Decentralization as a whole has had a hugely positive impact on the society but it is not without its negatives. In this article, I focus on the negative impacts that decentralization has had on the world.

Bitcoin is a perfect example of the decentralization impact of technology. All over the world, in various countries, central banks regulate the flow of money. Central banks determine the exchange rate and the way in which money is dealt with. This gives central banks and governments in general a central authority over the functioning of a country. Bitcoin manages to change all of this however. Being a crypto-currency that can be used in an anonymous manner, bitcoin is the first truly global currency in the world.

Bitcoin provides anonymity that traditional currency doesn’t provide. However this anonymity is often misused. Bitcoin is being used worldwide to obtain drugs, human trafficking and even prostitution. Many terrorists are also know to use bitcoin in order to be able to buy arms and deal in them. The anonymity of bitcoin is currently being used to illegal purposes mostly and has very few real life uses. Many gullible people are scammed into buying bitcoins by promising them higher returns in future. There have been huge bitcoin scams all over the world and in India itself where people have been duped for several lacs together.

Bitcoin is just one example of the negative effect of the decentralization impact of technology. With the spread of social media, news is no longer centrally concentrated in the hands of a select few organizations. While this is a good thing in terms of diversity of opinions and a wider spectrum of issues being covered, it also has a dark side.

The lack of a central body in today’s citizen journalism has allowed for the proliferation of several fake news articles and fake news forwards. Fake news is becoming a real menace in recent years as people with vested interests use social media platforms to propagate fake news that conforms to their bias and people’s bias as well.

The Decentralization impact of Technology has been largely positive. Firstly we must start off by acknowledging that decentralization of information with the help of the internet has helped the world become a much more efficient place and it has helped emerging countries in particular.

Take for example, the invention of fast shipping from one corner of the world to another. Earlier when the means of transportation were fairly limited and people couldn’t transport good and themselves from one place to another or from one country to another quickly, they were limited in their mobility. However with the invention of steam ships, this barrier of mobility was drastically reduced. This further led to globalization which benefited emerging countries a lot. Countries such as China etc became export power houses that exported a lot of everyday items from toys to clothing. This significantly helped China’s economy and has helped it become a super power in the recent years.

Similarly with the invention of internet, information could flow from one part of the world to another within milliseconds. This helped the IT boom take place in India. Companies such as TCS, Infosys, Wipro etc are multi billion dollar giants today who wouldn’t have existed had it not been for the invention of the internet. This in turn has helped millions of middle class Indians get access to well paying IT jobs.

The export boom and the IT boom have both been possible thanks to decentralization. With the improvement in transport technology, the world became decentralized in terms of production and consumption. It was no longer necessary for every country to produce the goods it consumed. Countries with cheaper labor could produce the required goods and export it to richer countries for consumption. The same goes with the IT boom. With the explosion of internet and improvement in global connectivity, a lot of back-end IT work could be done by countries that had cheaper skilled labor. It was no long necessary for every company to maintain its own IT infrastructure. They could just outsource the work to countries like India which have cheaper labor.

Apart from the obvious economic benefits realized from globalization thanks to the decentralization impact of technology, it has also played a vital role in the dissemination of information. Earlier a select few newspapers had control over the news that got circulated and the opinions of people. But with the invention of internet and its subsequent reach worldwide, citizen journalism found a firm footing. These days news is first shared over social media websites like Whatsapp, Facebook etc before it gets picked up by the larger news organizations.

There is something to be said about the decentralization impact that technology has on the existing structures in the world and its ability to change the way things work. In this article I would be quoting a few examples on the real life decentralization affects of technology.

The amount of land that’s accessible for productive purposes depends on the time it takes to travel between two corners of a particular landmass within a limited time-frame. For example, when humans didn’t have motorized vehicles, the land that was accessible for productive purposes was often that of a small village which spanned a few kms of 7-8. These villages would have limited amenities and in many cases even today have limited amenities. However with the introduction of motorized vehicles, the accessible area for productive purposes increased significantly. Most cities these days span as much as a few hundred kms because humans today have the means of transportation to venture within these huge cities in a short span of time.

After the invention of motorized vehicles, the next big technological disruption in terms of decentralization has been the internet Since the internet allows for information to flow from one corner of the world to another corner within milliseconds, it absolutely had the ability to disrupt existing world structures in a huge manner and it indeed did.

Take for example, bitcoin. World over, central banks of various countries are responsible for the circulation and flow of money but bitcoin managed to overcome such a central authority and became an independent form of currency which was not centrally controlled by any one person or any one organization. Its not just bitcoin, there are several other examples of decentralization that can be quoted in this article.

Before the internet came into existence, a few news organizations had control over the flow of information and the opinion of the masses. But with the invention of the internet and its subsequent spread all over the world, citizen journalism became increasingly popular. These days, news first appears on social media websites like Facebook and apps such as Whatsapp before it gets picked up by the larger news organizations.

People are now able to do everything from the comfort of their house. Be it ordering groceries or ordering food, there is now an app for everything. Learning has also been decentralized to a great extent. People can learn multiple languages within a month with the help of an app called DuoLingo. From complex mathematical equations to the process of making an omelette, everything can be learned from the internet. The largest library on earth is now nothing more than a collection of several decentralized internet websites.

The decentralization power of the internet is limitless and it has indeed changed the world as we know it. In the next article I would be discussing the positive aspects of such decentralization followed by an article on the negative aspects as well.

We often come across the phrases “Technology is changing lives”, “Technology is making us more productive” and other such similar phrases. However, do we ever pause to understand what the true meaning of technology really is? Most of us feel devices such as smartphones, laptops, computers etc are what technology is made up of and that is true to some extent. However, this is just a superficial understanding of what technology is and we need to dig deeper into its true meaning.
Technology in plain words is anything that helps improve human productivity. For example, let us consider a farmer. In the medieval times, the farmer would be using tools such as a bullock cart for transportation of goods. The bullock cart would move slowly and would often stop in the middle as the bull would need to take rest. With the invention of trucks, the farmer would be able to move his goods at a much faster pace and without any interruption. Thus the truck here could be seen as a technology which made the farmer’s life easier than before.
Seen from such a lens, technology is then the anything that has helped the human evolve. From the invention of fire to the invention of internet, all these can be considered as technologies that have helped improve human productivity and have helped humanity in general to move forward. In essence, technology is one of the core pillars of human evolution.
Technology has played a vital role in the evolution of humanity and the evolution of human life in general. The society which we know today is more of clay that keeps changing its shape depending on which technology acts upon it. Like everything in life, there are positive aspects and negative aspects of technology as well. In general till date, the positive aspects of technology have far outweighed the negative aspects and this has made technology a net positive effect on humanity.
In this web journal I will try to ascertain the evolution of technology over the years and how it has come to affect human life in general. In particular I would deal with the three aspects of technology as mentioned below –

1. Decentralization impact of technology
2. Technology’s impact on relationships