Agriculture:

Today, farmers work very differently than they would have decades ago. Data analytics and robotics have built a productive food system. Digital innovations are being used for plant breeding and harvesting equipment. Software and mobile devices are helping farmers harvest better. With various data and information available to farmers, they can make better-informed decisions, for example, tracking the amount of carbon stored in soil and helping with climate change.

Disadvantages of Technology:

People have become dependent on various gadgets and machines, resulting in a lack of physical activity and tempting people to lead an increasingly sedentary lifestyle. Even though technology has increased the productivity of individuals, organisations, and the nation, it has not increased the efficiency of machines. Machines cannot plan and think beyond the instructions that are fed into their system. Technology alone is not enough for progress and prosperity. Management is required, and management is a human act. Technology is largely dependent on human intervention. 

Computers and smartphones have led to an increase in social isolation. Young children are spending more time surfing the internet, playing games, and ignoring their real lives. Usage of technology is also resulting in job losses and distracting students from learning. Technology has been a reason for the production of weapons of destruction.

Dependency on technology is also increasing privacy concerns and cyber crimes, giving way to hackers.

FAQs on Technology Essay

1. What is technology?

Technology refers to innovative ways of doing work through various smart means. The advancement of technology has played an important role in the development of human civilization. It has helped in improving the productivity of individuals and businesses.

2. How has technology changed the face of banking?

Technology has made banking operations very sophisticated. With the emergence of Internet banking, self-service tools have replaced the traditional methods of banking. You can now access your money, handle transactions, and monitor your bank statements anytime and from anywhere in the world. Technology has made banking more secure and safe.

3. How has technology brought a revolution in the medical field?

Patients and doctors keep each other up to date on the most recent medical discoveries, share treatment information, and offer each other support when dealing with medical issues. It has allowed much faster access to the medical records of each patient. Modern technology has allowed us to contact doctors from the comfort of our homes. There are many websites and mobile apps through which we can contact doctors and get medical help.

4. Are we dependent on technology?

Yes, today, we are becoming increasingly dependent on technology. Computers, smartphones, and modern technology have helped humanity achieve success and progress. However, in hindsight, people need to continuously build a healthy lifestyle, sorting out personal problems that arise due to technological advancements in different aspects of human life.

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The societal impacts of technological change can be seen in many domains, from messenger RNA vaccines and automation to drones and climate change. The pace of that technological change can affect its impact, and how quickly a technology improves in performance can be an indicator of its future importance. For decision-makers like investors, entrepreneurs, and policymakers, predicting which technologies are fast improving (and which are overhyped) can mean the difference between success and failure.

New research from MIT aims to assist in the prediction of technology performance improvement using U.S. patents as a dataset. The study describes 97 percent of the U.S. patent system as a set of 1,757 discrete technology domains, and quantitatively assesses each domain for its improvement potential.

“The rate of improvement can only be empirically estimated when substantial performance measurements are made over long time periods,” says Anuraag Singh SM ’20, lead author of the paper. “In some large technological fields, including software and clinical medicine, such measures have rarely, if ever, been made.”

A previous MIT study provided empirical measures for 30 technological domains, but the patent sets identified for those technologies cover less than 15 percent of the patents in the U.S. patent system. The major purpose of this new study is to provide predictions of the performance improvement rates for the thousands of domains not accessed by empirical measurement. To accomplish this, the researchers developed a method using a new probability-based algorithm, machine learning, natural language processing, and patent network analytics.

Overlap and centrality

A technology domain, as the researchers define it, consists of sets of artifacts fulfilling a specific function using a specific branch of scientific knowledge. To find the patents that best represent a domain, the team built on previous research conducted by co-author Chris Magee, a professor of the practice of engineering systems within the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS). Magee and his colleagues found that by looking for patent overlap between the U.S. and international patent-classification systems, they could quickly identify patents that best represent a technology. The researchers ultimately created a correspondence of all patents within the U.S. patent system to a set of 1,757 technology domains.

To estimate performance improvement, Singh employed a method refined by co-authors Magee and Giorgio Triulzi, a researcher with the Sociotechnical Systems Research Center (SSRC) within IDSS and an assistant professor at Universidad de los Andes in Colombia. Their method is based on the average “centrality” of patents in the patent citation network. Centrality refers to multiple criteria for determining the ranking or importance of nodes within a network.

“Our method provides predictions of performance improvement rates for nearly all definable technologies for the first time,” says Singh.

Those rates vary — from a low of 2 percent per year for the “Mechanical skin treatment — Hair removal and wrinkles” domain to a high of 216 percent per year for the “Dynamic information exchange and support systems integrating multiple channels” domain. The researchers found that most technologies improve slowly; more than 80 percent of technologies improve at less than 25 percent per year. Notably, the number of patents in a technological area was not a strong indicator of a higher improvement rate.

“Fast-improving domains are concentrated in a few technological areas,” says Magee. “The domains that show improvement rates greater than the predicted rate for integrated chips — 42 percent, from Moore’s law — are predominantly based upon software and algorithms.”

TechNext Inc.

The researchers built an online interactive system where domains corresponding to technology-related keywords can be found along with their improvement rates. Users can input a keyword describing a technology and the system returns a prediction of improvement for the technological domain, an automated measure of the quality of the match between the keyword and the domain, and patent sets so that the reader can judge the semantic quality of the match.

Moving forward, the researchers have founded a new MIT spinoff called TechNext Inc. to further refine this technology and use it to help leaders make better decisions, from budgets to investment priorities to technology policy. Like any inventors, Magee and his colleagues want to protect their intellectual property rights. To that end, they have applied for a patent for their novel system and its unique methodology.

“Technologies that improve faster win the market,” says Singh. “Our search system enables technology managers, investors, policymakers, and entrepreneurs to quickly look up predictions of improvement rates for specific technologies.”

Adds Magee: “Our goal is to bring greater accuracy, precision, and repeatability to the as-yet fuzzy art of technology forecasting.”

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Essay on Technology – A Boon or Bane for Students

500+ words essay on technology for students.

In this essay on technology, we are going to discuss what technology is, what are its uses, and also what technology can do? First of all, technology refers to the use of technical and scientific knowledge to create, monitor, and design machinery. Also, technology helps in making other goods that aid mankind.

Essay on Technology – A Boon or Bane?

Experts are debating on this topic for years. Also, the technology covered a long way to make human life easier but the negative aspect of it can’t be ignored. Over the years technological advancement has caused a severe rise in pollution . Also, pollution has become a major cause of many health issues. Besides, it has cut off people from society rather than connecting them. Above all, it has taken away many jobs from the workers class.

Familiarity between Technology and Science

As they are completely different fields but they are interdependent on each other. Also, it is due to science contribution we can create new innovation and build new technological tools. Apart from that, the research conducted in laboratories contributes a lot to the development of technologies. On the other hand, technology extends the agenda of science.

Vital Part of our Life

Regularly evolving technology has become an important part of our lives. Also, newer technologies are taking the market by storm and the people are getting used to them in no time. Above all, technological advancement has led to the growth and development of nations.

Negative Aspect of Technology

Although technology is a good thing, everything has two sides. Technology also has two sides one is good and the other is bad. Here are some negative aspects of technology that we are going to discuss.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

With new technology the industrialization increases which give birth to many pollutions like air, water, soil, and noise. Also, they cause many health-related issues in animals, birds, and human beings.

Exhaustion of Natural Resources

New technology requires new resources for which the balance is disturbed. Eventually, this will lead to over-exploitation of natural resources which ultimately disturbs the balance of nature.

Unemployment

A single machine can replace many workers. Also, machines can do work at a constant pace for several hours or days without stopping. Due to this, many workers lost their job which ultimately increases unemployment .

Types of Technology

Generally, we judge technology on the same scale but in reality, technology is divided into various types. This includes information technology, industrial technology , architectural technology, creative technology and many more. Let’s discuss these technologies in brief.

Industrial Technology

This technology organizes engineering and manufacturing technology for the manufacturing of machines. Also, this makes the production process easier and convenient.

Creative Technology

This process includes art, advertising, and product design which are made with the help of software. Also, it comprises of 3D printers , virtual reality, computer graphics, and other wearable technologies.

Information Technology

This technology involves the use of telecommunication and computer to send, receive and store information. Internet is the best example of Information technology.

FAQs on Essay on Technology

Q.1 What is Information technology?

A –  It is a form of technology that uses telecommunication and computer systems for study. Also, they send, retrieve, and store data.

Q.2 Is technology harmful to humans?

 A – No, technology is not harmful to human beings until it is used properly. But, misuses of technology can be harmful and deadly.

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The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

Marc Andreessen

• Hacker News

You live in a deranged age — more deranged than usual, because despite great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing. Walker Percy

Our species is 300,000 years old. For the first 290,000 years, we were foragers, subsisting in a way that’s still observable among the Bushmen of the Kalahari and the Sentinelese of the Andaman Islands. Even after Homo Sapiens embraced agriculture, progress was painfully slow. A person born in Sumer in 4,000BC would find the resources, work, and technology available in England at the time of the Norman Conquest or in the Aztec Empire at the time of Columbus quite familiar. Then, beginning in the 18th Century, many people’s standard of living skyrocketed. What brought about this dramatic improvement, and why? Marian Tupy

There’s a way to do it better. Find it. Thomas Edison

We are being lied to.

We are told that technology takes our jobs, reduces our wages, increases inequality, threatens our health, ruins the environment, degrades our society, corrupts our children, impairs our humanity, threatens our future, and is ever on the verge of ruining everything.

We are told to be angry, bitter, and resentful about technology.

We are told to be pessimistic.

The myth of Prometheus – in various updated forms like Frankenstein, Oppenheimer, and Terminator – haunts our nightmares.

We are told to denounce our birthright – our intelligence, our control over nature, our ability to build a better world.

We are told to be miserable about the future.

Our civilization was built on technology.

Our civilization is built on technology.

Technology is the glory of human ambition and achievement, the spearhead of progress, and the realization of our potential.

For hundreds of years, we properly glorified this – until recently.

I am here to bring the good news.

We can advance to a far superior way of living, and of being.

We have the tools, the systems, the ideas.

We have the will.

It is time, once again, to raise the technology flag.

It is time to be Techno-Optimists.

Techno-Optimists believe that societies, like sharks, grow or die.

We believe growth is progress – leading to vitality, expansion of life, increasing knowledge, higher well being.

We agree with Paul Collier when he says, “Economic growth is not a cure-all, but lack of growth is a kill-all.”

We believe everything good is downstream of growth.

We believe not growing is stagnation, which leads to zero-sum thinking, internal fighting, degradation, collapse, and ultimately death.

There are only three sources of growth: population growth, natural resource utilization, and technology.

Developed societies are depopulating all over the world, across cultures – the total human population may already be shrinking.

Natural resource utilization has sharp limits, both real and political.

And so the only perpetual source of growth is technology.

In fact, technology – new knowledge, new tools, what the Greeks called techne – has always been the main source of growth, and perhaps the only cause of growth, as technology made both population growth and natural resource utilization possible.

