Today day by day the use of the internet and other modern technologies is increasing constantly. Since 1995, the use of the internet has increased from 0.4% to 40.9% of the world population (“Internet Growth Statistics”). People start to implement it in every sphere of their life, making it easier for them and more convenient to cope with daily tasks. In this situation, it is important not to forget that technology is not all about convenience and comfort in life, but rather it is a double-edged sword. Using it more and more, people can become lazy, more and more passive, until they stop self-questioning and thinking about the world. Therefore, it is time for us to stop the technical research and inventions, and correct the shortcomings that were created by those who wanted instant success in the past, then move forward judiciously, or machine will rule our world one day.
Modern human life is unthinkable without information technology. It is a broad class of disciplines and areas of activity related to technology management and data processing, as well as the creation of data, including the use of computer technology. Recently, under the information technology, people often understand computer technology. In particular, IT deals with the use of computers and software for the storage, conversion, protection, processing, transmitting and receiving information. Specialists in computer technology and programming are often called IT specialists.
According to the definition adopted by UNESCO, IT is a set of interrelated scientific, technological and engineering disciplines, studying methods of effective organization of labor of people involved in information processing and storage; computer technology and methods of organization and interaction with people and production equipment, their practical application, as well as associated with all this social, economic and cultural issues. IT themselves require complex training, high initial costs and science-intensive technology. Their introduction should begin with the creation of the software, the formation of information flows in systems training.
Information technology as a phenomenon is a stick with two ends. It is an object of endless disputes of scientists of all fields of science. The main issue of the dispute – is it good or bad? Information technology offers limitless possibilities of communicating with different people on the other side of the world without leaving your home, it is gigabytes of information, books, photos, videos, articles, it is stores on the couch. Or should we look at it in another way? Millions of people with swollen red eyes for days without departing from the computer, which is not live, and live their lives, forgetting about the friends, the rustle of these books from the library and shopping, which helps to relieve stress?
A large number of psychological studies have been conducted in the framework of the problems of human exploration of new technologies. In this way, there were studied phenomena of the need for "dialogue" with the computer and features of such communication, for example, the need for anthropomorphic interface and emotive lexicon, the phenomenon of computer personification, as well as various forms of computer anxiety. “Despite powerful anecdotal evidence of people making major behavioral changes in discrete, absolute manners (having an epiphany after ‘‘hitting bottom,’’ for instance), research indicates that most people make major life changes, such as becoming sober in a more complex and dynamic process over a period of time” (Futterman, Sapadin and Silverman 267). These phenomena have been attributed to the manifestation of the trend of subject to unconscious likening oneself with a computer, compared to their own intellectual abilities and capabilities of the system.
The second side of human-computer interaction is the problem of the psychological consequences of informatization that deserves no less attention. For example, one of the leading experts in the field of computer science, author of "The Psychology of Computer Programming" - Ben Shneiderman raises the question of the responsibility of computer software for the consequences of their use. In this he cites experts - physicists, to whom there was a problem of responsibility for the consequences of the invention and use of atomic energy.
However, this is not the only option of the negative impact of computerization - the consequences of this kind of information are quite a lot. Examples of such negative personality changes include: addiction to computer games, the Internet, programming and information technology in general (e.g., hacking).
All these kinds of hobbies and addictions at different phenomenology have similar psychological mechanisms and features. First, in all these activities can be observed the same phenomenon: a special state of absorption activity called flow experience. This special type of subjective experience has been described and continues to be studied a group of American psychologists, led by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Psychological study of computer games has shown the special states of absorption activity, in which the expected result of this activity departs in human consciousness into the background and very easily and accurately flowing action takes full account (Venkatesh, Thong and Xu 157). Experience of stream possesses the following characteristics:
1. Requirements of tasks are perceived as relevant skills.
2. The subject feels a sense of control of his/her actions and the environment.
3. Requirements for action are clear; there is a quick feedback.
4. The attention span is achieved without subjective efforts.
5. The subject has a sense of merging action and awareness; self-forgetfulness.
Experience of flow includes intense positive emotions and is valuable to the subject. Through this, activity, in which there is the experience of flow, becomes self-motivated. Experiences derived from computer games, all the characteristics correspond to the flow experience (Kalathil and Boas 127). There are identified additional mechanisms to ensure that sticking to the game. These are:
1. Peculiar phenomenon of unfinished action that does not allow players to forget about the game.
2. The mechanism that is strongly reminiscent of the neurotic mechanism of "escape", player's desire to forget about the unpleasant reality. In the case of this "escape", the intensity of the direct pleasure from the game is reduced, and at its end, there is fatigue, a feeling of devastation and irritation.
