The story of Adam, Eve and the garden of…
This video, I found, while looking for resources online for this week’s post is mind blowing! I was surprised at the mediocre applause at the end of Alessandro’s talk compared to the one for Eli’s titled ‘Filter Bubble’ featured in Kim’s post about this week’s work and I could not stop wondering if this was because it is only I who didn’t know about the depth of issues discussed by Alessandro? or is it because the audience in that TED Talk didn’t realise the gravity of the situation as well as he did? or is it because of his Italian accent? 🙂 I would like to think it’s his accent but I am more inclined to believe that the audience didn’t actually sense the seriousness of what he revealed by way of the results
from his experiments. I think we have truly and wholly become a ‘consumer’ and ‘feel happy’ society! The chemicals in our brain which shoot off at the thought of a new iPhone and Apple Watch numbs the sections of brain which should be seeing the link between the matter of privacy Alessandro touched upon in his talk and the ‘new’ features from iOS 8 which would now obtain, record and use our extremely personal and considerably important data from integrated health monitors.
The topic discussed in last week’s blog post and this week are intertwined in so many ways. I cannot stop thinking about how our understanding of ‘privacy’ online relates to our ‘digital footprints’. Does the discovery about how tech companies and governments use the algorithms and ‘big data’ to target us for their own financial and security gains define our use of the cyber world? and what information we leave behind while interacting with the Internet! At least I do for my part. Since the advent of Web 2.0 technologies I have been reading, thinking and embracing these technologies with caution and understanding. Even then I know that there are so many ways that I am leaving ‘important, personal and trackable’ data behind me in this vast and unerasable world of 1s and 0s. For example the current professionally oriented and well designed website of our dear Kim Cofino is vastly different from the very basic and personal website of hers back in 2008!
Digital footprints and Privacy are two important links in the chain of ‘digital citizenship’ we ought to be unraveling for our young generations who are living and breathing data 24/7 and conveying the underlying message in Alessandro’s talk about autonomy, freedom and huge cost of our privacy we may have to pay for the temporary benefits we get when we pour our personal information out into the ‘big data’!
3 COMMENTS
Ah, I miss that old website! Did you find my other one? kimandalex.com? That was one of our original recruiting sites – there is another version of kimcofino.com that is my very first professional site too. I may sound crazy, but I have all of them stored on a hard drive somewhere too 🙂 Thanks for a little step back in time!
Wow! Thanks for the great blog and the excellent TED video Mohammah. I have to tell you that I found his talk one of the best I’ve heard on TED in regards to digital privacy and the ability of outside people/ organisations to snoop on individuals. This would be a great video to share with students as he is funny but also makes excellent points! Thanks!
Thanks for sharing this video. It does a great job of answering the argument, “I have nothing to hide.” I usually respond to this argument by adding the word “now” implying that what may be legal today could suddenly become illegal tomorrow in a nod to the ever-shifting nature of government and population organizations. Allesandro’s video, however, suggests that the problem is more significant even than the rules of society. His video suggests that businesses and governments can use this information to coerce people to do what they want, i.e. buy their products or, even worse, their ideas as demonstrated by the composite photo of friends. I think the only pedagogy against this is the Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 1970). Oh, and you are right, the milquetoast applause is that of a stunned audience.