Information technology as a phenomenon that plays a significant role in the life of society and human is relatively recent. Many experts connect it with the information revolution that started at the beginning of the 90s of the last century. The greatest influence on this process was by the development of local and global networks, industry of personal computers production, the Internet widespread, but the main driver of this process was the emergence of new services for the globalization of information exchange (creating the World Wide Web for standardization of search and delivery of multimedia documents). Today I consider that it is important to research the way technology influences the way we communicate with each other. This paper argues that the modern technology makes people less aware of their environment as they are getting used to virtual communication and other benefits IT offers to them.
The next step in the chain of revolutionary changes in information technology became the development of globally distributed computing (clusters, supercomputers, grid technologies, cloud calculations). At the turn of the century, there formed the concept of GRID - the computer infrastructure of a new type, ensuring global integration of information and computing resources. The GRID initiative serves to create a set of standardized services to ensure a reliable, compatible, cheap, pervasive and secure access to geographically dispersed high-tech information and computation resources - individual computers, clusters, supercomputing centers, information stores, networks, scientific tools, etc.
In the XXI century, information technologies develop even more rapidly, drawing into their orbit all the activities (politics, economy, science, education, medicine, business, media, communication, entertainment, etc.). Mobile telephony, IP-telephony, Skype, IP-TV, social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.), Twitter, Wikipedia, Google, WEB 2.0, and Cloud computing significantly influenced all aspects of human activity and changed the environment of our communication (Priest 48).
Particularly large impact on communication and relationships of people have social networks. They are aimed at building communities online of people with similar interests and activities. Communication is done through internal mail service and instant messaging. Victorious march to the Internet of social networking began in 1995 with the American portal Classmates.com (Zorn, Flanagin and Shoham 12). The project was very successful, and in the next few years, it provoked appearance of a dozen similar services. The official start of the social networks boom is considered to be 2003-2004, when there were launched LinkedIn, MySpace and Facebook.
If LinkedIn was founded in order to establish and maintain business contacts, holders of MySpace and Facebook would have relied primarily on the satisfaction of human need for self-expression. One of the most pressing problems is the representation and retrieval of information. Significant improvement of search is a priority for today's Internet. Many companies have made great strides in this direction, but the problem is complicated, as in the forefront there is the problem of representation and retrieval of knowledge.
Getting to the analysis of the mechanisms of influence of information technology on daily life, it is also necessary to consider the concept of technology. The word technology comes from two Greek words: techno - art, skill, ability and logos, i.e., organized, systematic, purposeful knowledge. In modern dictionaries, there is noted ambiguity of the concept (Forey and Lockwood 19). Under the technology, there is meant:
1) a set of techniques and methods of obtaining, handling or processing of raw materials, semi-finished products or articles carried out in various industries, construction and the like;
2) scientific discipline, developing and improving techniques and methods of preparation, handling or processing of raw materials, semi-finished products or articles;
3) description of the sequence of work operations necessary to convert the object of labor in the product;
4) the scope of activity of the person with a body of knowledge, providing it;
5) a general description of activities typical of a society;
6) special type of worldview inherent in industrial and post-industrial era.
In today's society, there are becoming increasingly important information or information and communication technology, resulting from the merger of two achievements in the development of technology: computers and ways to transfer digital information over telecommunications networks. The basis of all information technology products is the ability to represent text, sounds and visual images in digital form, i.e. information technology is a whole family of interactive technologies used in information processing (Beatty and Geiger 255). Information technology includes a set of technologies in microelectronics, computing, telecommunications and optic-electronic industry.
The feature of information technologies is that they have a significant impact not only on production processes, but also transform our daily life, affecting the neurophysiological, psychological, socio-cultural processes (McLuhan 8). Information and communication technologies lead to the formation of a new type of consciousness, change language, modify verbal means of communication. Let us consider the psychological and neurophysiological mechanisms of the effect of information technology on daily life.
