Phoning it in: Discussing the Digital Revolution with a popular media columnist
Farhad Manjoo, columnist for The New York Times and author, visited Wright State on Tuesday for the 10th annual Honors Institute luncheon to discuss technology as it applies to this year’s theme of the Digital Revolution.
More specifically, Manjoo’s speech was entitled “How Smartphones Will Change Everything.” The columnist spoke about the kind of impact smartphones have had on today’s technological world, commenting on several aspects of the topic.
“Technology has the capacity to completely change how people live,” Manjoo said during his talk. He touched on several apps that impact society in a way greater than most people realize, including Uber, Instacart and an app that allows people to access valet parking from any given location.
“You have an app that’s more efficiently routing people to where they’re needed to perform an economic task,” Manjoo said, and this is a reason why these apps are working and creating advances in the technological world.
Manjoo commented on how a smartphone, a personal computing device that has the capability to be transported everywhere and is personalized to its respective owner, gives everyone access to several tools at once. This leads to why smartphones have so much potential to change the world we live in today, according to Manjoo.
“More and more recently, I’ve been talking to people who can claim, with pretty good evidence, that we have a technology that’s going to change our lives in huge ways. It might substantially change every part of what we do. It may affect how people work, it may help people in developing cultures live longer and give them healthier lives with greater access to medicine and information, it might change politics and freedom around the world, and the technology that everyone points to is the smartphone,” said Manjoo.
Manjoo was the second and final speaker to be featured at this year’s Honors Institute, following Steve Wozniak’s keynote address that also focused on the Digital Revolution.
The final episode of the semester is here! Staff Videographer Isaac Warnecke and Contributing Writer Emily Mancuso are joined with us one more time to talk about their plans for the future, Spotify Wrapped, and their favorite moments this semester!
