Contemporary technology

1. E-commerce
The act of conducting business online is called e-commerce.
E-commerce is the use of internet to help the business to market and sell the product and or services. World Wide
Web has becomes a global vehicles for e-commerce, create a new ways for business to interact with one another
and their customer. In simple term, e-commerce means doing business online and it has become big business
indeed.

Some examples of e-commerce are:-

 Accepting credit cards for commercial online sales.
 Generating online advertising revenue.
 Trading stock in online brokage account.
There are three types of e-commerce.
i. Business to Business (B2B): the B2B e-commerce refers to a company selling or buying from other
companies. In other context the companies communicate with other companies by electronic means. i.e.
B2B commerce involves the sale of goods and services among business (companies).
ii. Business to Customer (B2C): B2C e-commerce involves electronic retailing of products and services
directly to individual customers. E.g. Barners&Nobel.com, which sells books, software, and music to
individual customers. With B2C type e-commerce the company first establishes a web site on the Internet
on which the company can put information about product and services, and the websites allows the
customer to order product and services.
Benefits of this are:-
Lower marketing cost
Lower sales cost
Lower order processing cost
Better customer services
Lower customer support cost
New sales opportunities – WEB is accessible 365 days whole days and night and reaches a
global audience.
iii. The digital Middleman: The digital Middleman in e-commerce could be a company that creates a virtual
community or portal on the Internet and gather several companies together into this community. The
middle man then promotes this new virtual community to public. The virtual community (websites)
provides the information of the product and services of each company to the visitors, allowing them to do
comparison and select the best deal. The middleman takes a fee from the companies for each Internet
referral. Other digital middleman act as a auction houses or flea markets were seller put up their
advertising and buyers bids for their items. The digital middleman takes a small commission for each
transaction.

2. E-Business
E-business is way of improving business process using Information and communication Technology (ICT).
This includes managing internal process such as human resources, financial and administrative system as well as
external process such as sales and marketing, supply of goods and services, and customer relation.
E-business and e-commerce are the different concept. E-busyness is a super set of e-commerce. E-business
refers to more strategic focus on business, serving customer and collaborating with business partners etc, rather
than just buying and selling through electronic means.

3. E-governance
E-governance refers to the way of exchanging information and providing services with citizens, business,
and branches of government offices using ICTs in order to bring out moral, accountable, responsible as well as
transparent government.

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After the implementation of e-governance into practice, citizens can make contact with the government
through electronic means: they can send feedback to government policies and performances. Citizens have rights to
access government information and services and e-governance can be employed in sector of government‟s
administration, judiciary and legislation.
There are various model of e-governance. Some are:
 Government to Citizens (G2C)
 Government to Employees (G2E)
 Government to Government (G2G)
 Government to Business (G2B)
Advantages of e-governance
 Easy to access data and information.
 It becomes one portal for delivering government services.
 Since e-governance reduces the paper work, it helps to improve environment.
 E-government allows citizens to interact with computers to achieve objectives at any time and any location,
and eliminates the necessity for physical travel to government agents sitting behind desks and windows.
 There will be no territory boundaries, from any part of world information can be accesses.

Disadvantages
 Cost: required large amount for developing and implementing.
 Inaccessibility: difficult to access for poor and rural people.
 Hyper-surveillance: e-governance lead to a lack of privacy for civilians as their government obtains more
and more information on them.

4. E-learning
E-learning refers to delivery of learning, training or education program by electronic means such as
computer and electronic devices like PDA, Mobile phones. E-learning also includes the things such as Internet,
Intranet, Extranet, virtual class room, and multimedia. Hence e-learning is mode of learning that makes use of ICT.
E-learning also called as “computer based training” CBT, “Internet based training” IBT, and then “web based
training” WBT. Due to internet distance learning is possible.
Advantages of e-learning
 low cost than regular universities mode.
 Learning is possible in our own time, own pace, and in our own place.
 Reduce travel time travel costs for off campus student.
 Students from different part of world can join on the same course

5. E-medicine
E-medicine refers to providing medical services and information to the patients using ICT. Due to e-
medicine, it is possible to have doctors and patient in different geographical location.
In early days or even now a day‟s medical services were/are provided through telephone or fax, such
services is called telemedicine and doctors called tele-doctors. By the use of ICT gave the telemedicine a new height
(voice, video are used to provide medical service at the real time).
E-medicine is also popular among medical personnel, for discussing about treatment process and new technologies
as they can share their idea, knowledge and experiences with each other and of course will be helpful for saving
many lives..
Advantages
 Helps to provide the medical services at affordable cost.
 Saves the time of both patients and doctors by eliminating travelling from one location to others.
 Helps to provides high quality health care for under privileged population of rural areas.
 There will be territory boundaries among patient and doctors.

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Notes: in countries like Nepal, where numbers of doctors are very less compared to patient and it is very difficult to
provide the quality health services to the large numbers of peoples scattered geographically. And also huge
number of population are in rural , hilly and mountain area. By making easy access to the ICT and e-medicine
people of such areas will get benefited.

6. Virtual reality
Virtual reality (VR) is an artificial environment created by computers with simulated software and
presented to the users in such way that it gives an illusion of real world environment. The uses have to put special
goggles, gloves, earphones to interact with virtual environment.
Some devices used in VR are:
Head mounted display (HMD), Binocular omni oriented monitors (BOOM), cave automatic virtual environment
(CAVE)
Application
1. Civil aviation: - pilots gains experience through the use of flight simulators
2. Video games: games such as DOOM, Formula one etc. gives the players the sense of realism.
3. Space exploration, demonstration, training are possible through VR
4. Military application: Battle field simulator, fighter plane simulator, etc
5. Interior design, civil engineering: it enables the designer to create or change computer generated
simulation of proposed environment through 3D images, rather than hand drawn perspectives.
6. Surgery: Surgeons before performing delicate operations can do testing through virtual reality.
7. Designing product: the manufacturer can show model of product before going the real product.

7. Robotics
Robotics is the branch of science that deals with the design, constructions, operations and application of
robots. Robots are the device that can move and react to sensory input. Robotics involves three components:
mechanical, electronic, and software. The term „robotics‟ was coined by Isaac Asimov and he formulated three law
of robotics:
 A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
 A robot must obey any order given to it by human being, expect where such orders would conflict with
first law.
 A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second
law.
A robot as made up of components to some extend similar to human beings. It has a movable physical
structure, motors, a sensors system, a power supply and a microprocessor chip and others chips that control all the
components.
Robots are used in risky or dirty jobs for human beings. Common application area of robots are: transportation,
surgery, earth and space exploration, weapon laboratory search ate.

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