Then of course, there is the information, communication, and education (popularly referred to as the 'Information Super Highway') aspects of Electronification . Considering some of the previous aspects of Electronification, I'd be very careful about the about how real the benefits of the 'Super Highway' are.
E-commerce is also part of 'communication', an ever increasing part actually. There's plenty being written elsewhere about e-commerce, so I'll restrict my comment to my preference of people using it not just for consumption, but as an avenue to be productive (again) within the home - a point I expand upon very soon.
There will also be notification and clarification through Electronification.
You will be notified or will notify others.
You will be clarified (as to your identity) and this is how you will clarify others.
Again, care is needed - keep plenty of alternative records.
Finally (for now) within Electronification there is invasion and revolution.
Electronification IS invading nearly ever aspect of modern society.
Thankfully at the moment, there is an 'off-button' that comes with the technology. However, there is currently computer software that (seemingly) does what it wants to and not what you want it to do, such as changing capital letters automatically, making it difficult to type something like 'PhD' (as an aside, I having seen a few people get their PhD - Doctorate of Philosophy - it seems like 'PhD' means by the time you finish, you are truely PhuckeD!).
Ah, I hear all you computer buffs saying, "you can turn that 'self-correcting-feature' off" - "yes, but only if you know how to" I reply.
There are more sinister happenings such as every document you have ever written, or every website you have ever visited, being stored in your (or some-else's) computer - without you knowing it!
So, in the future, will there be an 'off-button' for the Electronification in our lives?, and if there is, will most people know where it is?, let alone how to switch it off?
And that's where REVOLUTION comes in. There is the revolution of Electronification itself as it gets 'better and better', but I'm more interested in another type of revolution - where people take greater control of their lives!
In particular, I'd like to see more people use Electronification in their HOMES to PRODUCE rather than just consume .
One of the greatest losses that Industrialisation has brought to human society, is the loss of the home as a unit of production. Before Industrialisation, every home needed to produce SOMETHING with which they could feed or clothe themselves, or use as trade for something else they could not produce themselves.
The loss of this in-home-productivity has lead to an over-reliance on things outside of our homes(/control) to provide for us.
In turn, this had lead to a loss of personal/family/community power because people have given up controlling their own destiny. When considering the e-mocracy previously mentioned, political power becomes more entrenched in the hands of 'others', particularly as long as people continue to produce little or nothing of their own.
I recently read a definition of wealth as being "how long you can survive without working". I believe that wealth is how long you can survive if your 'outside supplied/held' power/gas, water, food, drainage and money is cut off. This is not so much a 'disaster scenario', but more a reflection of reality.
Measure your wealth against the 'cut-off' definition above and give yourself a score - I'd forward that most people would score ZERO! in that surviving beyond (maybe) a few days or even at a stretch, weeks, would probably be very difficult.
Measure yourself and see how UNself-reliant and perhaps how unproductive you really are, and therefore how little power/control you have over your own life.
But then, perhaps what has been outlined in this article applies to only Industrialised people, for only 1% of the world's current 6 billion people own a computer.
But then again, Electronification and its associated impacts, has only just begun.
to the beginning of this article
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