Digital disruption: Five ways technology is changing our lives

by Karen Holt and Mika Elizabeth Ono

On January 9, 2007—a mere 10 years ago—Apple CEO Steve Jobs stood on the stage of San Francisco’s Moscone Center and introduced the iPhone.

“Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything,” he said in apparent hyperbole. Sales of the device have now exceeded 1 billion.¹

Of course, it’s not just Apple driving the digital revolution. Also 10 years ago, Google launched Android; startup companies Facebook and Twitter started to scale globally; and IBM introduced its first cognitive computer, Watson.² Ripples are still being felt in how we work, learn, relate, vote, and create.

How is the digital age transforming our lives? Here are five answers from the University of Redlands:

1. Mapping the past, present, future
2. Shifting the rules of politics in a world of social media
3. Unleashing student potential in the digital classroom
   • Simulation challenges MBA students to solve real-world problems
4. Cultivating fake intimacy
5. Mastering music in the age of digitized perfect pitch and media convergence

¹ Apple news room, “Apple celebrates one billion iPhones,” July 27, 2016
² Thanks to Thomas Friedman in Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Acceleration (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), for this list.