We believe technology is a lever on the world – the way to make more with less.

Economists measure technological progress as productivity growth : How much more we can produce each year with fewer inputs, fewer raw materials. Productivity growth, powered by technology, is the main driver of economic growth, wage growth, and the creation of new industries and new jobs, as people and capital are continuously freed to do more important, valuable things than in the past. Productivity growth causes prices to fall, supply to rise, and demand to expand, improving the material well being of the entire population.

We believe this is the story of the material development of our civilization; this is why we are not still living in mud huts, eking out a meager survival and waiting for nature to kill us. 

We believe this is why our descendents will live in the stars.

We believe that there is no material problem – whether created by nature or by technology – that cannot be solved with more technology.

We had a problem of starvation, so we invented the Green Revolution.

We had a problem of darkness, so we invented electric lighting.

We had a problem of cold, so we invented indoor heating.

We had a problem of heat, so we invented air conditioning.

We had a problem of isolation, so we invented the Internet.

We had a problem of pandemics, so we invented vaccines.

We have a problem of poverty, so we invent technology to create abundance.

Give us a real world problem, and we can invent technology that will solve it.

We believe free markets are the most effective way to organize a technological economy. Willing buyer meets willing seller, a price is struck, both sides benefit from the exchange or it doesn’t happen. Profits are the incentive for producing supply that fulfills demand. Prices encode information about supply and demand. Markets cause entrepreneurs to seek out high prices as a signal of opportunity to create new wealth by driving those prices down .

We believe the market economy is a discovery machine, a form of intelligence – an exploratory, evolutionary, adaptive system.

We believe Hayek’s Knowledge Problem overwhelms any centralized economic system. All actual information is on the edges, in the hands of the people closest to the buyer. The center, abstracted away from both the buyer and the seller, knows nothing. Centralized planning is doomed to fail, the system of production and consumption is too complex. Decentralization harnesses complexity for the benefit of everyone; centralization will starve you to death.

We believe in market discipline. The market naturally disciplines – the seller either learns and changes when the buyer fails to show, or exits the market. When market discipline is absent, there is no limit to how crazy things can get. The motto of every monopoly and cartel, every centralized institution not subject to market discipline: “We don’t care, because we don’t have to.” Markets prevent monopolies and cartels.

We believe markets lift people out of poverty – in fact, markets are by far the most effective way to lift vast numbers of people out of poverty, and always have been. Even in totalitarian regimes, an incremental lifting of the repressive boot off the throat of the people and their ability to produce and trade leads to rapidly rising incomes and standards of living. Lift the boot a little more, even better. Take the boot off entirely, who knows how rich everyone can get.

We believe markets are an inherently individualistic way to achieve superior collective outcomes. 

We believe markets do not require people to be perfect, or even well intentioned – which is good, because, have you met people? Adam Smith: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages.”

David Friedman points out that people only do things for other people for three reasons – love, money, or force. Love doesn’t scale, so the economy can only run on money or force. The force experiment has been run and found wanting. Let’s stick with money.

We believe the ultimate moral defense of markets is that they divert people who otherwise would raise armies and start religions into peacefully productive pursuits.

We believe markets, to quote Nicholas Stern, are how we take care of people we don’t know.

We believe markets are the way to generate societal wealth for everything else we want to pay for, including basic research, social welfare programs, and national defense.

We believe there is no conflict between capitalist profits and a social welfare system that protects the vulnerable. In fact, they are aligned – the production of markets creates the economic wealth that pays for everything else we want as a society.

We believe central economic planning elevates the worst of us and drags everyone down; markets exploit the best of us to benefit all of us. 

We believe central planning is a doom loop; markets are an upward spiral.

The economist William Nordhaus has shown that creators of technology are only able to capture about 2% of the economic value created by that technology. The other 98% flows through to society in the form of what economists call social surplus. Technological innovation in a market system is inherently philanthropic , by a 50:1 ratio. Who gets more value from a new technology, the single company that makes it, or the millions or billions of people who use it to improve their lives? QED.

We believe in David Ricardo’s concept of comparative advantage – as distinct from competitive advantage, comparative advantage holds that even someone who is best in the world at doing everything will buy most things from other people, due to opportunity cost. Comparative advantage in the context of a properly free market guarantees high employment regardless of the level of technology.

We believe a market sets wages as a function of the marginal productivity of the worker. Therefore technology – which raises productivity – drives wages up , not down. This is perhaps the most counterintuitive idea in all of economics, but it’s true, and we have 300 years of history that prove it.

We believe in Milton Friedman’s observation that human wants and needs are infinite.

We believe markets also increase societal well being by generating work in which people can productively engage. We believe a Universal Basic Income would turn people into zoo animals to be farmed by the state. Man was not meant to be farmed; man was meant to be useful , to be productive , to be proud .

We believe technological change, far from reducing the need for human work, increases it, by broadening the scope of what humans can productively do.

We believe that since human wants and needs are infinite, economic demand is infinite, and job growth can continue forever.

We believe markets are generative, not exploitative; positive sum, not zero sum. Participants in markets build on one another’s work and output. James Carse describes finite games and infinite games – finite games have an end, when one person wins and another person loses; infinite games never end, as players collaborate to discover what’s possible in the game. Markets are the ultimate infinite game.

The Techno-Capital Machine

Combine technology and markets and you get what Nick Land has termed the techno-capital machine, the engine of perpetual material creation, growth, and abundance.

We believe the techno-capital machine of markets and innovation never ends, but instead spirals continuously upward. Comparative advantage increases specialization and trade. Prices fall, freeing up purchasing power, creating demand. Falling prices benefit everyone who buys goods and services, which is to say everyone. Human wants and needs are endless, and entrepreneurs continuously create new goods and services to satisfy those wants and needs, deploying unlimited numbers of people and machines in the process. This upward spiral has been running for hundreds of years, despite continuous howling from Communists and Luddites. Indeed, as of 2019, before the temporary COVID disruption, the result was the largest number of jobs at the highest wages and the highest levels of material living standards in the history of the planet. 

The techno-capital machine makes natural selection work for us in the realm of ideas. The best and most productive ideas win, and are combined and generate even better ideas. Those ideas materialize in the real world as technologically enabled goods and services that never would have emerged de novo.

Ray Kurzweil defines his Law of Accelerating Returns: Technological advances tend to feed on themselves, increasing the rate of further advance.

We believe in accelerationism – the conscious and deliberate propulsion of technological development – to ensure the fulfillment of the Law of Accelerating Returns. To ensure the techno-capital upward spiral continues forever.

We believe the techno-capital machine is not anti-human – in fact, it may be the most pro-human thing there is. It serves us . The techno-capital machine works for us. All the machines work for us.

We believe the cornerstone resources of the techno-capital upward spiral are intelligence and energy – ideas, and the power to make them real.

Intelligence

We believe intelligence is the ultimate engine of progress. Intelligence makes everything better. Smart people and smart societies outperform less smart ones on virtually every metric we can measure. Intelligence is the birthright of humanity; we should expand it as fully and broadly as we possibly can.

We believe intelligence is in an upward spiral – first, as more smart people around the world are recruited into the techno-capital machine; second, as people form symbiotic relationships with machines into new cybernetic systems such as companies and networks; third, as Artificial Intelligence ramps up the capabilities of our machines and ourselves.

We believe we are poised for an intelligence takeoff that will expand our capabilities to unimagined heights.

We believe Artificial Intelligence is our alchemy, our Philosopher’s Stone – we are literally making sand think.

We believe Artificial Intelligence is best thought of as a universal problem solver. And we have a lot of problems to solve.

We believe Artificial Intelligence can save lives – if we let it. Medicine, among many other fields, is in the stone age compared to what we can achieve with joined human and machine intelligence working on new cures. There are scores of common causes of death that can be fixed with AI, from car crashes to pandemics to wartime friendly fire.

We believe any deceleration of AI will cost lives. Deaths that were preventable by the AI that was prevented from existing is a form of murder.

We believe in Augmented Intelligence just as much as we believe in Artificial Intelligence. Intelligent machines augment intelligent humans, driving a geometric expansion of what humans can do.

We believe Augmented Intelligence drives marginal productivity which drives wage growth which drives demand which drives the creation of new supply… with no upper bound.

Energy is life. We take it for granted, but without it, we have darkness, starvation, and pain. With it, we have light, safety, and warmth.

We believe energy should be in an upward spiral. Energy is the foundational engine of our civilization. The more energy we have, the more people we can have, and the better everyone’s lives can be. We should raise everyone to the energy consumption level we have, then increase our energy 1,000x, then raise everyone else’s energy 1,000x as well.

The current gap in per-capita energy use between the smaller developed world and larger developing world is enormous. That gap will close – either by massively expanding energy production, making everyone better off, or by massively reducing energy production, making everyone worse off.

We believe energy need not expand to the detriment of the natural environment. We have the silver bullet for virtually unlimited zero-emissions energy today – nuclear fission. In 1973, President Richard Nixon called for Project Independence, the construction of 1,000 nuclear power plants by the year 2000, to achieve complete US energy independence. Nixon was right; we didn’t build the plants then, but we can now, anytime we decide we want to.

Atomic Energy Commissioner Thomas Murray said in 1953: “For years the splitting atom, packaged in weapons, has been our main shield against the barbarians. Now, in addition, it is a God-given instrument to do the constructive work of mankind.” Murray was right too.

We believe a second energy silver bullet is coming – nuclear fusion. We should build that as well. The same bad ideas that effectively outlawed fission are going to try to outlaw fusion. We should not let them.

We believe there is no inherent conflict between the techno-capital machine and the natural environment. Per-capita US carbon emissions are lower now than they were 100 years ago, even without nuclear power.

We believe technology is the solution to environmental degradation and crisis. A technologically advanced society improves the natural environment, a technologically stagnant society ruins it. If you want to see environmental devastation, visit a former Communist country. The socialist USSR was far worse for the natural environment than the capitalist US. Google the Aral Sea.

We believe a technologically stagnant society has limited energy at the cost of environmental ruin; a technologically advanced society has unlimited clean energy for everyone.

We believe we should place intelligence and energy in a positive feedback loop, and drive them both to infinity.

We believe we should use the feedback loop of intelligence and energy to make everything we want and need abundant.

We believe the measure of abundance is falling prices. Every time a price falls, the universe of people who buy it get a raise in buying power, which is the same as a raise in income. If a lot of goods and services drop in price, the result is an upward explosion of buying power, real income, and quality of life.

We believe that if we make both intelligence and energy “too cheap to meter”, the ultimate result will be that all physical goods become as cheap as pencils. Pencils are actually quite technologically complex and difficult to manufacture, and yet nobody gets mad if you borrow a pencil and fail to return it. We should make the same true of all physical goods.

We believe we should push to drop prices across the economy through the application of technology until as many prices are effectively zero as possible, driving income levels and quality of life into the stratosphere.