Descriptions of this kind of involvement in activities can also be found in relation to other types of hobbies in information technology (Davenport 47). Therefore, you can find reference to the fact that such a condition is experienced by those who are keen on staying on the Internet. There is something intoxicating in the fact that the whole system can be started up thanks to the orders given to the person, similar to the sense of power and competence that the subject felt during the experience of flow.
Hackers themselves emphasize the similarity of their feelings with meditation, ecstasy, merging with the object of activity. It should be noted that the researchers themselves experience flow on its website on the Internet emphasize that this phenomenon is universal: in spite of the fact that people are engaged in completely different activities, their description of this experience are surprisingly similar.
Description of the experiences of flow is very similar to the descriptions of the subject and being in a virtual reality - a computer game or the information space (e.g., the internet). As with the experience of flow, virtual reality exists for the subject relevant here and now, there is no past or future. “A small number of studies have previously investigated the effect of presenting misspellings on subsequent spelling performance using an item-specific experimental approach.” (Powell and Dixon 59). On the experience of flow, there has been said that action and awareness merge, for a person being in a virtual reality, it seems that he/she is directly involved in the events.
Navigating the Internet (associated with any kind of activity), can contribute to the emergence of a kind of escape from reality, dependency syndrome on the Internet, in which the navigation process draws the subject so much that he/she is unable to properly function in the real world. Thus, in the Internet there exist informal consultations to assist those who suffer from this syndrome, there are created special programs that limit the time spent in the network. Important is the fact that the fifth edition of the official classification of mental disorders in the United States "DSM-5" asked to include a section "Cybernetic disorder." In terms of an operational description of this phenomenon is more similar to dependence on alcohol, gambling or drugs: these include such symptoms as tolerance to navigation on the Internet, the emergence of psychomotor restlessness, persistent thoughts about what is happening in cyberspace, reduced participation in meaningful social activities or complete rejection of it.
Some scientists fear that the people who use the computer as a model, begin to think mechanically, but others argue that thanks to the particular model of a particular style of thinking to work with the computer, it is easier to understand such thing as a style of thinking. On the one hand, the strengthening of logical thinking can be accompanied by some suppression of intuitive thinking in the beginning. “One controversial ethical and legal consideration relevant to the use of reproductive technologies is the possibility that the use of those technologies harms the children they are used to create.” (Malek 83). On the other hand, the computer may contribute to the development of cognitive needs of the individual, can give a powerful impetus to the development of the prestigious motivation.
It is often noted that information technology contributes to the emergence of new types and forms of activity, new skills, knowledge, and skills. However, one of the consequences of information and is a kind of revival of a number of previously highly significant, but then those that largely lost their role of mental components. To refer to these phenomena can use the term "reversion".
Reversion is a change in the role of writing. Email systems revived written communication skills, which are gradually coming to naught after the telephone and radio. Spontaneous or caused by scenario group activities of communication through computer networks in real activity-context. This raises the motivation of learning to write.
In correspondence through the internet, users are increasingly faced with the operations of writing dating, establishing and maintaining contact, exchange of polite phrases, demonstrations of interest to the partner, they learn to combine personal and business communication. The article by Lovelock “contributes to the field of body studies and the sociology of pain, and provides the first account of the socio-cultural context within which farmers manage injury and disease in New Zealand” (Lovelock 587). Interethnic communication involves the exchange of socio-cultural information, which leads to an intensification of foreign language learning, updating the general cultural and geographical knowledge.
