Technology taking over our lives?

Here's a thought, with all the technology that we have at our fingertips--where many devices serve multiple functions--we are multi-tasking more than ever. While working on their homework on their computer, teens could be listening to music, checking their email, chatting via aim and facebook, texting their friends on their phone, eating and watching the TV in the background. This obviously leads to less productivity, more distractors, and possibly too much of a blending of work and play. For students that don't already have ADD, we are creating a world where students have such a stimulus overload that they are likely to struggle with the same problems people with ADD encounter. For those that already have ADD--good luck! Even the website/wiki/blog format of creating seems to almost encourage distraction because of hyperlinks. While it is great to have the information right at your fingertips (as opposed to relying on footnotes and citation chasing, which is probably fairly rare for students especially), it can be easy to get distracted clicking on the links, and then getting interested in something else, and forgetting what the true assignment or goal was. This poses issues in the classroom, because students seem to get bored and distracted easier. They expect the same sensory stimulation they are used too and want to find quick, fast answers with minimal effort. Although this encourages us to be more creative as teachers, I wonder how it affects students ability to work hard and to focus. Are we going to have to start teaching meditation in school in order to help kids learn how to concentrate on one thing at a time (such as reading). Reading effectively takes so much concentration in order to truly absorb it and I wonder if this skill is starting to get lost a bit.

Also, technology is also so pervasive in our lives that it has the unfortunate side affect of making us feel like we must be constantly available. It has become harder and harder to avoid people or put work off. There is an immediacy about things, and I think it causes people to be more impulsive, selfish/demanding and less inclined to plan ahead. Whereas things used to have to be planned in advance to insure coordination with a variety of people and to get things completed during the 9-5 work day, now people have 24 hour access to people via cell phones and email. People can monitor what you are doing through twitter and facebook status updates, and they can see when you are on facebook or gmail and chat with you right there. Because of this, people are more impatient and less likely to wait for you to get back to them when it is convenient for you. Instead they will find another medium to contact you until they are able to reach you (at their convenience, not yours). This in turn leads to impulsive behaviors, because people our coerced to make decisions or give opinions on things before they have had the time to fully look into matters. This will inevitably result in poor, uninformed decisions, at least some of the time. It is also harder for people who are indecisive (like me), because they feel more more pressure to act quickly, because that is what is valued by friends, family and professionals in our world. The 9-5 job also becomes less and less realistic, as it becomes harder and harder to get away from bringing work home or at least staring at in the face via email or phone. Add in the popular idea of "working from home" and things get even more complicated, with work and personal life interfering with each other and life becoming harder and harder to keep organized or separate, leading to more multi-tasking, less focus, and ultimately, less productivity.

There is less and less privacy and the line between personal and professional life gets blurrier and blurrier. As supervisors and teachers, how do we deem what is appropriate use of computer/work time anymore? Many people save documents in their email and share working documents on google docs, so disallowing "email" sites either through filters or through library policy becomes problematic. Also with privacy issues, coworkers and students can learn more about our personal lives than ever before if we allow to become our "facebook friends" or twitter followers. How do you keep your professional and personal life separated? Is the idea of not letting your personal life interfere with your work, or not talking about it with co-workers even possible in this situation?

Facebook Literacy

As I was reading through the article on facebook's policies (which are, by the way, changing again, for those of you concerned--check the staff blog!), I was struck by the fact that, at least as far as facebook is concerned, I feel like kids and young adults are much more aware of the privacy issues contained in the site than many of their parents are.

For those of us who've been coming into adulthood since facebook entered the scene, there has been what seems like hyper-awareness of the propensity for privacy invasion there. Because facebook is designed to network with people you sort-of-know-but-not-necessarily-really, it treads a strange terrain for most of us between sharing and keeping secret. Our organizational affiliations, interests, and contact details are widely publicized, but at the same time, we are hugely aware of who may be looking at our stuff. We were incensed when the site opened up to non-college students, even more when it became apparent that prospective employers and, increasingly, family members were there.

For me, facebook is a tool to keep in quick contact with people from my undergrad, a spare few from high school, and the occasional relative. I have very little of substance on there; a few photos from a family reunion, some from when I was at Oxford, some program pictures from my RA days, basic contact information for myself, and a few quotes. But my family members, all adults who have been very concerned for years about my own online presence, share pieces of information about themselves that I often wonder if they realize are quite as available as they are. My peers and I navigate privacy settings carefully, while those who are newer to the game seem completely unaware of the need to do so.

