Whether it’s how we greet each other, find the perfect partner to date, celebrate someone’s birthday or even the way we parent. With everything accessible at our fingertips, the development of technology has changed human lives in every possible way. Postcards and love letters have been replaced by birthday memes and Tinder, television time is now Netflix and chill, gossips get replaced with scandalous tweets and parenting is now mainly protecting your kids from online bullying. But technology has transformed human in way greater degrees by extending its transformation to fields like Democracy and Healthcare.
- Predictive Policing: Data Systems like Hitachi are employing Visualization Predictive Crime Analytics (PCA) solution and other machine learning tools to mine online datasets from social media platforms to track unusual behavioral patterns or anomalies that might predict future criminality. Such solutions are empowering “law enforcement, emergency management and other security organizations greater situational awareness and the capacity to more effectively and efficiently extract insights from a broader range of data sources to ensure faster response times when a situation developed,” as remarks Mark Jules, vice president, Public Safety and Data Visualization, Hitachi Data Systems.
- Saving Sex Workers: National Ugly Mugs is one of the many examples of how the most basic technology can save many lives. National Ugly Mugs in a collaboration with Reason Digital that has created a mobile app called Ugly Mugs that do not only improve the safety standards of sex workers but also helps in convicting criminals targeting sex workers.
- Patient Empowerment: Besides serving as an engine increasing the quality of health systems, Technology is also de-stigmatizing and empowering Mental Health. Emerging Healthcare apps are not only giving patients a broader understanding and stronger role in their clinical treatment but with data democratization healthcare networks are now executing more transparently.
- Face Payment: Face recognition technology, over the years, has made tremendous progress. The latest of all venture being the Face ID authentication factor integrated into iPhone X. Yet another pioneer in emerging Facial authentication technology is Beijing based startup Face++ is that’s empowered popular online payment platform like Alipay to let users log in and make payments using their face as ID.
- Political Empowerment: Technology has enabled politically-engaged coders and journalist networks like Code for Ghana “to create a network of civic-minded activists who use their knowledge, hands and voices to make the local government system better through transparency, open data, and citizen engagement.” Code for Ghana follows in the tradition of Code for Kenya and Code for South Africa, who work with CSOs, NGOs and Government organizations to build active Open Data ecosystem, open up public data and provide easy access to citizens and build civic apps and platforms that will promote citizen engagement.
Mobile devices have enhanced human living standards beyond imagination and it’s only the beginning. From creating new businesses and empowering the old to helping rescue-teams save millions of lives during disasters with real-time communication, technology although posing its own threats is a force in unstoppable momentum.