In todays lecture/seminar we spoke about how important privacy is to the individual and as a population. We believe in certain freedoms e.g. freedom in speech, freedom in belief. But we then went on to examine the many ways where our private life isn’t actually private like we want it to be.
I thought about this in reflection to my life. As a Facebook user, I agree to certain terms and conditions which allow them to use my data for profitable purposes, like many other companies do which I interact with.
We then went on to discuss this topic as a radical change. This is due to the fact that there has been a reverse in the relationship between public and private. Before internet, private was the default and it took effort to become public or required money. Now, the private is almost by default and requires effort or money for privacy. This lecture made me think more about how I feel about my data being used in order for companies to gain a profit. It is like I am selling and contributing something and not gaining much back from it, and is also ironic because i’m not too fond of the internet anyway. However, if we were to not agree with the terms that most of what we use today impose, we would lose out on a lot of news and social life. This would leave people isolated.