How technology is reshaping human interaction

Technology drastically is changing how humans interact personally, inter-nationally, and economically.
Netscape: Netscape has led the way for Internet providers to change the way individuals interact with each other. Before the Internet people either used the telephone or letters to communicate with each other. Now people can just get on the computer and send an email or use instant messaging to talk to several people at one time. It is also a lot cheaper to send email as it is to send a letter. The Internet has also changed the way companies communicate inter-nationally now if you want to have a meeting with your business partners you don't have to fly them in from all over the world. You can just set up video conferencing using the internet. If companies need a product they order it online and it gets shipped automatically. The Internet has changed the way humans buy and sell things. Many times people go online to buy things because they can search for a better deal. They don't have to drive around for an hour to find one. Even though you have to pay for shipping it saves a lot of money. Before the internet it was harder to sell something. But now you have ebay to sell your things online. You can have a thousand people look at your item in a matter of days.
Worflow software: This has mainly changed they way humans interact inter-nationally. Instead of everyone in a design team for let say a cartoon show being in the same room, now they can be all over the world thanks to work flow software. You can have the actors in L.A., the writers in San Francsico and the animators in Bangalore all working on the same project for cheaper and more efficently. Using work flow software they can talk amongst themselves and for example the writers can give input to the actors or the writers giving input to the animators halfway across the world.
Open Sourcing: Open Sourcing has made it possible for people all over the world to collaborate on one project such as wikipedia. Wikipedia is a prime example of open sourcing. This mostly affects the personal aspect of human interaction because now you as an indivdual have the power to make something better by creating a patch to a piece of software.
Outsourcing: Outsourcing effects all aspects of Human interaction. It effects you personally because instead of someone doing your taxes in your hometown they are being done by someone India. You are interacting with someone across the globe when you get your taxes done. Smaller companies now can strive to get bigger because they can get stuff done in India for much cheaper than it would be if you had it done in the United States. For instance some McDonalds have outsourced there drive through order to other states because there is less mistakes with the orders and they can get more orders place in an hour thus they can make more money. Out sourcing has changed the economical aspect the most. More and more jobs are being outsourced because they can be done cheaper and more efficiently. From taxes to drive thru orders, they can be all outsourced. If it can be digitized it can be outsourced.
Off Shoring: Offshoring has made it cheaper for companies to produces there products cheaper. Instead of paying minimum wage to an american you can pay a fraction of that by using Chinese labor in China. If you are a company and you want to buy a product you are going to have to deal with the factory in China.
Supply Chaining: Before supply chaining there were many ware houses all over. Each company had there own warehouse. Thanks to supply chaining Walmart has one big warehouse in Arkansas and they ship out to all of the Wal-Marts nation wide. Suppy chaining is an effecient and cost effective way to get your goods to all around the country. You as a consumer can get what you want anytime you want because it will be always in stock or if it is not it probably will be in stock in the next day or two.
Insourcing: Instead of people interacting with many countries for service and support you talk to a few companies such as UPS. Insourcing is more efficient because instead of many different companies doing different services for a company that can do everything from shipping the product to actually repairing and shipping it back out directly to the consumer. Insourcing cuts out the middle man. Usually if you can cut out the middle man you can do every thing quicker.
In-forming: People now can search for pretty much anything online. Instead of going to a library you can just go on your computer and find endless topics. Search engine are also changing how people interact with each other. Instead of looking in a phone book to find someone you can just type in there name in a search engine and you can find everything from there telephone number to where live and have lived previously.
The Steroids: The Steroids have brought along a whole different way of communicating from anywhere to anywhere. In Japan you can be pretty much anywhere and get wireless internet. VOIP is another big steroid. It allows someone to call over the internet to other VOIP users and landlines for much cheaper. You do not get charged from where or to who you ar e calling to.