Personally, I do not engage with social media. I don't have Snapchat, Instagram, or even Facebook. This gives me the slightest leg up in the privacy war, but I am still losing horrifically. I have a Google account, meaning it's game over for me. Of course, the first video presented me with no new information. From a young age, my whole generation has been taught that we have a digital footprint that everyone can see. However, as a historian, I appreciate the analogies present by relating the technology conversation to ancient Greece, proving once again that whatever you think, someone in ancient Greece thought it first.
I also live in a very small town, technically to be considered a village due to its small population. The neighboring town where we go to grocery shop is somewhat larger, but still small and poor. While I do engage with larger cities that I am sure are harvesting my information and location for their gain, my small, poor town gives me a form of immunity to this harvesting. I know it's only a matter of time before the technology reaches even my small town, but for now, I am relatively safe.
Luckily, I use an iPhone, giving me protection from government surveillance. It is extremely jarring to hear about how tap-friendly our whole lives have been since the beginning. I agree with the speaker in his opinion that it is better and safer to design a protected program than one built for surveillance. This video feels like a rare thing in this class, technology furthering our privacy. So for maybe the first time in this course, I would like to say thank you to massive corporations for protecting my privacy.
I encourage everyone to watch other TED videos on privacy. The more you see, the more you learn. The more you learn, the more scared you should be, but it's far more important to be afraid and informed than to live in blissful ignorance.
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