We believe Andy Warhol was right when he said, “What’s great about this country is America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good.” Same for the browser, the smartphone, the chatbot.

We believe that technology ultimately drives the world to what Buckminster Fuller called “ephemeralization” – what economists call “dematerialization”. Fuller: “Technology lets you do more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing.”

We believe technological progress therefore leads to material abundance for everyone.

We believe the ultimate payoff from technological abundance can be a massive expansion in what Julian Simon called “the ultimate resource” – people.

We believe, as Simon did, that people are the ultimate resource – with more people come more creativity, more new ideas, and more technological progress.

We believe material abundance therefore ultimately means more people – a lot more people – which in turn leads to more abundance.

We believe our planet is dramatically underpopulated, compared to the population we could have with abundant intelligence, energy, and material goods.

We believe the global population can quite easily expand to 50 billion people or more, and then far beyond that as we ultimately settle other planets.

We believe that out of all of these people will come scientists, technologists, artists, and visionaries beyond our wildest dreams.

We believe the ultimate mission of technology is to advance life both on Earth and in the stars.

Not Utopia, But Close Enough

However, we are not Utopians.

We are adherents to what Thomas Sowell calls the Constrained Vision.

We believe the Constrained Vision – contra the Unconstrained Vision of Utopia, Communism, and Expertise – means taking people as they are, testing ideas empirically, and liberating people to make their own choices.

We believe in not Utopia, but also not Apocalypse.

We believe change only happens on the margin – but a lot of change across a very large margin can lead to big outcomes.

While not Utopian, we believe in what Brad DeLong terms “slouching toward Utopia” – doing the best fallen humanity can do, making things better as we go.

Becoming Technological Supermen

We believe that advancing technology is one of the most virtuous things that we can do.

We believe in deliberately and systematically transforming ourselves into the kind of people who can advance technology.

We believe this certainly means technical education, but it also means going hands on, gaining practical skills, working within and leading teams – aspiring to build something greater than oneself, aspiring to work with others to build something greater as a group.

We believe the natural human drive to make things, to gain territory, to explore the unknown can be channeled productively into building technology.

We believe that while the physical frontier, at least here on Earth, is closed, the technological frontier is wide open.

We believe in exploring and claiming the technological frontier.

We believe in the romance of technology, of industry. The eros of the train, the car, the electric light, the skyscraper. And the microchip, the neural network, the rocket, the split atom.

We believe in adventure . Undertaking the Hero’s Journey, rebelling against the status quo, mapping uncharted territory, conquering dragons, and bringing home the spoils for our community.

To paraphrase a manifesto of a different time and place: “Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Technology must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.”

We believe that we are, have been, and will always be the masters of technology, not mastered by technology. Victim mentality is a curse in every domain of life, including in our relationship with technology – both unnecessary and self-defeating. We are not victims, we are conquerors .

We believe in nature, but we also believe in overcoming nature. We are not primitives, cowering in fear of the lightning bolt. We are the apex predator; the lightning works for us.

We believe in greatness . We admire the great technologists and industrialists who came before us, and we aspire to make them proud of us today.

And we believe in humanity – individually and collectively.

Technological Values

We believe in ambition, aggression, persistence, relentlessness – strength .

We believe in merit and achievement.

We believe in bravery , in courage.

We believe in pride, confidence, and self respect – when earned .

We believe in free thought, free speech, and free inquiry.

We believe in the actual Scientific Method and enlightenment values of free discourse and challenging the authority of experts.

We believe, as Richard Feynman said, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”

And, “I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.”

We believe in local knowledge, the people with actual information making decisions, not in playing God.

We believe in embracing variance, in increasing interestingness.

We believe in risk , in leaps into the unknown.

We believe in agency, in individualism.

We believe in radical competence.

We believe in an absolute rejection of resentment. As Carrie Fisher said, “Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” We take responsibility and we overcome.

We believe in competition, because we believe in evolution.

We believe in evolution, because we believe in life.

We believe in the truth.

We believe rich is better than poor, cheap is better than expensive, and abundant is better than scarce.

We believe in making everyone rich, everything cheap, and everything abundant.

We believe extrinsic motivations – wealth, fame, revenge – are fine as far as they go. But we believe intrinsic motivations – the satisfaction of building something new, the camaraderie of being on a team, the achievement of becoming a better version of oneself – are more fulfilling and more lasting.

We believe in what the Greeks called eudaimonia through arete – flourishing through excellence.

We believe technology is universalist. Technology doesn’t care about your ethnicity, race, religion, national origin, gender, sexuality, political views, height, weight, hair or lack thereof. Technology is built by a virtual United Nations of talent from all over the world. Anyone with a positive attitude and a cheap laptop can contribute. Technology is the ultimate open society.

We believe in the Silicon Valley code of “pay it forward”, trust via aligned incentives, generosity of spirit to help one another learn and grow.

We believe America and her allies should be strong and not weak. We believe national strength of liberal democracies flows from economic strength (financial power), cultural strength (soft power), and military strength (hard power). Economic, cultural, and military strength flow from technological strength. A technologically strong America is a force for good in a dangerous world. Technologically strong liberal democracies safeguard liberty and peace. Technologically weak liberal democracies lose to their autocratic rivals, making everyone worse off.

We believe technology makes greatness more possible and more likely.

We believe in fulfilling our potential, becoming fully human – for ourselves, our communities, and our society.

The Meaning of Life

Techno-Optimism is a material philosophy, not a political philosophy.

We are not necessarily left wing, although some of us are.

We are not necessarily right wing, although some of us are.

We are materially focused, for a reason – to open the aperture on how we may choose to live amid material abundance.

A common critique of technology is that it removes choice from our lives as machines make decisions for us. This is undoubtedly true, yet more than offset by the freedom to create our lives that flows from the material abundance created by our use of machines.

Material abundance from markets and technology opens the space for religion, for politics, and for choices of how to live, socially and individually.

We believe technology is liberatory. Liberatory of human potential. Liberatory of the human soul, the human spirit. Expanding what it can mean to be free, to be fulfilled, to be alive.

We believe technology opens the space of what it can mean to be human.

We have enemies.

Our enemies are not bad people – but rather bad ideas.

Our present society has been subjected to a mass demoralization campaign for six decades – against technology and against life – under varying names like “existential risk”, “sustainability”, “ESG”, “Sustainable Development Goals”, “social responsibility”, “stakeholder capitalism”, “Precautionary Principle”, “trust and safety”, “tech ethics”, “risk management”, “de-growth”, “the limits of growth”.

This demoralization campaign is based on bad ideas of the past – zombie ideas, many derived from Communism, disastrous then and now – that have refused to die.

Our enemy is stagnation.

Our enemy is anti-merit, anti-ambition, anti-striving, anti-achievement, anti-greatness.

Our enemy is statism, authoritarianism, collectivism, central planning, socialism.

Our enemy is bureaucracy, vetocracy, gerontocracy, blind deference to tradition.

Our enemy is corruption, regulatory capture, monopolies, cartels.

Our enemy is institutions that in their youth were vital and energetic and truth-seeking, but are now compromised and corroded and collapsing – blocking progress in increasingly desperate bids for continued relevance, frantically trying to justify their ongoing funding despite spiraling dysfunction and escalating ineptness.

Our enemy is the ivory tower, the know-it-all credentialed expert worldview, indulging in abstract theories, luxury beliefs, social engineering, disconnected from the real world, delusional, unelected, and unaccountable – playing God with everyone else’s lives, with total insulation from the consequences.

Our enemy is speech control and thought control – the increasing use, in plain sight, of George Orwell’s “1984” as an instruction manual.

Our enemy is Thomas Sowell’s Unconstrained Vision, Alexander Kojeve’s Universal and Homogeneous State, Thomas More’s Utopia.

Our enemy is the Precautionary Principle, which would have prevented virtually all progress since man first harnessed fire. The Precautionary Principle was invented to prevent the large-scale deployment of civilian nuclear power, perhaps the most catastrophic mistake in Western society in my lifetime. The Precautionary Principle continues to inflict enormous unnecessary suffering on our world today. It is deeply immoral, and we must jettison it with extreme prejudice.

Our enemy is deceleration, de-growth, depopulation – the nihilistic wish, so trendy among our elites, for fewer people, less energy, and more suffering and death.

Our enemy is Friedrich Nietzsche’s Last Man:

I tell you: one must still have chaos in oneself, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you have still chaos in yourselves.

Alas! There comes the time when man will no longer give birth to any star. Alas! There comes the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself…

“What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?” — so asks the Last Man, and blinks.

The earth has become small, and on it hops the Last Man, who makes everything small. His species is ineradicable as the flea; the Last Man lives longest…

One still works, for work is a pastime. But one is careful lest the pastime should hurt one.

One no longer becomes poor or rich; both are too burdensome…

No shepherd, and one herd! Everyone wants the same; everyone is the same: he who feels differently goes voluntarily into the madhouse.

“Formerly all the world was insane,” — say the subtlest of them, and they blink.

They are clever and know all that has happened: so there is no end to their derision… 

“We have discovered happiness,” — say the Last Men, and they blink.

Our enemy is… that.

We aspire to be… not that.

We will explain to people captured by these zombie ideas that their fears are unwarranted and the future is bright.

We believe these captured people are suffering from ressentiment – a witches’ brew of resentment, bitterness, and rage that is causing them to hold mistaken values, values that are damaging to both themselves and the people they care about.

We believe we must help them find their way out of their self-imposed labyrinth of pain.

We invite everyone to join us in Techno-Optimism.

The water is warm.

Become our allies in the pursuit of technology, abundance, and life.

Where did we come from?

Our civilization was built on a spirit of discovery, of exploration, of industrialization.

Where are we going?

What world are we building for our children and their children, and their children?

A world of fear, guilt, and resentment?

Or a world of ambition, abundance, and adventure?

We believe in the words of David Deutsch: “We have a duty to be optimistic. Because the future is open, not predetermined and therefore cannot just be accepted: we are all responsible for what it holds. Thus it is our duty to fight for a better world.”

We owe the past, and the future.

It’s time to be a Techno-Optimist. 

It’s time to build.

Patron Saints of Techno-Optimism

In lieu of detailed endnotes and citations, read the work of these people, and you too will become a Techno-Optimist.

@BasedBeffJezos

@PessimistsArc

Ada Lovelace

Andy Warhol

Bertrand Russell

Brad DeLong

Buckminster Fuller

Calestous Juma

Clayton Christensen

Dambisa Moyo

David Deutsch

David Friedman

David Ricardo

Deirdre McCloskey

Doug Engelbart

Elting Morison

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

Frederic Bastiat

Frederick Jackson Turner

Friedrich Hayek

Friedrich Nietzsche

George Gilder

Isabel Paterson

Israel Kirzner

James Burnham

James Carse

Johan Norberg

John Von Neumann

Joseph Schumpeter

Julian Simon

Kevin Kelly

Louis Rossetto

Ludwig von Mises

Marian Tupy

Martin Gurri

Matt Ridley

Milton Friedman

Neven Sesardic

Paul Collier

Paul Johnson

Ray Kurzweil

Richard Feynman

Rose Wilder Lane

Stephen Wolfram

Stewart Brand

Thomas Sowell

Vilfredo Pareto

Virginia Postrel

William Lewis

William Nordhaus

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Marc Andreessen is a Cofounder and General Partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

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Technology and the future of growth: Challenges of change

Subscribe to global connection, zia qureshi zia qureshi senior fellow - global economy and development.

