Opinions - intensification of digital technology: the transformation of social and economic landscape

Digital technology is revolutionizing society and has become an integral part of daily life. As more and more people, businesses and organizations are digitally connected, a new digital society and economy is emerging. How should the businesses, employersand employees react? While many are celebrating the power of automation, signals of job polarization and mass unemployment are triggering. What does it indicate? In basic terms, it warns that no office job is safe. However, what determines vulnerability to automation is not so much whether the work concerned is manual or white-collar but whether it is routine (The Economist, June 2016). How should the employers react? Repositioning the IT strategy for job polarization should become a priority. Similarly, employees must possess the openness to face the challenges of new job title creations, job title rebranding and even job title elimination. What about businesses and digital marketing? Technological innovations have created emerging trends in business and customer relationships. This improves the bargaining power among consumers, causes a shift in the business-consumer relationships, and creates market openness. Yet, not to be forgotten, with the Internet growth, the robustness of mobile technology, the low barrier to entry and thousands of product choices, business competition remains very intense. Therefore, business organizations have to constantly strategize for business sustainability. Finally, digital technology is also transforming sociallandscape and social
norms by improving social capital via open participation, transparency and open innovation. On the other hand, it also offers harmful effects such as sexting, social isolation, depression and cyber-bullying. These acts are leading tounhealthy state of the minds, a situation that is negatively associated to ‘Internet wellness’. What are our roles? Simple. Be attentive to our online manners and ethics for social harmonization.