Digisoc 3
The digitisation of the world around us and our lives has brought a large number of changes we need to consider. As with anything else, living in a digital world has a lot of benefits and a lot of drawbacks.
The digital world has changed the way we engage with other people — we can communicate with anybody instantly, independent of their location. We also engage with a whole new type of things — things in the digital world. All of this engagement and interaction generates data about us — who we talk to, where do we go, what tv channels we watch, what websites we browse, what items we buy, what kind of music we listen to, our schedules, our habits, our interests and many more. The problem with that is that information about us can be turned into data and it can be stored and processed producing an individual digital identity for each of us, containing an enormous amount of personal information. Naturally, there are measures, such as GDPR, put in place by organisations, such as the EU, that aim to prevent abuse against this data and a violation or total loss of our privacy. But there are a number of problems and imperfections with these measures.
First of all, we are essentially being forced to give away our data to any service, app or website we use since our only other option it to not use them. The GDPR gives us the right to provide only basic information about is but there is still no option to just outright decline to share anything.
The next problem is that we are given the right to request all of our own data to be deleted but this right is still limited by certain conditions. In addition to that, most data gathering companies tell us that our data will be immediately deleted but it might still exist in older backups eg. we have no proof that our data will actually be deleted and not used or sold anymore and this is a much more serious problem than it seems. We essentially have information about our every action, interest, contact, etc. collected and stored in a database somewhere unknown to us, controlled by a company also unknown to us and sold to many other companies without our say in it. In addition to that, many people have argued that a percentage of the money earned by selling our data and using it for targeted advertising should be payed to the person who is the source of that data. It only seems logical that each person owns their own data and at least gets paid for it. This whole problem represents an ethical case about trading with people’s identities and privacy and should be a main consideration for the future development of the digital world.
Another implication of living in a digital world is that our thoughts and way of thinking are influenced to a great extent by it. The digital world provides a whole new array of platforms for marketing. We are constantly bombarded by ads on any website we visit and products are being promoted to us all the time sometimes without us realising it and targeting us on a subconscious level. Along with that, we are presented with the issues of misinformation and disinformation. Since the digital world is seen as one of the tools making freedom of speech possible there is usually no censorship on it. Anybody can say anything and especially the news outlets. They can fabricate a story with fake sources and essentially misinform the people. Because of that, the user of the digital world needs to constantly be critically thinking. Nowadays, the issue of disinformation and misinformation is very serious and can only be solved by critically thinking and evaluating every piece of information gathered from the digital world.
What needs to be considered with that is that the interaction with the digital world is bidirectional. While we interact with it, it also interacts with us and by doing that, collects data about us that can be used in many ways as previously discussed in this article. When analysing a person (as with any other analysis) the more data points and data sources we have, the better and more useful results we would get. Therefore establishing reliable sources of high quality information is key for the digital world. This is where The Internet of Things comes into play. It is a concept where every item we interact with in our everyday lives is connected to and enhanced by the digital world. Some see it as the 4th disruptive technology in history. In the past few years, we have seen an increase of such items — smart speakers, smart lights, smart cars and even fully smart homes. By using all these devices, Internet of Things provides us with as much gateways as possible to the digital world but it also provides the digital world with as much sources of information about us as possible.
In essence, becoming a part of the digital world is similar to selling your soul to the devil — you acquire new abilities and are able to do things you couldn’t before but you have to pay a price for it with your privacy and your data. Many people see that as outrageous and unacceptable and they try (some of them succeed) to live “off the grid”. Others see it as the necessary evil and believe that without the digital world we would’ve never had many of the pleasantries of today’s world.
Self reflection
Taking this course has helped me expand my knowledge in a different direction from what I usually study at university. It has also helped me look in a new way at today’s world.
The course has helped me understand a lot about the history and development of the digital world, its main ideas and how has it impacted our lives. I learned about how the digital world has changed the way we interact with people and enabled us to interact with a completely new set of things. I learned a lot about the data we generate as users of the digital world, how it used, how can we have an impact on what happens with it and what does this whole thing mean for our privacy. In addition to that, I found about the ethical problems that come with essentially having a permanent record of our identities stored in the digital world. Personally, I felt that the ‘The Internet of Things’ and the ‘Smart Cities’ topics were extremely interesting. These are aspects of the digital world that have gained traction is recent times and learning about them gave me an idea of what the future might look like. Finally, I learned about the virtually infinite amounts of information that is accessible through the Internet and how to be critical when using it. I believe that critical thinking is a very beneficial skill to have since it could be applied to almost anything we do.
The reason I enrolled in this course was because, as a Computer Science student, I am and will be extremely entangled with the digital world. I am probably going to be part of the people who are going to form it in the future and for me this meant that I need to know how it affects our world and what my impact might be. Having learned about the many different aspects of the digital world, I now have an idea of what I would like it to be in the future and what kind of obstacles I might face. I think that today’s digital world definitely has some issues and problems with it that I would like to fix and this course has helped me establish that.
Overall, this Digital Society course has helped me gain an insight into what the digital world looks like, how this has formed the world that we currently live in and how is it going to affect our future.
