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12 Emerging Trends

(Earlier Cyber Safety)

12.1 INTRODUCTION

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The 21 century has been defined by application of and advancement in information technology.
Information technology today has become an integral part of our daily life. It has served as a
big change agent in different aspects of business and society. It has proven a game changer in
resolving economic and social issues. Advancements in and application of information technology
are ever changing.

A number of technologies are introduced almost every day. While some of these do not succeed
and fade away over time, some prosper and persist gaining attention of the users. There is hardly
any field of human life that is not affected by information technology. Various technological trends
like cloud computing, mobile computing, social media, ubiquitous computing, etc., are growing
rapidly. Cloud computing enables us to share hardware and software resources as a service over
the internet with any user over the globe on pay-per-use basis. Mobile computing helps us to
access and process data on handheld mobile devices like smartphones, iPads, etc. Social media
like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, YouTube, LinkedIn help people interact with each other around
the world. Social media is also contributing to make this world a better place to live in by raising
social issues. Internet of Things (IoT), a network of a large number of objects, computing devices
embedded with microchips, sensors, actuators is making this world a smart place to inhabit.
Emerging trends are state-of-the-art technologies which gain popularity and set a new trend
among users. In this chapter, we will learn about some emerging trends like cloud computing,
mobile computing, social media and Internet of Things (IoT), which are evolving very fast, and
also discuss their role and future impact on digital economy and interaction in digital societies.

12.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)

Artificial Intelligence is a technology that is already impacting
how users interact with, and are affected by, the internet and
its impact will only continue to grow. AI traditionally refers to
an artificial creation of human-like intelligence that can learn,
reason, plan, perceive or process natural language. The two
words Artificial and Intelligence or AI, where Artificial means
‘man-made’, and intelligence means ‘thinking power’, together
mean ‘a man-made thinking power’.