February 25, 2020

This blog is part of a project  exploring how the agenda for economic growth is being reshaped by forces of change, particularly technological change.

Economic growth has been lackluster for more than a decade now. This has occurred at a time when economies have faced much unfolding change. What are the forces of change, how are they affecting the growth dynamics, and what are the implications for policy? A recently published book, “ Growth in a Time of Change, ” addresses these questions.

Three basic ingredients drive economic growth—productivity, capital, and labor. All three are facing new challenges in a changing context. Foremost among the drivers of change has been technology, spearheaded by digital transformation.

Slowdown in productivity and investment

Productivity is the main long-term propeller of economic growth. Technology-enabled innovation is the major spur to productivity growth. Yet, paradoxically, productivity growth has slowed as digital technologies have boomed. Among advanced economies over the past 15 years or so, it has averaged less than half of the pace of the previous 15 years. Firms at the technological frontier have reaped major productivity gains, but the impact on productivity more widely across firms has been weak. The new technologies have tended to produce winners-take-most outcomes. Dominant firms have acquired more market power, market structures have become less competitive, and business dynamism has declined.

Investment also has been weak in most major economies. The persistent weakness of investment despite historically low interest rates has prompted concerns about the risk of “secular stagnation.” Weak productivity growth and investment have reinforced each other and are linked by similar shifts in market structures and dynamics.

Shifts in labor markets

Technology is having profound effects on labor markets. Automation and digital advances are shifting labor demand away from routine low- to middle-level skills to higher-level and more sophisticated analytical, technical, and managerial skills. On the supply side, however, equipping workers with skills that complement the new technologies has lagged, hindering the broader diffusion of innovation within economies. Education and training have been losing the race with technology.

Most major economies face the challenge of aging populations. Many of them are also seeing a leveling off of gains in labor force participation rates and basic education attainments of the population. These trends put an even greater focus on productivity—and technological innovations that drive it—to deliver economic growth.

Rising inequality

Growth has also become less inclusive. Income inequality has been rising in most major economies, and the increase has been particularly pronounced in some of them, such as the United States. The new technologies favoring capital and higher-level skills have contributed to a decline in labor’s share of income and to increased wage inequality. They have also been associated with more concentrated industry structures and high economic rents enjoyed by dominant firms. Income has shifted from labor to capital and the distribution of both labor and capital income has become more unequal.

Rising inequality and mounting anxiety about jobs have contributed to increased social tensions and political divisiveness. Populism has surged in many countries. Nationalist and protectionist sentiment has been on the rise, with a backlash against international trade that, alongside technological change, is seen to have increased inequality with job losses and wage stagnation for low-skilled workers.

Changing growth pathways

While income inequality has been rising within many countries, inequality between countries has been falling as faster-growing emerging economies narrow the income gap with advanced economies. Technology poses new challenges for this economic convergence. Manufacturing-led growth in emerging economies has been the dominant driver of convergence, fueled by their comparative advantage in labor-intensive production based on their large pools of low-skill, low-wage workers. Such comparative advantage is eroding with automation of low-skill work, creating the need to develop alternative pathways to growth aligned with technological change.

AI, robotics, and the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Technological change reshaping growth will only intensify as artificial intelligence, advanced robotics, and cyber-physical systems take the digital revolution to another level. We may be on the cusp of what has been termed the “Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR).” And globalization is going increasingly digital, a transformation that, analogous to 4IR, has been termed “Globalization 4.0.”

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Technological change recently has not delivered its full potential in boosting productivity and economic growth. It has pushed income inequality higher and generated fears about a “robocalypse”—massive job losses from automation. This should not cause despair, however.

Advances in digital technologies hold considerable potential to lift the trajectory of productivity and economic growth, and to create new and better jobs to replace old ones. As much as two-thirds of potential productivity growth in major economies over the next decade could be related to the new digital technologies. But technological change is inherently disruptive and entails difficult transitions. It also inevitably creates winners and losers—as does globalization. Policies have a crucial role to play. Unfortunately, they have been slow to adapt to the challenges of change. With improved and more responsive policies, better outcomes are possible.

An agenda to harness the potential of new technology

The core of the forward policy agenda is to better harness the potential of the new technologies. Reforms must seek to improve the enabling environment for firms and workers—to broaden access to opportunities that come from technological change and to enhance capabilities to adjust to the new challenges.

• Policies and institutions governing markets must keep pace as technological change transforms the world of business. Competition policies should be revamped for the digital age to ensure that markets continue to provide an open and level playing field for firms, keep competition strong, and check the growth of monopolistic structures. New regulatory issues revolving around data, the lifeblood of the digital economy, must be addressed. Flexibility in markets will be key to facilitating adjustments to disruptions and structural shifts from digital transformation.
• The innovation ecosystem should keep pushing the technological frontier but also foster wider economic impacts from the new advances. With the intangible asset of knowledge becoming an increasingly important driver of economic success, research and development systems and patent regimes should be improved to promote broader diffusion of technologies embodying new knowledge.
• The foundation of digital infrastructure and digital literacy must be strengthened. The digital divide is narrowing but wide gaps remain.
• Investment in education and training must be boosted and reoriented to emphasize the skills for the jobs of the future. With the old career path of “learn-work-retire” giving way to one of continuous learning, programs for worker upskilling and reskilling and lifelong learning must the scaled up. The key to winning the race with technology is not to compete against machines but to compete with machines.
• Labor market policies should become more forward-looking, shifting the focus from seeking to protect existing jobs to improving workers’ ability to change jobs. Social protection systems, traditionally based on formal long-term employer-employee relationships, should be adapted to a more dynamic job market. Social contracts need to realign with the changing nature of work.
• Tax systems should be reviewed in light of the new tax challenges of the digital economy, including the implications of the transformations occurring in business and work and the new income distribution dynamics. The potential tax reform agenda spans taxes on labor, capital, and wealth.

Reforms are needed at the international level as well, although the dominant part of the agenda to make technology—and globalization—work better and for all rests with policies at the national level. Not only must past gains in establishing a rules-based international trading system be shielded from protectionist headwinds, but new disciplines must be devised for the next phase of globalization led by digital flows to ensure open access and fair competition. Sensible policies on migration can complement national policies, such as pension reform and lifelong learning, in mitigating the effects of population aging.

The era of smart machines holds much promise. With smart policies, the future could be one of stronger and more inclusive growth.

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The 8 Main Ways Technology Impacts Your Daily Life in 2024

Our content is funded in part by commercial partnerships, at no extra cost to you and without impact to our editorial impartiality. Click to Learn More

Technology affects almost every aspect of life in 2024, from transport efficiency and safety to access to food and healthcare, socialization, and productivity . It’s made learning more convenient, information easier to access, and has enabled global communities to form organically on the internet.

Even though technology has impacted our lives positively and allowed ideas and resources to be shared more easily, the overuse of some technology has been linked to a decline in mental health , increased social division , and privacy concerns . The rapid rise of AI tools like ChatGPT has raised even more questions about the role technology plays in our lives.

We take technology for granted every day – even when it’s delivering us the latest news in an instant, making our cappuccino, or connecting us with loved ones halfway across the country (or even the world).

So, to remind ourselves of just how much technology has changed society, we’ve taken a look at the eight most important ways that tech has impacted our lives in recent years.

Ways Technology Impacts Our Lives:

• Improved Communication
• AI Changing The Way We Work
• Decreased Privacy
• Accessible Shopping
• Better Information Access
• Virtual Social Lives
• Remote Working
• 4-Day Workweek

1. Improved Communication

“Come here Watson, I need to see you.” These were the first words that Alexander Graham Bell uttered over his revolutionary invention back in 1876, and it’s fair to say that the trusty telephone has had a good run. Bell originally dreamed that there would be ‘one in every town’. He was right of course — in fact, these days, there’s one in every person’s pocket. However, technology has seen the traditional audio call being edged out in favor of messaging and social media as a way of touching base.

Another medium that has seen a boom in the last few years is video calling. It’s nothing particularly new – the concept has been around for about as long as Bell’s telephone – but the revolution of high-speed broadband at affordable prices means that it’s now easy to send and receive the amounts of data needed for a video call.

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While video calling has spent the last decade slowly creeping into daily life, it’s the ongoing pandemic that has pushed it over the edge and secured its future as an everyday way to stay in touch.

Thanks to lockdowns and social distancing, families and friends are meeting up and socializing via video call more than ever before.

If you hadn’t heard of Zoom before 2020, you will have certainly become aware of it by now, and while there are plenty of other video conferencing apps out there, it’s Zoom that has emerged as the poster child for video chat in the public consciousness. In 2023, it was estimated that Zoom had well over 800 million unique global visitors a month.

In the post-pandemic world, more of us are working from home than ever. Many in-person meetings have been replaced with video conferencing as office staff swapping the boardroom for the bedroom (or wherever else they can find space to work at home) in droves. Now, based on data from mid-2022, Mckinsey estimates 35% of Americans can work from home full time.

While Zoom is a great tool for catching up with buddies, can it do the job of supporting your business through the pandemic? We’ve evaluated several high-profile video conferencing systems and can help you find the right one for your company in minutes.

2. AI Changing The Way We Work

If someone had told you just a few years ago that very soon, you’d have access to a free AI tool that could help you with all of your tasks, you might not have believed them. Millions of people now use ChatGPT, Bard , and other generative AI tools for all sorts of tasks in their personal and work lives.

Although it was only launched back in November 2022, ChatGPT has already had a transformative impact on the lives of students and businesspeople alike, making their lives easier by quickly and accurately answering questions relating to their work. According to our own research, 65% of companies are using ChatGPT already .

The AI revolution really is here. ChatGPT has been helping people with jobs like writing recipes, creating job resumes, crafting essays and poems, summarizing historical events, composing emails, creating spreadsheets, and even filing their tax returns. Others have used it to get free legal advice or plan their holiday.

The ChatGPT website is currently generating around 1.8 billion visits a month, and a Tech.co survey found that almost half (47%) of business leaders are considering using AI instead of hiring new members of staff. Some experts even say that soon, large companies will have “ 50 different AI tools ” in operation.

Be mindful that although ChatGPT is useful and has already had a significant impact on the lives of millions of people, you can’t – and shouldn’t – use it for every single essay, report, or task in your day-to-day life.

Although using ChatGPT isn’t technically plagiarism – after all, you’re not copying someone else’s work – many universities and schools now consider it to be cheating. Some teachers have said their students can use it, while others have banned it completely. It’s also not perfect, and it’s certainly not a geniue – AI tools often get things wrong, and you should always double-check the responses you receive from them.

