Modern ICT Use, Trends, & Legislation

^{*I was digging through some old college files and came across a satirical essay I produced for a rinky-dink communications class I did:}

Introduction

“The more we elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.”
~ J. B. Priestly

Over the past century, Information Communications Technology (ICT) has permeated and revolutionised almost every aspect of our modern lives. From how we communicate, work, entertain ourselves, and learn, it’s become a matter of ubiquity to interact with computer systems and networks in everyday life. This essay will look at trends in communication, various issues associated with ICT, and legislation regarding data protection and safety.

ICT Use in Personal & Work Life

Personal use of ICT is most prevalent with the use of smartphones. With these magic little devices of exploitatively mined cobalt the technologically bourgeois may scrupulously manage their finances through online banking; purchase online the latest bric-a-brac from whatever dealer of bric-a-brac they espouse; write meretricious assignments on the go; serendipitously inundate themselves with fetishised pornography, the list goes on; however, one gets the point: ICT use in personal life is quite versatile.

Social media takes centre stage in the daily personal usage of ICT with more than 4.95 billion users of top social sites recorded in October 2023, that’s over 61.4% of the total global population (Global Social Media Statistics, 2023). There would be overlap between users of predominant social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X (the new obtuse nomenclature for Twitter), but the numbers are staggering, nonetheless.

In a vocational respect, productivity applications such as the Office 365 suite, email, and video conferencing software have become integral to business operations across most industries. Lotsa jobs today require proficiency in word processing and other discrete software.

Advantages & Disadvantages of ICT

Advantages of ICT include no longer being limited by geographical location in terms of communications and instant accessibility to productivity apps and information.

Disadvantages of ICT include issues of privacy and its unbridled use breeding a generation of weak-willed, illiterate halfwits, both in diction and locution.

Current Developments in ICT

For brevity I’m only going to cover a few topics here: Personalised Education, Telepresence, Universal Translators, and Computing & AI.

Personalised Education

Lecturers be aware, the advent of telepresence, AI, and massive open online courses (MOOCs) indicates that the future of education will be primarily self-directed with individually tailored material devised and disseminated to students by AI. We can see a primitive form of this today with DCU’s Connected online education and many of Trinity’s CPD courses.

Telepresence

Is being somewhere without being physically present using robots that act as avatars while possessed by humans and provide sensory feedback. An extension of video conferencing tools, telepresence has an enormous range of applications in the manufacturing and corporate industries from allowing workers to safely and remotely work in hazardous environments, to personal, at-home doctor appointments.

Universal Translators

Tools like Google Translate, and Pixel earbuds allow real-time translation of different languages using machine learning. As this technology improves and automatic translation becomes omnipresent and instantaneous, it is thought that language learning will become a niche field.

Computing & AI

The bogeyman of today’s tech landscape, AI, is an area of tech fraught with misconception. Of concern among writers is the fact that tools like ChatGPT are seemingly able to create and ‘think up’ stories, instilling a fear that they will replace humans in the creative job market. Unless you’re a lazy writer that lacks imagination, this is not going to happen. The way to think of these AI tools is like a web browser (albeit a gross simplification), whereby instead of presenting a list of web resources in response to a given query or prompt, they disseminate relative information into a mock conversation/literary style, preordained by algorithms in their language model. This means that, at best, any raw output of creative work these tools produce is quite stilted and heavily clichéd as it is built with existing styles and works from text pattern recognition in their training data. Their output can be useful to writers in terms of idea generation or simple plot outlines, but to produce something worthwhile still requires an articulate human brain involved.

I think the dangers associated with AI lie not in a dystopian, sci-fi view of gaining self-awareness and enslaving mankind, but rather of perverse instantiation, or blunders of ambiguity from human programmers.

Legislation Governing the Use of ICT

The main legislative edicts concerning the use of ICT systems are GDPR and OSMR.

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

The Data Protection Acts 1988-2018 combined with the EU Directive, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), came into effect on 25th May 2018, replacing the existing data protection framework under an EU Data Protection Directive. Under GDPR any individual/organisation that retains any of your personal data is referred to as a Data Controller. Data Controllers have certain responsibilities regarding any information they store pertaining to individuals on a computer or a manual file. These responsibilities are as follows:

Obtain and Process Information Fairly.
Keep it only for specified lawful purposes.
Process it only in ways compatible with the purposes for which it was given to you initially.
Keep it safe and secure.
Accurate and up to date.
Ensure that it is adequate, relevant, and not excessive.
Retain it no longer than is necessary for the specified purpose/purposes.
Give a copy of his/her personal data to any individual, on request.

Online Safety and Media Regulation (OSMR)

Came into law on the 10th of December 2022. Whereas GDPR is concerned with data integrity and privacy, OSMR chiefly exists to spy on people, sorry, to monitor and sanction for the purposes of protecting us from the big bad internet and incorporate various broadcast regulations. It seeks to clamp down on cyberbullying and harmful online content such as material promoting self-harm or suicide.

Conclusion

Every day we creep ever closer to a technological singularity where the lines between reality and imagination are turtles all the way down. Whether we gain a mastery of technology, become enslaved by it, or wipe ourselves out as a result of technological hubris; it is an exciting time to live in and probably the last century or two of a non-technocratic Earth.

Bibliography

Global Social Media Statistics – DataReportal – global digital insights (2023) DataReportal. Available at: https://datareportal.com/social-media-users (Accessed: 24 October 2023).

Mansfield, K. (2019) ‘Telepresence, Personalized Education, Universal Translators, Computing and AI, Quantum Computing, Perverse Instantiation’, in The future in minutes. London: Quercus.

Guinness, H. (2023) How does chatgpt work?, Zapier. Available at: https://zapier.com/blog/how-does-chatgpt-work/ (Accessed: 26 October 2023).

Your rights under the GDPR: Data Protection Commission (no date) Your Rights under the GDPR | Data Protection Commission. Available at: https://www.dataprotection.ie/en/individuals/rights-individuals-under-general-data-protection-regulation (Accessed: 24 October 2023).

Data Protection and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (2021) Search for services or information. Available at: https://www.gov.ie/en/organisation-information/26c38c-data-protection-and-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/ (Accessed: 24 October 2023).

Citizensinformation.ie (no date), Freedom of Information (FOI). Available at: https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/government-in-ireland/how-government-works/standards-and-accountability/freedom-of-information/ (Accessed: 24 October 2023).

Online safety and media regulation act 2022 (2020). Available at: https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/d8e4c-online-safety-and-media-regulation-bill/#key-features-of-the-act (Accessed: 24 October 2023).