Concerns about social and ethical implications on society caused by convergence technologies.
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to outline concerns arising from the use of converging technologies such as smartphone’s. The discussion will more particularly dwell into the concerns resulting that are believed to have some social and ethical implications to the society.
Introduction
The technological convergence of communication and computing for mobile technology is in the outburst forefront compare other convergence technologies such as nanotechnology, etc. This evolutionary path of these technologies brings interoperability and benefitted from each other’s services and functions including other industries. This has placed smartphones in the leading technology trend of playing the role of universal mobile unit. Smartphone is a mobile phone with advance features and functionality that provides integrated services from communication, computing and mobile areas which also includes voice communication, messaging, applications to management personal information and wireless communication features (Zheng, P. et al, 2006). In addition to the above mentioned capabilities, smartphones are also equipped with features to take, edit and display photos, play games on the devices or over the network, play videos, navigation and audio and video playback and recording, send and receive emails, social networking applications functionalities and surf the web and wireless internet, etc.
As a result of all these features and functions, consumers has made smartphones now their common choice of gadgets in their day to day life’s along with the use in business as it was initially perceived due to its cost and application. However, today we are in a chaotic smartphone society flooded with smartphones from vendors all over the world offering a wide range of advance functionalities and features and services on a piece of hardware (Nurfit, 2012). It is evident that today,...