3. Decreased Privacy

We’re spending more of our lives online than ever before. According to one report , the “typical” global internet user spent seven hours a day online in 2022.

Shopping? It’s done on Amazon. Catching up with friends? It’s FaceTime, Snapchat, or email. Want to be entertained? Netflix, or online gaming. Research? Hit up Google. Almost every facet of our daily routines can be catered for online today, so it seems inevitable that our time spent online will only increase. In fact, 37% of consumers said in a 2022 survey that they’d switched companies in an attempt to protect their own privacy.

While access to everything online gives us an unparalleled level of convenience, it has also made us vulnerable. Every move we make online is recorded, and we leave digital footprints wherever we visit. Hackers and scammers know this, and work hard to exploit it for financial gain.

Of course, as with everything else, technology has also given us the tools to protect ourselves and ensure that we are safe as our lives migrate online. In the last few years, this has become even more key – many of us are not only browsing for personal reasons, but accessing shared work networks from our own homes, and we can’t rely on the closed off security of the physical office.

One piece of technology that will help keep your data safe is the password manager . A password manager will protect your existing passwords, suggest new and secure ones, and in some cases, even monitor the web to ensure that your details aren’t compromised. Not only that, but it will do away with that ever-present fear we all have of forgetting one of our many, many passwords. If you don’t have one, there’s never been a better time to invest –plus, with some of the best apps only costing a few dollars a month, it’s a great low-cost solution for added security .

Another great security advancement is the Virtual Private Network (VPN). A VPN will bypass your internet service provider and mask your digital footprints. Nobody will be able to see the content you are accessing, and it makes you a lot less susceptible to hackers. You can also use public Wi-Fi accounts with more confidence. Many businesses have adopted them recently, as well as home users – they’re very quick to set up and most of the time you can troubleshoot a VPN yourself , which means they’re very low-maintenance.

Our recommendation? PureVPN . It’s packed with features like quantum-resistant servers and a streaming “shortcuts” tool, and has servers in more than 60 countries. What’s more, at just $2.11 per month , it’s a lot cheaper than NordVPN and ExpressVPN.

There’s also anti-virus software, providing a great shield from all the nasties out there on the internet looking to catch us out. This includes ransomware and malware, which is usually designed with the intent of extracting money from victims. From individuals to government, nobody is immune, and good antivirus software is a great way to capture and quarantine such efforts before they can wreak havoc.

Lastly, there are different ways to remove your personal information from Google that, in a world of decreased privacy, are definitely worth knowing about. Knowing how to kick off Google’s official removal request process will come in handy, for example, if you find content on a website that includes sensitive data about you.

A VPN can protect your identity from unwanted tracking. Have you used a VPN before?

4. Accessible Shopping

As we’ve mentioned, shopping has found a convenient and popular home online, but that’s not to say the high street is to be ignored – after all, you can’t really beat seeing a product in the flesh before you buy it, and you can’t eat out online just yet (you can order a delivery, but that’s not quite the same).

Technology hasn’t bypassed physical shopping either. Thanks to contactless cards and phone payments, we don’t need to worry about handing over cash or keying in a pin number – just tap to pay, and you’re done.

If you’re a business, then a Point of Sale (POS) system is a huge boon, regardless of your size. With a POS, not only can you take payments electronically, but you can also automatically manage stock levels, create electronic receipts, manage loyalty schemes, manage sales and so on. It doesn’t need to be costly, either – POS systems start at around $30 a month, and some even offer free hardware. To find out more, take a look at our POS system reviews, and compare POS systems today.

Of course, you don’t need to leave the house to shop. With the vast majority of us owning a tablet , laptop or smartphone , we’ve all got easy access to a virtual shop front right in front of us, where we can buy pretty much anything we want.

Technology has also democratized retail. It used to be the case that you needed a physical presence to start your own shop – now all you need is a computer and an idea.

Sharing your wares with the world is easier than ever. This is thanks to the simplicity of website builders – tools that can help you create professional-looking websites in minutes , then sell your products or services.

Have you used a password manager before?

5. Better Information Access

Today, if you want to find something out, it’s no more strenuous than a couple of clicks. For many of us, we don’t even need to move from the spot – simply pull out your phone and get Googling, or even ask your smart home assistant .

It may seem like a distant memory, but it wasn’t so long ago that you’d have to take a trip to the library to find out more in-depth information about a subject if it was available at all. Now, due to these advances in technology, you can find hundreds of thousands of web pages dedicated to pretty much anything you can dream of, from “crochet patterns” (Google gives 129,000,000 results) to “Roman history” (1,360,000,000 results).

It’s something of a cliche, but there is literally an app for anything, and they’ve rendered a lot of other mediums all but obsolete for many of us. Take GPS, for example – if you want to know how to get somewhere, it’s simply a case of pulling up an app like Google Maps and choosing the best route, which will come complete with directions, as well as satellite imaging. There are even apps for businesses that automatically route vehicles alongside traffic, weather, safety and legal information. App technology has also made learning, dating, dining, and almost anything else you can think of a lot easier for us.

Not to be overlooked either are the actual devices that all these apps run on. The rise of the smartphone has been exponential over the last decade, and daily web searches on mobile devices now outnumber those on laptop or desktop computers. Improvements continue to be made to handheld devices, each and every year, without fail.

The mobile phone is now considered an essential device for almost everyone, vastly superseding its original use as a telephone (to actually talk to people) and becoming our pocket-sized portal to an online world.

6. Virtual Social Lives

Another seismic change in our lives over the past decade has been the widespread usage of social media . This industry has progressed fast, and the early days of the likes of MySpace and the original version of Facebook – which first went live in 2006 – seem like a bygone age already.

Now, services such as Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, and others give us an insight into the waking lives of others in real-time, whether they’re friends with a few followers or celebrities with millions. New platforms are still coming out this year. Just recently, Meta – the company that owns WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram – brought out a new social media platform called Threads , which is a little bit like Twitter.

Now, these very same companies want us to spend even more time online, in a digital space they call “the Metaverse”, a virtual reality where users can interact in a computer-generated environment. Facebook’s chief Mark Zuckerberg says he wants one billion people to exist within it one day, and a variety of metaverse companies now exist. In the past year, some businesses even managed to sell virtual land in the metaverse.

Businesses have got in on the act too, and a savvy social media manager is considered essential in most companies, with their ability to make or break a brand’s reputation.

Social media’s course over the last few years has been somewhat bumpy, but as a society, or many societies, we’ve never seen global communication on such a scale. It has enabled the rise of social commentary and movements, such as #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, as well as leaving us vulnerable, with the likes of Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal serving to manipulate voters and skew democracy.

Social media can be fun, but studies have also shown that it can have a detrimental effect on our mental health. It’s so bad, in fact, that some governments are calling for social media companies to be more responsible – especially when it comes to younger users.

A recent study in the UK found that 46% of young girls reported that social media had a negative impact on their self-esteem, so there’s clearly a lot to fix. Lots of other recent studies have found links between social media use and mental health issues like depression, anxiety, and even Smartphone addiction.

Ultimately, social media is only as positive as the hands of the people it’s in – but it looks like it’s here to stay, whether you like it or not.

As a consumer, you can choose to opt out, but businesses yet to get in on the action will soon fall behind the competition. Digital marketing is a hugely important aspect of any company with an online presence, and an essential one to get right.

7. Remote Working

2020 will be remembered for a lot of negative reasons, but one of its most defining positives has been the widespread acceptance of working from home. With the pandemic in full swing, many had to abandon their offices and log on from their own residences.

At its peak, 42% of Americans were working from home, according to one study. The trend has continued longer after the pandemic too, with large companies such as Twitter and Microsoft already stating that their staff can work from home indefinitely.

The CIPD’s 2023 report on flexible working found that 40% of organizations reported an increase in requests for flexible working arrangements in 2023. Two-thirds (66%) of organizations said it was important to them to offer this perk when advertising for new roles, up from 56% in 2021.

For many, working from home has been something of a revelation – no commuting, more flexible hours, a lessened environmental impact, and being able to choose where they work. All this is made possible thanks to technological advancements, yet again – as well as a whole host of companies offering remote work .

That’s not to say working outside the office doesn’t have its challenges – organizing employees who are spread across various locations successfully can certainly present problems. But yet again, our friend technological progress comes to the rescue, this time with remote working software , which can aid in organization, time management, goal focus and structure.

Anti-Virus Software Prevents Security Risks

8. 4-Day Workweek

Classic cartoon The Jetsons gave us a glimpse into the future of work, with the main character lamenting the fact he had to work ‘three hours a day, three days a week’.

The Jetsons was set in 2062, so there’s still a chance we could end up with a nine hour week, but until then, the focus is on the 4-day workweek.

It’s a movement that has seen a huge push in the last couple of years, with many companies starting to offer employees longer weekends . Some US States are also pushing a 4-day workweek, too .

The reason for the 4-day workweek becoming viable is, you guessed it, technology, specifically, AI. With the ability for tech to do a lot of the heavy lifting, many are arguing, including the likes of Bernie Sanders , that workers should reap the benefits and be rewarded with more leisure time.

We have seen some landmark studies carried out on the reduced workweek over the last year, and they proved overwhelmingly positive for the most part.

And why not? As we mention above, remote working, once seen as a luxury, is now more common than ever. The 4-day workweek could well be next.

Conclusion: The Impact of Technology

So, there we have it — eight dramatic ways that technology has impacted our daily lives for good. Of course, technology never takes a rest, and you can bet that it won’t be long before some of the devices and services we’ve covered here are superseded — in many cases, their next iteration is already being worked on in a lab somewhere.

Regardless, there’s no denying that technology has, and will continue to, have a huge impact on our lives, in one way or another.

More on this topic:

• Flirt, Fake, Make Them Wait— How Technology Has Changed the Way We Interact
• Top 6 Social Media Trends
• 10 Ways Businesses Are Using ChatGPT Right Now
• How to Remove Your Personal Information From Google
• What is a Digital Footprint, and How Do You Minimize It?

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The state of AI in early 2024: Gen AI adoption spikes and starts to generate value

If 2023 was the year the world discovered generative AI (gen AI) , 2024 is the year organizations truly began using—and deriving business value from—this new technology. In the latest McKinsey Global Survey  on AI, 65 percent of respondents report that their organizations are regularly using gen AI, nearly double the percentage from our previous survey just ten months ago. Respondents’ expectations for gen AI’s impact remain as high as they were last year , with three-quarters predicting that gen AI will lead to significant or disruptive change in their industries in the years ahead.

About the authors

This article is a collaborative effort by Alex Singla , Alexander Sukharevsky , Lareina Yee , and Michael Chui , with Bryce Hall , representing views from QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, and McKinsey Digital.

Organizations are already seeing material benefits from gen AI use, reporting both cost decreases and revenue jumps in the business units deploying the technology. The survey also provides insights into the kinds of risks presented by gen AI—most notably, inaccuracy—as well as the emerging practices of top performers to mitigate those challenges and capture value.

