Now, let's turn to our second key question. How did digital media impact communication in general? As we discussed, digital media integrates many features of traditional media systems. Digital information and communication technologies, we also call them ICTs, dramatically changed the way in which humans share information and communicate with one another. We rely on digital media devices for interpersonal communication, information seeking and entertainment. A computer can be a television, a telephone, a library, a mailbox, a fax machine, a video game console or even a bank teller. Our entire social lives are mediated and we're now living in an era of mediated communication. To further understand the nature and the impacts of digital media on human communication, let's trace the evolution of digital information and communication technologies. Not a long ago, digital media channels only offer limited capacity for carrying and transmitting text-based information, numbers and letters. Users could only sense simple texts, symbols and numbers via their computer terminals. In such code-based communication we're inefficient and asynchronous and we're often deprived of any social meaning and contexts. As personal computers became more accessible, powerful and user friendly in the 1980s and 90s, computer mediated communication became more social in nature. Advances in computer graphics display technologies, and the increase of the Internet speed and bandwidth also allowed digital media to carry and deliver multimedia content. Emails, online chat rooms and informational websites were the dominant channels of digital communication. We also call this era the Web 1.0 era. However, during this era, various forms of digital communication were pretty much more powerful versions of their predecessors. The primary functions of digital media we're still just delivering and displaying digitally coded information and messages. This has changed in the mid 2000s. The mid 2000s saw the second stage of development of the World Wide Web where the so called Web 2.0. The Webpages we're no longer just passive placeholders to statically display digital information. They offered a more dynamic user experience and greater levels of control and interactivity to the users. To design of computer interfaces became more user-friendly. To Internet and the World Wide Web, we're also no longer geeky computer tools reserved only for those who are tech savvy. They're accessible to average users of all ages from all walks of life and required very little technical knowledge. Different functions of digital media such as interpersonal communication, information access, publishing, started to converge all on the same platform. The Web became digital hubs for users to search and share information and to connect and socialize with each other. Social and user-generated media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube were not just channels for communications anymore, but also distinctive and virtual communities created and maintained by the billions of users around the world. Beyond these social activities, other aspects of human lives we're moving online to the digital world as well. More people became comfortable with the idea of online banking and online shopping. They spent more and more time online via digital interfaces and in this digitally mediated society. As we can see, in just the past few years, the digital media and computing technologies went from being the center and the front of digital devices to being behind the scenes, much like how most of us wouldn't even give a second thought and question how the electricity powers our home. The internet and digital technologies that used to be so important and the coolest features of all the technology we use will become more ubiquitous and omnipresent in our lives. We simply don't notice their presence anymore. Users of the digital tools are no longer bounded by a physical location. They increase the mobility, allow users to bring the digital information world with them everywhere they go. As such, digital media are now an integral part of the fabric of our human society. New computer interfaces such as augmented reality and virtual reality blurred the lines between the real world and the digital world. We no longer notice the media channels that delivers the information. We only see the information being delivered and presented in the most natural way. This technological shift again significantly impacted how humans communicate and process information. For example, a refrigerator that knows it is low on milk and then sends a text reminder to the phone will be perceived as an intelligent appliances. But behind the scene, this is still a very complex communication process involving human-machine interactions and machine to machine data exchange and processing. This refrigerator is not only a refrigerator, but also a communication device. Thus, it can and should be recognized as a marketing channel to understand consumers, to reach consumers. Now, let me use another example to illustrate this point. Recent data has shown that 81% of the online shoppers conduct research before they buy a product. They would evaluate product reviews and compare prices before making a purchase decision. Now, let's imagine two shoppers using very different media devices to conduct the same product search. One shopper would use a desktop computer and the other would use a mobile app that aggregates the various product reviews information found on various search engines and automatically rates them and displays them in order of importance or credibility based on a computer algorithm. Now, based on what we know about how humans interact with the technologies, the first shopper in this case will be more likely to engage in deeply processed information she found and base her decision on the quality of the information. But the second shopper it will be more likely to accept and reject the ratings and recommendations provided by the smartphone or the app based on superficial features such as the design and usability of tool and instead of relying on the quality of the information. Not only did digital technologies impact the process of information, but also the scale and patterns of communication. In the era of traditional media and mass communication, mediated communication generally falls into two types: one-to-one communication, interpersonal communication, through telecommunication channels, such as telephone and text messaging, or one-to-many communication through mass and broadcast media, such as television and radio. Earlier versions of digital channels such as emails and information websites followed these communications patterns. As digital media platforms became more integrated, interactive, and social, new modes of communication and information dissemination emerged. Billions of people create, share and exchange information in the digital world. Any individual anywhere on the planet can become connected in this digital world as long as they have access to the internet. Any piece of information from any individual can be shared and distributed to the entire world in instant. Both the scale and the complexity of such a many-to-many communication pattern are unprecedented in our human history, and of course it has a great impact on marketing communication.