Studies have shown that when IT mediated communication in practice the knowledge of the difference styles of writing, and causes significant difficulties on emotions speech skills for written expression of emotions are underdeveloped in most people (except those who have special abilities or training - journalists, writers, etc.). It is even more difficult to use and understand verbal ways of expressing emotions in a foreign language - recall ethnic correspondence on the Internet is conducted in English. It has long been faced with these problems, users of computer networks have developed special artificial means - easily playable with the keyboard icons for expressing emotions (Herman and Ladics 2668). The use of these icons and even just their recognition requires advanced skills of categorization of emotional states. However, the acquisition of categorizing children experience emotional states in the field of IT mediated communication can stimulate the development of the skills of emotion recognition and application of verbal means of expressing them in terms of traditional communication.
An example is the reversion and symbolic experience has a significant impact on personal development. The role of fantasies, dreams, mental residence in the imagination to create their own situations significantly changed in the course of historical development. In modern society, daydreaming, so common in the romantic era, increasingly subject patho-psychological study than characteristic norm. Attempts to stimulate such altered states of consciousness by means of narcotics are persecuted by society. At the same time, modern IT, namely, virtual reality systems allow you to implement socially acceptable form of expansion of the symbolic experience. However, studies suggest that the generation and implementation of new forms of symbolic experience, the transformation processes of the imagination, computer dreams may contribute to negative phenomena, such as escape from reality in the form of absorption computer games, internet addiction.
The computer can be both a means of understanding of reality and the means of escape from this reality in a virtual world. Psychologists determine such negative consequences of informatization of human activity as a personification, i.e. conscious and unconscious assimilation of person’s inner world by computers, death of previously formed, but later became unnecessary skills, abilities, various types and forms of activity (for example, a number of mathematical operations). There are also concerns about the reduction and depersonalization of communication that are associated with the fading away of the role of emotions in the traditional communication taking place under the direct and indirect impact of IT.
Depersonification of communication through IT also has an effect in shaping the image of the communicative partner, which is usually reduced to a set of messages produced by them for a certain period. Therefore, for full or partial depersonalization is common among adolescents, the assessment of people through the list of what they can do in the field of IT.
Along with the reduction of the image of a communicative partner, computerization leads to a splitting image design in contradictory ways. There is known the silent effect, which is the reluctance of people to transmit or communicate to the addressee bad, negative news or facts. To transmit negative information, people prefer to use indirect forms of communication (the phenomenon of preference of impersonal contacts). If, in accordance with the silent effect in direct contact will be reported only positive information and negative will be transmitted after the channel-mediated communication, it inevitably will form and fix conflicting images of a partner (Waser 55).
Animism phenomenon manifests itself in the use of both children and adults of animistic characteristics with respect to IT, arguing the applicability of these characteristics is the fact that computers are supposedly able to think and act, but cannot feel (a kind of detachment affect the intellect). Thus, IT give an unexpected boost to animistic way of interpretation of reality.
Of course, information technology has a lot of advantages first of all, it is convenience. IT now capture all the big spheres of human activity – the education, and the arts and communication. Still, there is the problem of informatization of human life, which in my opinion, is very crucial. Here the danger lies not in the departure from the book culture, and in general the real natural culture as such in the direction of the virtual culture, man-made. However, it is important to understand that everything is good in moderation. This is the choice of each person – what to look at, what to read and what to listen to.
Works Cited
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Herman, Rod A., and Gregory S. Ladics. "Endogenous allergen upregulation: transgenic vs. traditionally bred crops." Food and Chemical Toxicology 49.10 (2011): 2667-2669.
“Internet Growth Statistics.” Internet World Stats. Miniwatts Marketing Group, n.d. Web. 23 Nov. 2014.
Kalathil, Shanthi, and Taylor C. Boas. Open networks, closed regimes: The impact of the Internet on authoritarian rule. Carnegie Endowment, 2010.
Lovelock, Kirsten. "The injured and diseased farmer: occupational health, embodiment and technologies of harm and care." Sociology of health & illness 34.4 (2012): 576-590.
Malek, Janet. "Identity, harm, and the ethics of reproductive technology." Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 31.1 (2006): 83-95.
Powell, Daisy, and Maureen Dixon. "Does SMS text messaging help or harm adults' knowledge of standard spelling?." Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 27.1 (2011): 58-66.
Venkatesh, Viswanath, James YL Thong, and Xin Xu. "Consumer acceptance and use of information technology: extending the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology." MIS quarterly 36.1 (2012): 157-178.
Waser, Rainer, ed. Nanoelectronics and information technology. John Wiley & Sons, 2012.