AI adoption surges

Interest in generative AI has also brightened the spotlight on a broader set of AI capabilities. For the past six years, AI adoption by respondents’ organizations has hovered at about 50 percent. This year, the survey finds that adoption has jumped to 72 percent (Exhibit 1). And the interest is truly global in scope. Our 2023 survey found that AI adoption did not reach 66 percent in any region; however, this year more than two-thirds of respondents in nearly every region say their organizations are using AI. 1 Organizations based in Central and South America are the exception, with 58 percent of respondents working for organizations based in Central and South America reporting AI adoption. Looking by industry, the biggest increase in adoption can be found in professional services. 2 Includes respondents working for organizations focused on human resources, legal services, management consulting, market research, R&D, tax preparation, and training.

Also, responses suggest that companies are now using AI in more parts of the business. Half of respondents say their organizations have adopted AI in two or more business functions, up from less than a third of respondents in 2023 (Exhibit 2).

Gen AI adoption is most common in the functions where it can create the most value

Most respondents now report that their organizations—and they as individuals—are using gen AI. Sixty-five percent of respondents say their organizations are regularly using gen AI in at least one business function, up from one-third last year. The average organization using gen AI is doing so in two functions, most often in marketing and sales and in product and service development—two functions in which previous research  determined that gen AI adoption could generate the most value 3 “ The economic potential of generative AI: The next productivity frontier ,” McKinsey, June 14, 2023. —as well as in IT (Exhibit 3). The biggest increase from 2023 is found in marketing and sales, where reported adoption has more than doubled. Yet across functions, only two use cases, both within marketing and sales, are reported by 15 percent or more of respondents.

Gen AI also is weaving its way into respondents’ personal lives. Compared with 2023, respondents are much more likely to be using gen AI at work and even more likely to be using gen AI both at work and in their personal lives (Exhibit 4). The survey finds upticks in gen AI use across all regions, with the largest increases in Asia–Pacific and Greater China. Respondents at the highest seniority levels, meanwhile, show larger jumps in the use of gen Al tools for work and outside of work compared with their midlevel-management peers. Looking at specific industries, respondents working in energy and materials and in professional services report the largest increase in gen AI use.

Investments in gen AI and analytical AI are beginning to create value

The latest survey also shows how different industries are budgeting for gen AI. Responses suggest that, in many industries, organizations are about equally as likely to be investing more than 5 percent of their digital budgets in gen AI as they are in nongenerative, analytical-AI solutions (Exhibit 5). Yet in most industries, larger shares of respondents report that their organizations spend more than 20 percent on analytical AI than on gen AI. Looking ahead, most respondents—67 percent—expect their organizations to invest more in AI over the next three years.

Where are those investments paying off? For the first time, our latest survey explored the value created by gen AI use by business function. The function in which the largest share of respondents report seeing cost decreases is human resources. Respondents most commonly report meaningful revenue increases (of more than 5 percent) in supply chain and inventory management (Exhibit 6). For analytical AI, respondents most often report seeing cost benefits in service operations—in line with what we found last year —as well as meaningful revenue increases from AI use in marketing and sales.

Inaccuracy: The most recognized and experienced risk of gen AI use

As businesses begin to see the benefits of gen AI, they’re also recognizing the diverse risks associated with the technology. These can range from data management risks such as data privacy, bias, or intellectual property (IP) infringement to model management risks, which tend to focus on inaccurate output or lack of explainability. A third big risk category is security and incorrect use.

Respondents to the latest survey are more likely than they were last year to say their organizations consider inaccuracy and IP infringement to be relevant to their use of gen AI, and about half continue to view cybersecurity as a risk (Exhibit 7).

Conversely, respondents are less likely than they were last year to say their organizations consider workforce and labor displacement to be relevant risks and are not increasing efforts to mitigate them.

In fact, inaccuracy— which can affect use cases across the gen AI value chain , ranging from customer journeys and summarization to coding and creative content—is the only risk that respondents are significantly more likely than last year to say their organizations are actively working to mitigate.

Some organizations have already experienced negative consequences from the use of gen AI, with 44 percent of respondents saying their organizations have experienced at least one consequence (Exhibit 8). Respondents most often report inaccuracy as a risk that has affected their organizations, followed by cybersecurity and explainability.

Our previous research has found that there are several elements of governance that can help in scaling gen AI use responsibly, yet few respondents report having these risk-related practices in place. 4 “ Implementing generative AI with speed and safety ,” McKinsey Quarterly , March 13, 2024. For example, just 18 percent say their organizations have an enterprise-wide council or board with the authority to make decisions involving responsible AI governance, and only one-third say gen AI risk awareness and risk mitigation controls are required skill sets for technical talent.

Bringing gen AI capabilities to bear

The latest survey also sought to understand how, and how quickly, organizations are deploying these new gen AI tools. We have found three archetypes for implementing gen AI solutions : takers use off-the-shelf, publicly available solutions; shapers customize those tools with proprietary data and systems; and makers develop their own foundation models from scratch. 5 “ Technology’s generational moment with generative AI: A CIO and CTO guide ,” McKinsey, July 11, 2023. Across most industries, the survey results suggest that organizations are finding off-the-shelf offerings applicable to their business needs—though many are pursuing opportunities to customize models or even develop their own (Exhibit 9). About half of reported gen AI uses within respondents’ business functions are utilizing off-the-shelf, publicly available models or tools, with little or no customization. Respondents in energy and materials, technology, and media and telecommunications are more likely to report significant customization or tuning of publicly available models or developing their own proprietary models to address specific business needs.

Respondents most often report that their organizations required one to four months from the start of a project to put gen AI into production, though the time it takes varies by business function (Exhibit 10). It also depends upon the approach for acquiring those capabilities. Not surprisingly, reported uses of highly customized or proprietary models are 1.5 times more likely than off-the-shelf, publicly available models to take five months or more to implement.

Gen AI high performers are excelling despite facing challenges

Gen AI is a new technology, and organizations are still early in the journey of pursuing its opportunities and scaling it across functions. So it’s little surprise that only a small subset of respondents (46 out of 876) report that a meaningful share of their organizations’ EBIT can be attributed to their deployment of gen AI. Still, these gen AI leaders are worth examining closely. These, after all, are the early movers, who already attribute more than 10 percent of their organizations’ EBIT to their use of gen AI. Forty-two percent of these high performers say more than 20 percent of their EBIT is attributable to their use of nongenerative, analytical AI, and they span industries and regions—though most are at organizations with less than $1 billion in annual revenue. The AI-related practices at these organizations can offer guidance to those looking to create value from gen AI adoption at their own organizations.

To start, gen AI high performers are using gen AI in more business functions—an average of three functions, while others average two. They, like other organizations, are most likely to use gen AI in marketing and sales and product or service development, but they’re much more likely than others to use gen AI solutions in risk, legal, and compliance; in strategy and corporate finance; and in supply chain and inventory management. They’re more than three times as likely as others to be using gen AI in activities ranging from processing of accounting documents and risk assessment to R&D testing and pricing and promotions. While, overall, about half of reported gen AI applications within business functions are utilizing publicly available models or tools, gen AI high performers are less likely to use those off-the-shelf options than to either implement significantly customized versions of those tools or to develop their own proprietary foundation models.

What else are these high performers doing differently? For one thing, they are paying more attention to gen-AI-related risks. Perhaps because they are further along on their journeys, they are more likely than others to say their organizations have experienced every negative consequence from gen AI we asked about, from cybersecurity and personal privacy to explainability and IP infringement. Given that, they are more likely than others to report that their organizations consider those risks, as well as regulatory compliance, environmental impacts, and political stability, to be relevant to their gen AI use, and they say they take steps to mitigate more risks than others do.

Gen AI high performers are also much more likely to say their organizations follow a set of risk-related best practices (Exhibit 11). For example, they are nearly twice as likely as others to involve the legal function and embed risk reviews early on in the development of gen AI solutions—that is, to “ shift left .” They’re also much more likely than others to employ a wide range of other best practices, from strategy-related practices to those related to scaling.

In addition to experiencing the risks of gen AI adoption, high performers have encountered other challenges that can serve as warnings to others (Exhibit 12). Seventy percent say they have experienced difficulties with data, including defining processes for data governance, developing the ability to quickly integrate data into AI models, and an insufficient amount of training data, highlighting the essential role that data play in capturing value. High performers are also more likely than others to report experiencing challenges with their operating models, such as implementing agile ways of working and effective sprint performance management.

About the research

The online survey was in the field from February 22 to March 5, 2024, and garnered responses from 1,363 participants representing the full range of regions, industries, company sizes, functional specialties, and tenures. Of those respondents, 981 said their organizations had adopted AI in at least one business function, and 878 said their organizations were regularly using gen AI in at least one function. To adjust for differences in response rates, the data are weighted by the contribution of each respondent’s nation to global GDP.

Alex Singla and Alexander Sukharevsky  are global coleaders of QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, and senior partners in McKinsey’s Chicago and London offices, respectively; Lareina Yee  is a senior partner in the Bay Area office, where Michael Chui , a McKinsey Global Institute partner, is a partner; and Bryce Hall  is an associate partner in the Washington, DC, office.

They wish to thank Kaitlin Noe, Larry Kanter, Mallika Jhamb, and Shinjini Srivastava for their contributions to this work.

This article was edited by Heather Hanselman, a senior editor in McKinsey’s Atlanta office.

Explore a career with us

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Implementing generative AI with speed and safety

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B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends: Outlook for 2024 [Research]

• by Stephanie Stahl
• | Published: October 18, 2023
• | Trends and Research

Creating standards, guidelines, processes, and workflows for content marketing is not the sexiest job.

But setting standards is the only way to know if you can improve anything (with AI or anything else).

Here’s the good news: All that non-sexy work frees time and resources (human and tech) you can apply to bring your brand’s strategies and plans to life.  

But in many organizations, content still isn’t treated as a coordinated business function. That’s one of the big takeaways from our latest research, B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends: Outlook for 2024, conducted with MarketingProfs and sponsored by Brightspot .

A few symptoms of that reality showed up in the research:

• Marketers cite a lack of resources as a top situational challenge, the same as they did the previous year.
• Nearly three-quarters (72%) say they use generative AI, but 61% say their organization lacks guidelines for its use.
• The most frequently cited challenges include creating the right content, creating content consistently, and differentiating content.

I’ll walk you through the findings and share some advice from CMI Chief Strategy Advisor Robert Rose and other industry voices to shed light on what it all means for B2B marketers. There’s a lot to work through, so feel free to use the table of contents to navigate to the sections that most interest you.

Note: These numbers come from a July 2023 survey of marketers around the globe. We received 1,080 responses. This article focuses on answers from the 894 B2B respondents.