As someone who's been responsible for hiring and has been required by supervisors to browse facebook profiles in the process (sometimes deceptively!), I am extremely careful about what goes onto my profile in the first place, and especially about who can see what. I don't allow people to post on my wall; I get notifications any time someone replies to anything I post so I can edit if needed; no one is able to see photos in which other people have tagged me until I change settings on each individual photo.

There are a great many situations in which it is incredibly important for kids to be educated on their privacy concerns, and facebook is certainly one of them, but in my mind, the nature of the site and its user base suggest that perhaps we need to be hosting information sessions for adults who are long past their undergrad days to make sure that they have the same information as the rest of us.

Some Scattered Thoughts on Copyright and Privacy

Copyight & Choking Creativity

Lessig’s TED presentation on copyright law certainly resonated with me, and left me with much to think about. While I very much respect where he is coming from, I have several concerns about his proposed solutions.

Corporations not Creators Own Copyrights

First, he argues that artists and creators should allow more freely available content into the marketplace. This makes sense, and I agree that this is necessary for movement toward his vision of a “legal” read-write society. What I question, however, is whether in today’s economy artists and creators are really in control of their work. Often artists sign away their rights (or at least some of their rights) to corporations –agencies, publishers, record labels, etc. While they may still gain profit from their work and have some limited control over how the work is used, it is the corporation that must give permission and make the content freely available. It is the corporation that will sue if copyright infringement occurs, and it is the corporation that has a vested interest in making sure the content is not freely available.

Copyright is Confusing

Lessig alludes to Creative Commons in his presentation, though he doesn’t go into a discussion of it. I strongly support the ideals of Creative Commons. However, I don’t see it as a feasible solution that will end “Copyright abolitionism” that is so rampant among youth (and many others), simply for the fact that it is too confusing. If you are remixing 10 movie clips with a song plus multiple photographs, and perhaps look at 100s of objects to decide which is best for your creation, think how time consuming and limiting it is to try to figure out the allowances and restrictions that are on each individual item. Even with Creative Commons labeling, it can be extremely difficult to discern how and when the item can be used, who to ask for permission, etc. I just don’t see young people taking the time to investigate this for each item.

I agree with Lessig that in this “Age of Prohibitions” youth will continue to be driven (or choose to) live life “against the law” simply because it is too hard and limiting to follow the law, and because the risk of prosecution is relatively low. The lessons of a previous age of Prohibition (remember speakeasys?) showed that in the end it was necessary to reconsider the law because it was impossible to prosecute everyone who has breaking the law, and only the gangsters and bootleggers were profiting. I wonder if digital copyright law might not be a similar case.


Does Participating in Society Today Mean Forgoing Privacy?

I’ve been thinking lately about the ways in which privacy is defined and does or doesn’t exist in today’s society. I have recently received a spate of privacy policy statements in the mail from various credit cards, banks, and businesses that I use the services of. In order to participate with nearly any business or web site, or to have a presence in the online world, etc., etc. we must sign away certain rights to our personal information. Many of us do this without thinking—often feeling that we don’t have a choice. And in many ways, I don’t think we do. How can one really avoid putting their information into the public sphere without becoming a recluse?

Even if you were able to somehow avoid working with any business or organization that had access to personal information, you would still be confronted with the massive amounts of public surveillance that goes on worldwide. I can’t remember ever signing or seeing a privacy policy about how an ATM or convenience store or city street camera can use my image. While generally these images are only released upon a crime being committed, how are images being stored, by who, and for how long? Is there any law saying that the owner of that surveillance tape could not use it to make a profit? If a celebrity sits down in a restaurant with someone who is not their spouse, could that restaurant sell the tape to a gossip outlet like TMZ?

I realize I am stretching things a bit here, but it is an interesting question. How much of our right to privacy do we give up just by leaving our house, whether virtually or physically? How much right to privacy should we expect to have in the public sphere? And will the legacy of our culture in the distant future be the massive amounts of surveillance images that we are leaving behind?

Also wanted to share this link to an intriguing map about surveillance from http://www.privacyinternational.org/. I was going to post a copy of the picture here, but decided in the light of copyright discussions this week, I would just link to it.