Information technology has an impact on human consciousness. This problem is quite complex and requires separate consideration. Its complexity is due, above all, to the extreme versatility of the phenomenon of consciousness. Some researchers believe that the mind is what a person is aware of, of what he is aware and what he can share. Others point out that this is not the only mind, but also emotions, conscious and unconscious. Others - that consciousness, reality, are primary with respect to the rest (Thong et al. 614). In modern psychology by consciousness is understood the highest form of mentality inherent in human, characterized by categorical value reflection of reality; representation of the world in the mind of the individual in the form of a system of generalized, conceptually differentiated images. In the philosophy consciousness is defined as a person's ability to operate, the social interactions of action with objects, natural and cultural ties, separate from the direct contact with people and realize activities, consider these samples as the conditions, means, guiding their behavior.
Currently work in the study of the phenomenon of consciousness is actively conducted in many countries. Booming is the so-called cognitive science, formed at the junction of experimental cognitive psychology, neuroscience, computer science and artificial intelligence, philosophy of mind, cognitive anthropology and linguistics. One of the major goals of ongoing research is to find new methods, techniques, and forms of influence on the psyche of the individual and the masses of people, as well as the empowerment of human consciousness, including by means of artificial intelligence. The latest technology significantly increases the possibility of such effects, not only constructive, but also destructive.
One of the major global problems is the information or the digital inequality between developed and developing countries. There is a big gap on the Internet use in developed and developing countries. Consequences of such a rupture are obvious, as insufficient development of information technology shall entail economic slowdown in the vast region of the globe.
Thus, the digital division creates conflicts, exacerbates social tensions between developed and developing countries. It reinforces economic inequality between individuals, population groups and countries. However, there is an optimistic trend, as the rate of growth in the number of Internet users in developing countries over the past 10 years, far exceeds those of developed countries. Of course, these indicators are important, but the problem of the digital divide is much wider and deeper, as the important factors are the quality and reliability of the network infrastructure, data transmission speed, quantity and quality of information resources (Alberts, Nakayama and Martin 105).
There is no doubt that the development and spread of the Internet technologies, free access to information play an important constructive role and have a positive impact on people. However, in this phenomenon, there are negative factors. One of these factors is Internet addiction, which is reflected in the inability of a person to control his time on the web. Like a number of other addictions, such as gambling, in severe forms it may lead to degradation of the individual, total immersion in the virtual world that can affect mental health. This phenomenon is especially dangerous for children. While it is not fully understood yet, but the negative trend is recognized by everyone.
Currently, in the world of information technology, there is intensively developing grid, which is a new type of computer infrastructure, providing global integration of information and computing resources. Grid technology provides access to shared resources and services within virtual organizations. Virtual organization is a set of organizations united to address different problems in the mode of coordinated distribution of their resources.
Grid technology was originally used for scientific and engineering applications. However, now they became the basis for coordinated resource sharing in dynamic, virtual enterprise covering many organizations in industry and business. Thus, the grid is a universal effective infrastructure for high-performance distributed computing and data processing.
In many developed countries, there is established and effectively functioning national grid infrastructure (NGI), which are combined into global or distributed computing systems. European grid infrastructure, for instance, is widely used for modeling, storing, processing and analysis of experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Only in 2011, at this Grid infrastructure, there was made about 400 million user experiments on LHC, which used the amount of nearly 2 billion hours of CPU time. The total amount of stored data has reached more than 200 petabytes.
Resources of the European Grid infrastructure are used to solve problems of bioinformatics and medicine, earth sciences and quantum chemistry, nanotechnology and astrophysics, financial analysis and multimedia. Global Grid infrastructure facilitates collaboration between geographically dispersed communities and allows them to use jointly computing resources and data. Based on Grid technology, there can be created a business environment for distributed computing in commercial applications: e-business, distributed generation, collective design of complex objects, research data processing systems with high bandwidth, distributed supercomputing.
Grid technology is developing along with other technologies of distributed and parallel computing (supercomputers, cloud computing). Between them, there are many similarities, but there are also significant differences. Grid is effective to perform a huge number of tasks that process large amounts of information. Supercomputers cannot be used for this purpose, because their effectiveness will drop dramatically. However, supercomputer is effective when it solves a small number of parallel tasks, each of which uses hundreds or thousands of processors for solution.
