CONTENTS:
1.0 Introduction
1.1 Definition
2.0 New Economy and Its Origin
2.1 Networked Intelligence
3.0 Promises of Digital Economy
3.1 Digital Marketing and E-Commerce
3.2 Robotic Enhancement and AI
3.3 Innovation in Commute and Healthcare
3.3.1 Navigation
3.3.2 Healthcare
4.0 Dangers of Digital Economy
4.1 Monopoly Power
4.2 Digital Privacy and the Dark Web
4.3 Cyberbullying
Conclusion
References
1.0 INTRODUCTION
1.1 DEFINITION
In 2017, Gada states that the value of the digital economy had grown three trillion dollars and this amount is 30% of the S&P 500(Standard and Poor’s 500), six times the annual trade deficit of the United States, more than the GDP of United Kingdom. According to Pahwa (2022), the Digital economy alludes to an economy that is formed on digital gadgets, performing various operations in the online sector. It allows us to make transactions, interactions between individuals, organisations, gadgets, and data. This economy is also referred as Internet economy, web economy or new economy (Pratt, 2017). This report aims to investigate the promises and negative impacts of the digital economy. It starts by presenting the evolution of technology from the 20th century and then, how it has affected life in different sectors.
2.0 NEW ECONOMY AND ITS ORIGIN
2.1 NETWORKED INTELLIGENCE
The Digital economy of Networked Intelligence is a modern or new economy. Cash, cheques, invoices, reports, in-person meetings, analogue phone conversations, radio and television transmissions, and direct mail advertisements were all examples of information flow in the previous economy termed as old economy. All data in the new economy is transformed into digital bits that are saved in devices and transmitted across networks at a much faster rate. This binary computer code converts information and communications into digital ones and zeros. (Tapscott, 1996, pp 8).
3.0 PROMISES OF DIGITAL ECONOMY
3.1. DIGITAL MARKETING AND E-COMMERCE
The first promise of internet economy is retailing via online platforms such as digital marketing and e-commerce. New Economy is a marketing strategy that advertises goods and services online by using web-based digital technology. This is done by attracting new clients through social media, email marketing, Google Ads, blogs, or other websites. E-commerce starts where digital marketing ends. According to Barone (2022), consumers prefer to choose the product on their phones using the internet. Therefore, 70% of people make purchasing decisions prior to making a purchase.
E-commerce is a term used to represent purchasing and selling products online and transferring money for these transactions. It is rising in this century due to its flexibility for customers, as online shops are always open for taking orders and can have them delivered in next day. Amazon is one of the best examples to quote in the e-commerce platform. Amazon US retail revenue jumped by 19.1% in 2019 to a total of 222.6 billion US dollars. Gabrielyan (n.d.) predicts that by 2022, global eCommerce sales would reach $5.4 trillion, up from $4.28 trillion in 2020 and as by 2040, 95% of all transactions would occur via the internet.
3.2 ROBOTIC ENHANCEMENT AND AI
Another major promise of web economy is automated technology. According to research by Martin in 2022, A robot can sense its surroundings, compute outcomes, and conduct practical tasks in the real world. Engineering and operation, robot design, and a variety of additional jobs are all covered around robotics. Robots efficiently do their tasks, whether it is through 3D printing, cognitive computing, or next-generation security. In medical situations, robots assist surgeons in performing surgery and stitching procedures. Kelly (2022) states that Artificial intelligence (AI) is a representation of human intelligence found inside robots that have been programmed to think and act like actual humans. In 1956, John McCarthy introduced the term “artificial intelligence”, It refers to a machine that behaves like a human mind, learning new information through experience, adapting to it, and then solving problems based on what it has learned. AI strives to learn, reason, and perceive the data, regardless of how easy or difficult the task is. Automated cars, Siri, Netflix recommendation system and Alexa are all examples of it.