Table of contents

• Team structure
• Content marketing challenges

Content types, distribution channels, and paid channels

• Social media

Content management and operations

• Measurement and goals
• Overall success
• Budgets and spending
• Top content-related priorities for 2024
• Content marketing trends for 2024

Action steps

Methodology, ai: 3 out of 4 b2b marketers use generative tools.

Of course, we asked respondents how they use generative AI in content and marketing. As it turns out, most experiment with it: 72% of respondents say they use generative AI tools.

But a lack of standards can get in the way.

“Generative AI is the new, disruptive capability entering the realm of content marketing in 2024,” Robert says. “It’s just another way to make our content process more efficient and effective. But it can’t do either until you establish a standard to define its value. Until then, it’s yet just another technology that may or may not make you better at what you do.”

So, how do content marketers use the tools today? About half (51%) use generative AI to brainstorm new topics. Many use the tools to research headlines and keywords (45%) and write drafts (45%). Fewer say they use AI to outline assignments (23%), proofread (20%), generate graphics (11%), and create audio (5%) and video (5%).

Some marketers say they use AI to do things like generate email headlines and email copy, extract social media posts from long-form content, condense long-form copy into short form, etc.

Only 28% say they don’t use generative AI tools.

Most don’t pay for generative AI tools (yet)

Among those who use generative AI tools, 91% use free tools (e.g., ChatGPT ). Thirty-eight percent use tools embedded in their content creation/management systems, and 27% pay for tools such as Writer and Jasper.

AI in content remains mostly ungoverned

Asked if their organizations have guidelines for using generative AI tools, 31% say yes, 61% say no, and 8% are unsure.

We asked Ann Handley , chief content officer of MarketingProfs, for her perspective. “It feels crazy … 61% have no guidelines? But is it actually shocking and crazy? No. It is not. Most of us are just getting going with generative AI. That means there is a clear and rich opportunity to lead from where you sit,” she says.

“Ignite the conversation internally. Press upon your colleagues and your leadership that this isn’t a technology opportunity. It’s also a people and operational challenge in need of thoughtful and intelligent response. You can be the AI leader your organization needs,” Ann says.

Why some marketers don’t use generative AI tools

While a lack of guidelines may deter some B2B marketers from using generative AI tools, other reasons include accuracy concerns (36%), lack of training (27%), and lack of understanding (27%). Twenty-two percent cite copyright concerns, and 19% have corporate mandates not to use them.

How AI is changing SEO

We also wondered how AI’s integration in search engines shifts content marketers’ SEO strategy. Here’s what we found:

• 31% are sharpening their focus on user intent/answering questions.
• 27% are creating more thought leadership content.
• 22% are creating more conversational content.

Over one-fourth (28%) say they’re not doing any of those things, while 26% say they’re unsure.

AI may heighten the need to rethink your SEO strategy. But it’s not the only reason to do so, as Orbit Media Studios co-founder and chief marketing officer Andy Crestodina points out: “Featured snippets and people-also-ask boxes have chipped away at click-through rates for years,” he says. “AI will make that even worse … but only for information intent queries . Searchers who want quick answers really don’t want to visit websites.

“Focus your SEO efforts on those big questions with big answers – and on the commercial intent queries,” Andy continues. “Those phrases still have ‘visit website intent’ … and will for years to come.”

Will the AI obsession ever end?

Many B2B marketers surveyed predict AI will dominate the discussions of content marketing trends in 2024. As one respondent says: “AI will continue to be the shiny thing through 2024 until marketers realize the dedication required to develop prompts, go through the iterative process, and fact-check output . AI can help you sharpen your skills, but it isn’t a replacement solution for B2B marketing.”

Back to table of contents

Team structure: How does the work get done?

Generative AI isn’t the only issue affecting content marketing these days. We also asked marketers about how they organize their teams .

Among larger companies (100-plus employees), half say content requests go through a centralized content team. Others say each department/brand produces its own content (23%), and the departments/brand/products share responsibility (21%).

Content strategies integrate with marketing, comms, and sales

Seventy percent say their organizations integrate content strategy into the overall marketing sales/communication/strategy, and 2% say it’s integrated into another strategy. Eleven percent say content is a stand-alone strategy for content used for marketing, and 6% say it’s a stand-alone strategy for all content produced by the company. Only 9% say they don’t have a content strategy. The remaining 2% say other or are unsure.

Employee churn means new teammates; content teams experience enlightened leadership

Twenty-eight percent of B2B marketers say team members resigned in the last year, 20% say team members were laid off, and about half (49%) say they had new team members acclimating to their ways of working.

While team members come and go, the understanding of content doesn’t. Over half (54%) strongly agree, and 30% somewhat agree the leader to whom their content team reports understands the work they do. Only 11% disagree. The remaining 5% neither agree nor disagree.

And remote work seems well-tolerated: Only 20% say collaboration was challenging due to remote or hybrid work.

Content marketing challenges: Focus shifts to creating the right content

We asked B2B marketers about both content creation and non-creation challenges.

Content creation

Most marketers (57%) cite creating the right content for their audience as a challenge. This is a change from many years when “creating enough content” was the most frequently cited challenge.

One respondent points out why understanding what audiences want is more important than ever: “As the internet gets noisier and AI makes it incredibly easy to create listicles and content that copy each other, there will be a need for companies to stand out. At the same time, as … millennials and Gen Z [grow in the workforce], we’ll begin to see B2B become more entertaining and less boring. We were never only competing with other B2B content. We’ve always been competing for attention.”

Other content creation challenges include creating it consistently (54%) and differentiating it (54%). Close to half (45%) cite optimizing for search and creating quality content (44%). About a third (34%) cite creating enough content to keep up with internal demand, 30% say creating enough content to keep up with external demand, and 30% say creating content that requires technical skills.

Other hurdles

The most frequently cited non-creation challenge, by far, is a lack of resources (58%), followed by aligning content with the buyer’s journey (48%) and aligning content efforts across sales and marketing (45%). Forty-one percent say they have issues with workflow/content approval, and 39% say they have difficulty accessing subject matter experts. Thirty-four percent say it is difficult to keep up with new technologies/tools (e.g., AI). Only 25% cite a lack of strategy as a challenge, 19% say keeping up with privacy rules, and 15% point to tech integration issues.

We asked content marketers about the types of content they produce, their distribution channels , and paid content promotion. We also asked which formats and channels produce the best results.

Popular content types and formats

As in the previous year, the three most popular content types/formats are short articles/posts (94%, up from 89% last year), videos (84%, up from 75% last year), and case studies/customer stories (78%, up from 67% last year). Almost three-quarters (71%) use long articles, 60% produce visual content, and 59% craft thought leadership e-books or white papers. Less than half of marketers use brochures (49%), product or technical data sheets (45%), research reports (36%), interactive content (33%), audio (29%), and livestreaming (25%).

Effective content types and formats

Which formats are most effective? Fifty-three percent say case studies/customer stories and videos deliver some of their best results. Almost as many (51%) names thought leadership e-books or white papers, 47% short articles, and 43% research reports.

Popular content distribution channels

Regarding the channels used to distribute content, 90% use social media platforms (organic), followed by blogs (79%), email newsletters (73%), email (66%), in-person events (56%), and webinars (56%).

Channels used by the minority of those surveyed include:

• Digital events (44%)
• Podcasts (30%)
• Microsites (29%)
• Digital magazines (21%)
• Branded online communities (19%)
• Hybrid events (18%)
• Print magazines (16%)
• Online learning platforms (15%)
• Mobile apps (8%)
• Separate content brands (5%)

Effective content distribution channels

Which channels perform the best? Most marketers in the survey point to in-person events (56%) and webinars (51%) as producing better results. Email (44%), organic social media platforms (44%), blogs (40%) and email newsletters (39%) round out the list.

Popular paid content channels

When marketers pay to promote content , which channels do they invest in? Eighty-six percent use paid content distribution channels.

Of those, 78% use social media advertising/promoted posts, 65% use sponsorships, 64% use search engine marketing (SEM)/pay-per-click, and 59% use digital display advertising. Far fewer invest in native advertising (35%), partner emails (29%), and print display ads (21%).

Effective paid content channels

SEM/pay-per-click produces good results, according to 62% of those surveyed. Half of those who use paid channels say social media advertising/promoted posts produce good results, followed by sponsorships (49%), partner emails (36%), and digital display advertising (34%).

Social media use: One platform rises way above

When asked which organic social media platforms deliver the best value for their organization, B2B marketers picked LinkedIn by far (84%). Only 29% cite Facebook as a top performer, 22% say YouTube, and 21% say Instagram. Twitter and TikTok see 8% and 3%, respectively.

So it makes sense that 72% say they increased their use of LinkedIn over the last 12 months, while only 32% boosted their YouTube presence, 31% increased Instagram use, 22% grew their Facebook presence, and 10% increased X and TikTok use.

Which platforms are marketers giving up? Did you guess X? You’re right – 32% of marketers say they decreased their X use last year. Twenty percent decreased their use of Facebook, with 10% decreasing on Instagram, 9% pulling back on YouTube, and only 2% decreasing their use of LinkedIn.

Interestingly, we saw a significant rise in B2B marketers who use TikTok: 19% say they use the platform – more than double from last year.

To explore how teams manage content, we asked marketers about their technology use and investments and the challenges they face when scaling their content .

Content management technology

When asked which technologies they use to manage content, marketers point to:

• Analytics tools (81%)
• Social media publishing/analytics (72%)
• Email marketing software (69%)
• Content creation/calendaring/collaboration/workflow (64%)
• Content management system (50%)
• Customer relationship management system (48%)

But having technology doesn’t mean it’s the right technology (or that its capabilities are used). So, we asked if they felt their organization had the right technology to manage content across the organization.

Only 31% say yes. Thirty percent say they have the technology but aren’t using its potential, and 29% say they haven’t acquired the right technology. Ten percent are unsure.

Content tech spending will likely rise

Even so, investment in content management technology seems likely in 2024: 45% say their organization is likely to invest in new technology, whereas 32% say their organization is unlikely to do so. Twenty-three percent say their organization is neither likely nor unlikely to invest.

Scaling content production

We introduced a new question this year to understand what challenges B2B marketers face while scaling content production .

Almost half (48%) say it’s “not enough content repurposing.” Lack of communication across organizational silos is a problem for 40%. Thirty-one percent say they have no structured content production process, and 29% say they lack an editorial calendar with clear deadlines. Ten percent say scaling is not a current focus.

Among the other hurdles – difficulty locating digital content assets (16%), technology issues (15%), translation/localization issues (12%), and no style guide (11%).

For those struggling with content repurposing, content standardization is critical. “Content reuse is the only way to deliver content at scale. There’s just no other way,” says Regina Lynn Preciado , senior director of content strategy solutions at Content Rules Inc.

“Even if you’re not trying to provide the most personalized experience ever or dominate the metaverse with your omnichannel presence, you absolutely must reuse content if you are going to deliver content effectively,” she says.

“How to achieve content reuse ? You’ve probably heard that you need to move to modular, structured content. However, just chunking your content into smaller components doesn’t go far enough. For content to flow together seamlessly wherever you reuse it, you’ve got to standardize your content. That’s the personalization paradox right there. To personalize, you must standardize.

