The invention of technology and its benefits were highlighted glowingly from the very beginning. It was said to be a game-changer that would make our lives easier in almost every way possible. The first imaginations of what technology could be involved a perfect utopia where technology was king. Futurama at the New York world fair showed us the positives, but I don't think many could predict the negatives that would arise. They were right about all the benefits and how they could undoubtedly change our lives at the time. Technological inventions changed the way we communicate, educate, and function as a society. The Mad Max Remix video showed us the opposite extreme: we're a lifeless society dependent on our phones. I think right now, we're somewhere in between the two extremes. Technology is making big strives in advancement, and we've seen the best and worst of it all at once. The Frontline documentary gives us a picture that has been painted by current tech engineers of what our near future could look like with the advancements in Artificial Intelligence.
The Media Law and Literacy class with Professor Dean Smith has made me more aware of current technological privacy issues. The trajectory we're currently taking as a society on the current stance of the tech companies is worrisome as our internet behavior is continually being harvested for our data. I highlighted the past, current, and future technological attitudes in the first couple of paragraphs. When the tech was in its infancy in the 1960s, it was portrayed as a game-changing tool that would benefit us all, and it certainly has been to anything there are drawbacks. When a program or product is free, you are the product. Google, Facebook, Twitter are all free platforms to use, meaning the company has to make money in some way to stay afloat. Harvesting your data and feeding their captive audience advertisements is the primary way they produce revenue. To dive deeper into this subject, we must assess my own personal consumption of technology to explain the issue.
I personally have a strong connection with technology and use it daily. I believe that technology is a beneficial tool in my life, although my usage on my phone and some apps is unhealthy and, frankly, too much at times. These apps tend to be social media-based, but my usage depends on the week and time of year. When looking at my phone's weekly usage averages, it is predominately social media. Technology is becoming an issue with the increasing performance of the algorithms that keep you attached to the app. The algorithm is the tech company's ability to learn and display what you enjoy watching to keep you coming back. The new app, TikTok, does this very well, and with the ability to aimlessly scroll through videos that appeal to you, it tends to keep you on longer than you would like, which explains why it's my top used app throughout the week.
Personal Weekly Phone Usage
Not all the technology I used has a negative impact. Although my phone screen time suggests heavy social media usage, I know that isn't beneficial. I use my phone prominently for leisure, such as talking with friends or playing games. If my computer were to have this same feature, I believe it'd be quite different. I use my laptop for more valuable tasks such as completing homework assignments, taking notes in class, working on group projects, and reading news articles. I, of course, still watch YouTube videos (a Google product), but for the most part, I try to use my laptop for productive tasks. Access to the worldwide web has made our society more aware of our surroundings. We can get articles from other news agencies from across the globe instantly. Access to historical information on demand can broaden our knowledge and perspective. Although technology has this immense power to make us more knowledgeable, I think it also has the side effect of making us lazy. The efficiency factor is immense, but at what expense? Due to this, we have become an on-demand, instant gratification country, and like anything positive, this is the associated negative.
With my extensive usage of technology, the ability for tech companies to collect my information for their benefit is mind-boggling what they have figured out about me. After a quick search online, I discovered that you can review your own Google account to figure out how they customize their ads for you based on your interests. The information is accurate and shows how much the company knows and learns about your online behavior. When reading a Business Insider article explaining how to find this information, the author states that the company knew about information she didn't specifically type into the search engine. These statistics and information about you determine what ads are displayed to the user. The collection and usage of your data for advertisements is their direct business model, and they are not hiding it either.
The assembly of different categories Google has collected on me directly correlates to my digital footprint. Some categories of notable significance are my enrollment in a college, my membership to a fraternity, where I am located (New Hampshire and North Carolina), and that I am still a part of my family (not married). These startling facts are not all the information I have stored in my Google profile. My third-party website profile, username, and passwords are also saved on my Google account. I also use the photos feature to backup all my photos onto a separate cloud network from Apple in case of failure. My account overall is secure with advanced security settings put into place, but if I were to get hacked, I would essentially be giving the individual my entire identity, which includes personal information, photos, passwords to bank accounts, etc. This has worried me significantly, which is why I installed extra security features that would require the hacker to also have access to my phone to breach my account. Our technological use in the U.S. is built around the Google ecosystem, making it hard to prevent this susceptibility. My online footprint and information don't stem from only Google though anyone who posts pictures or my name on a website can come up during a simple search. When I looked up my own name, my Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and college swim recruiting account all came up on the first search page. A picture of myself also appeared because of my Twitter profile image. This ease of access makes searching for someone easy who is digitally involved but doesn't provide the privacy some would usually expect. I know, for instance, my parents, who are not as heavily involved in social media, would not come up as easily as my name would. My mom's business profile through her employer came up, but besides that basic information, that's all I was able to find. This does seem to be a generational issue as the young people in our society become increasingly technologically connected.
Circling back to the documentary In The Age of AI, we will continue to see this privacy oversteps from our online lives to our personal lives. As tech continues to enter our homes, we give them increased access to our personal data. More and more people are embracing tech, such as the laggards on the diffusion of innovations graph, and as technologically inferior countries begin to adopt its usage, we will be giving the companies more data to work with. Overall, I am skeptically optimistic that some restrictions will be put into place to prevent these pervasive actions from continuing as congress increasingly addresses the issue. In the meantime, I and everyone else need to be more aware of what information we are giving away in this technologically progressive society.
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