3.3 INNOVATION IN COMMUTE AND HEALTHCARE
3.3.1 NAVIGATION
The new economy innovations simplified daily life. An investigation by Hoffman in 2016 states that enhancements in technology made it simple to check your location and get directions to the desired place to go with an estimated time and distance to reach there with the help of a radio navigation system through satellites called Global positioning system or GPS, for example, google maps and Apple maps. Improvement led to new applications such as uber, minicabit, and bolt that use the navigation system to earn money with no insecurity as everything is monitored. Recent research by Ceci (2021) states that despite having a preinstalled direction programme on Android handsets, the most downloaded and installed application in United States was Google maps, with 25.4 million downloads. Waze was next, with 13.4 million downloads.
3.3.2 HEALTHCARE
The most important promise of the digital economy is evolution in the medical field. Healthcare industry has been revolutionized by digital enhancement as e-medicine, machine learning enabled medical equipment, and blockchain digital health records have changed the way to communicate with medical practitioners. These applications and devices help in reducing human error, lowering costs, and saving time by virtual assisting. Another application is data collection from wearable devices which monitor health events such as blood pressure, physical movement, stress, and sleep. According to Reddy (2022), The market for wearable medical devices is anticipated to grow from $8 million in 2017 to more than $27 million by 2023.
4.0 DANGERS OF DIGITAL ECONOMY
4.1 MONOPOLY POWER
The first peril of digital economy is monopoly power in the marketing sector. A monopoly exists when one vendor dominates the market. The monopolist does not have any competition as the firm holds majority of the market shares and possesses the power of setting prices by its own means. Haggard and Tussikov (2021) in their recent research showed that companies such as Amazon create monopoly issues as a marketplace operator and retailer. As an operator, It has a unique posture to favour its own items and manipulate costs, and as a seller, it may steal information from competitors businesses to produce and promote products under own brand name. These firms make barriers for the new entrants in the industry to stay in power because the lower the rivalry is, the greater the power they hold. The core of monopoly as a market failure is the inability of markets to self-regulate. There are different sources of monopolies, Natural monopoly, geographical monopoly, and monopolies in industries by the government.
4.2 DIGITAL PRIVACY AND DARK WEB
Another danger to the web economy is insecurity which is a sensitive part of the digital world. The rise in online presence and internet usage puts this privacy at stake because it allows data at risk of being accessed by unauthorised people. Significant harm may result if someone’s sensitive data or information falls into the wrong hands, as it is always being stored and observed. Protecting sensitive data from misuse, such as personal information, addresses, medical records, and tax information is essential. Regulations governing data protection and privacy, for instance, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union (EU), are getting stricter to ensure the observance of privacy terms (Patidar, 2022).
4.3 CYBER BULLYING
The most negative threat to the internet economy is online bullying, especially to immature children. Recent research by Patchin (2021) states that cyberbullying is one of the most critical acts as per the analysis of May and April 2021. Around 46% of students were victims of cyberbullying by different means. Further investigation by Cook (2022) showed that Indian parents have the highest ratio of claiming their children were cyberbullied, it grew from 32% to 37% from 2011 to 2018, respectively. 82.3% of students were bullied at school following 19.1% on buses, this led to negative effects on teenagers such as a growth rate in depression and suicides.
CONCLUSION
The 21st century can be regarded as an era of science and technology due to rapid advancements in every field such as, it made the world a global village by connecting everyone through the internet, introducing machines to cure the uncurable diseases and allowing online transactions to make currency digital. The potential to innovate technologically has effectively increased by the digital economy. This economy has bought uncountable cherish to the lives of people, but it has taken the joys of sitting in family gatherings, outing with friends, and raising insecurities. Computer scientists and companies are working on improving security to ensure proper privacy and making new advancements which are far more fascinating than we already have. According to the Global Industry Vision (GIV) 2025 report, there will be forty billion personal digital gadgets in use and one hundred billion connections worldwide by 2025, resulting in a $23 trillion digital economy (Igbasan, 2018).
REFERENCES
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