“Once you have your content standards in place and everyone is creating content in alignment with those standards, there is no limit to what you can do with the content,” Regina explains.

Why do content marketers – who are skilled communicators – struggle with cross-silo communication? Standards and alignment come into play.

“I think in the rush to all the things, we run out of time to address scalable processes that will fix those painful silos, including taking time to align on goals, roles and responsibilities, workflows, and measurement,” says Ali Orlando Wert , senior director of content strategy at Appfire. “It takes time, but the payoffs are worth it. You have to learn how to crawl before you can walk – and walk before you can run.”

Measurement and goals: Generating sales and revenue rises

Almost half (46%) of B2B marketers agree their organization measures content performance effectively. Thirty-six percent disagree, and 15% neither agree nor disagree. Only 3% say they don’t measure content performance.

The five most frequently used metrics to assess content performance are conversions (73%), email engagement (71%), website traffic (71%), website engagement (69%), and social media analytics (65%).

About half (52%) mention the quality of leads, 45% say they rely on search rankings, 41% use quantity of leads, 32% track email subscribers, and 29% track the cost to acquire a lead, subscriber, or customer.

The most common challenge B2B marketers have while measuring content performance is integrating/correlating data across multiple platforms (84%), followed by extracting insights from data (77%), tying performance data to goals (76%), organizational goal setting (70%), and lack of training (66%).

Regarding goals, 84% of B2B marketers say content marketing helped create brand awareness in the last 12 months. Seventy-six percent say it helped generate demand/leads; 63% say it helped nurture subscribers/audiences/leads, and 58% say it helped generate sales/revenue (up from 42% the previous year).

Success factors: Know your audience

To separate top performers from the pack, we asked the B2B marketers to assess the success of their content marketing approach.

Twenty-eight percent rate the success of their organization’s content marketing approach as extremely or very successful. Another 57% report moderate success and 15% feel minimally or not at all successful.

The most popular factor for successful marketers is knowing their audience (79%).

This makes sense, considering that “creating the right content for our audience” is the top challenge. The logic? Top-performing content marketers prioritize knowing their audiences to create the right content for those audiences.

Top performers also set goals that align with their organization’s objectives (68%), effectively measure and demonstrate content performance (61%), and show thought leadership (60%). Collaboration with other teams (55%) and a documented strategy (53%) also help top performers reach high levels of content marketing success.

We looked at several other dimensions to identify how top performers differ from their peers. Of note, top performers:

• Are backed by leaders who understand the work they do.
• Are more likely to have the right content management technologies.
• Have better communication across organizational silos.
• Do a better job of measuring content effectiveness.
• Are more likely to use content marketing successfully to generate demand/leads, nurture subscribers/audiences/leads, generate sales/revenue, and grow a subscribed audience.

Little difference exists between top performers and their less successful peers when it comes to the adoption of generative AI tools and related guidelines. It will be interesting to see if and how that changes next year.

Budgets and spending: Holding steady

To explore budget plans for 2024, we asked respondents if they have knowledge of their organization’s budget/budgeting process for content marketing. Then, we asked follow-up questions to the 55% who say they do have budget knowledge.

Content marketing as a percentage of total marketing spend

Here’s what they say about the total marketing budget (excluding salaries):

• About a quarter (24%) say content marketing takes up one-fourth or more of the total marketing budget.
• Nearly one in three (29%) indicate that 10% to 24% of the marketing budget goes to content marketing.
• Just under half (48%) say less than 10% of the marketing budget goes to content marketing.

Content marketing budget outlook for 2024

Next, we asked about their 2024 content marketing budget. Forty-five percent think their content marketing budget will increase compared with 2023, whereas 42% think it will stay the same. Only 6% think it will decrease.

Where will the budget go?

We also asked where respondents plan to increase their spending.

Sixty-nine percent of B2B marketers say they would increase their investment in video, followed by thought leadership content (53%), in-person events (47%), paid advertising (43%), online community building (33%), webinars (33%), audio content (25%), digital events (21%), and hybrid events (11%).

The increased investment in video isn’t surprising. The focus on thought leadership content might surprise, but it shouldn’t, says Stephanie Losee , director of executive and ABM content at Autodesk.

“As measurement becomes more sophisticated, companies are finding they’re better able to quantify the return from upper-funnel activities like thought leadership content ,” she says. “At the same time, companies recognize the impact of shifting their status from vendor to true partner with their customers’ businesses.

“Autodesk recently launched its first global, longitudinal State of Design & Make report (registration required), and we’re finding that its insights are of such value to our customers that it’s enabling conversations we’ve never been able to have before. These conversations are worth gold to both sides, and I would imagine other B2B companies are finding the same thing,” Stephanie says.

Top content-related priorities for 2024: Leading with thought leadership

We asked an open-ended question about marketers’ top three content-related priorities for 2024. The responses indicate marketers place an emphasis on thought leadership and becoming a trusted resource.

Other frequently mentioned priorities include:

• Better understanding of the audience
• Discovering the best ways to use AI
• Increasing brand awareness
• Lead generation
• Using more video
• Better use of analytics
• Conversions
• Repurposing existing content

Content marketing predictions for 2024: AI is top of mind

In another open-ended question, we asked B2B marketers, “What content marketing trends do you predict for 2024?” You probably guessed the most popular trend: AI.

Here are some of the marketers’ comments about how AI will affect content marketing next year:

• “We’ll see generative AI everywhere, all the time.”
• “There will be struggles to determine the best use of generative AI in content marketing.”
• “AI will likely result in a flood of poor-quality, machine-written content. Winners will use AI for automating the processes that support content creation while continuing to create high-quality human-generated content.”
• “AI has made creating content so easy that there are and will be too many long articles on similar subjects; most will never be read or viewed. A sea of too many words. I predict short-form content will have to be the driver for eyeballs.”

Other trends include:

• Greater demand for high-quality content as consumers grow weary of AI-generated content
• Importance of video content
• Increasing use of short video and audio content
• Impact of AI on SEO

Among the related comments:

• “Event marketing (webinars and video thought leadership) will become more necessary as teams rely on AI-generated written content.”
• “AI will be an industry sea change and strongly impact the meaning of SEO. Marketers need to be ready to ride the wave or get left behind.”
• “Excitement around AI-generated content will rise before flattening out when people realize it’s hard to differentiate, validate, verify, attribute, and authenticate. New tools, processes, and roles will emerge to tackle this challenge.”
• “Long-form reports could start to see a decline. If that is the case, we will need a replacement. Logically, that could be a webinar or video series that digs deeper into the takeaways.”

What does this year’s research suggest B2B content marketers do to move forward?

I asked CMI’s Robert Rose for some insights. He says the steps are clear: Develop standards, guidelines, and playbooks for how to operate – just like every other function in business does.

“Imagine if everyone in your organization had a different idea of how to define ‘revenue’ or ‘profit margin,’” Robert says. “Imagine if each salesperson had their own version of your company’s customer agreements and tried to figure out how to write them for every new deal. The legal team would be apoplectic. You’d start to hear from sales how they were frustrated that they couldn’t figure out how to make the ‘right agreement,’ or how to create agreements ‘consistently,’ or that there was a complete ‘lack of resources’ for creating agreements.”

Just remember: Standards can change along with your team, audiences, and business priorities. “Setting standards doesn’t mean casting policies and templates in stone,” Robert says. “Standards only exist so that we can always question the standard and make sure that there’s improvement available to use in setting new standards.”

He offers these five steps to take to solidify your content marketing strategy and execution:

• Direct. Create an initiative that will define the scope of the most important standards for your content marketing. Prioritize the areas that hurt the most. Work with leadership to decide where to start. Maybe it’s persona development. Maybe you need a new standardized content process. Maybe you need a solid taxonomy. Build the list and make it a real initiative.
• Define . Create a common understanding of all the things associated with the standards. Don’t assume that everybody knows. They don’t. What is a white paper? What is an e-book? What is a campaign vs. an initiative? What is a blog post vs. an article? Getting to a common language is one of the most powerful things you can do to coordinate better.
• Develop . You need both policies and playbooks. Policies are the formal documentation of your definitions and standards. Playbooks are how you communicate combinations of policies so that different people can not just understand them but are ready, willing, and able to follow them.
• Distribute . If no one follows the standards, they’re not standards. So, you need to develop a plan for how your new playbooks fit into the larger, cross-functional approach to the content strategy. You need to deepen the integration into each department – even if that is just four other people in your company.
• Distill . Evolve your standards. Make them living documents. Deploy technology to enforce and scale the standards. Test. If a standard isn’t working, change it. Sometimes, more organic processes are OK. Sometimes, it’s OK to acknowledge two definitions for something. The key is acknowledging a change to an existing standard so you know whether it improves things.

For their 14 th annual content marketing survey, CMI and MarketingProfs surveyed 1,080 recipients around the globe – representing a range of industries, functional areas, and company sizes — in July 2023. The online survey was emailed to a sample of marketers using lists from CMI and MarketingProfs.

This article presents the findings from the 894 respondents, mostly from North America, who indicated their organization is primarily B2B and that they are either content marketers or work in marketing, communications, or other roles involving content.

Thanks to the survey participants, who made this research possible, and to everyone who helps disseminate these findings throughout the content marketing industry.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

About Content Marketing Institute

Content Marketing Institute (CMI) exists to do one thing: advance the practice of content marketing through online education and in-person and digital events. We create and curate content experiences that teach marketers and creators from enterprise brands, small businesses, and agencies how to attract and retain customers through compelling, multichannel storytelling. Global brands turn to CMI for strategic consultation, training, and research. Organizations from around the world send teams to Content Marketing World, the largest content marketing-focused event, the Marketing Analytics & Data Science (MADS) conference, and CMI virtual events, including ContentTECH Summit. Our community of 215,000+ content marketers shares camaraderie and conversation. CMI is organized by Informa Connect. To learn more, visit www.contentmarketinginstitute.com .

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More than 600,000 marketing professionals worldwide rely on MarketingProfs for B2B Marketing training and education backed by data science, psychology, and real-world experience. Access free B2B marketing publications, virtual conferences, podcasts, daily newsletters (and more), and check out the MarketingProfs B2B Forum–the flagship in-person event for B2B Marketing training and education at MarketingProfs.com.

About Brightspot

Brightspot , the content management system to boost your business.

Why Brightspot? Align your technology approach and content strategy with Brightspot, the leading Content Management System for delivering exceptional digital experiences. Brightspot helps global organizations meet the business needs of today and scale to capitalize on the opportunities of tomorrow. Our Enterprise CMS and world-class team solves your unique business challenges at scale. Fast, flexible, and fully customizable, Brightspot perfectly harmonizes your technology approach with your content strategy and grows with you as your business evolves. Our customer-obsessed teams walk with you every step of the way with an unwavering commitment to your long-term success. To learn more, visit www.brightspot.com .

Stephanie Stahl