Supercomputers at all times have been the flagship in development of information technology as they embody the most advanced hardware, software and architectural solutions. In 2008, there was created a supercomputer with the performance of 1 PFlops. Today in the developed world, scientists are engaged in designing more powerful supercomputers with even greater performance. Traditional leaders in producing supercomputers (USA, Japan) were recently joined by China (McNaughton and Light 108).
Recently, in the direction of distributed computing there is more and more attention paid to the active development of cloud computing. The basic concept is founded on translating into reality the old dream about computer maintenance at regular municipal services. In this terminology, everything is a service: infrastructure, platform, software, applications, and data. Consumers can take advantage of these services and pay for their actual use. This model has many advantages and many companies are moving to the use of cloud technology in their operations, which leads in many cases to saving money on the maintenance of the IT infrastructure.
We briefly discussed the advances in information technology in the field of distributed and parallel computing, and now it is time to address the question of their impact on human. There is no doubt that these technologies play a positive role in the development of civilization, help to solve complicated problems, which ultimately are for the benefit of human. However, in the development of these technologies, there are many difficulties. One of the biggest problems is training of specialists in the field of parallel and distributed computing. Universities in some countries do not have time for the development of information technology, so the training of qualified IT professionals significantly lags behind the needs of the market. Grid technologies are actively developing more than 10 years, but none of the world university prepares specialists in this profile. Similar difficulties exist for training in the other IT areas. Of course, the training of specialists in the IT field does not end outside the university. Everyone should understand that IT professionals must be well adapted to continuously improve their skills, acquire new knowledge and competencies to be in demand in the rapidly changing world of information technology. However, must constantly evolve not only IT-specialists, but also experts from other disciplines that use IT in their operations. There have already become popular terms that symbolize the inextricable link between the different activities and information technology: science (e-science), medicine (e-health), business (e-commerce), education (e-learning), etc.
Another layer of problems is associated with globalization and new forms of association of people. For example, an important form of associations of people became virtual organizations, which consist of people who are geographically distributed to different cities and countries, but are working for the benefit of the community. Many questions need to be addressed for such communities to be effective and disclose the potential and possibilities of human. Similar issues arise in the development of cloud services, infrastructure, knowledge, social networks.
Many aspects have the problem of the interaction of information technology and media. After the appearance of the World Wide Web, many magazines, newspapers, publishers began to create their own websites and portals to accommodate electronic materials. With the development of network and multimedia technology, many radio stations and TV-channels began to use Internet services for their broadcasting. Currently, the vast Internet has a huge number of digital libraries, digital archives, texts, images, audio, video and more. Everyone has the opportunity to create easily information resources, and many enjoy these opportunities. This led to the fact that along with useful and reliable information there was a large number of materials that contain unverified, distorted, low-quality information. This leads to serious negative consequences.
Information is a huge force, so this tool must be handled carefully in order to use it for the construction, education, good deeds. Approach to the provision of information should be responsible with the ethical principle of doing no harm. A big role in the development of information technology is played by information security to help protect personal data, databases prevent computer fraud, viruses and other harmful processes. However, there are problems that are difficult to solve by means of technology and information security, such as spam - sending unacceptable hype and more.
As a result, it can be concluded that information technology plays a critical role in the development of civilization and human. However, they are developing at such a rapid pace that it is difficult to assess the impact and effect on human of those or other factors. Positive and negative factors on human development combine in unpredictable ways.
On the one hand, there is free access to information, focusing in the Internet, on the other hand, Internet addiction, which is expressed in a person's inability to control his time on the web. On the one hand, the opportunities for virtual communication (social networks, digital libraries, museums, collections), on the other hand, immersion in virtual reality, alienated from the real world. On the one hand, there is a possibility of getting knowledge, using the potential of distance education systems, virtual laboratories, and computer courses; on the other hand, there is a lack of permanent teacher-student communication, which allows for the transfer not only of knowledge, but also of experience of the succession of generations, the lack of communication in the team.
Thus, for the harmonious development of information technology, it is necessary to bring together researchers, philosophers, clergy and comprehensive coverage of all the achievements, to prevent possible negative influences on human development. It is necessary to face the reality – that the IT has already deeply set its roots in our society, so it is better to turn it to our benefit, than to refuse from it completely, or act as if nothing is going on.
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