My vision for the future of digital communications is for better accessibility, higher usage, and privacy protection.
The aspect I would like to see expand globally is the access and usage to the Internet, right now only 40 percent of the world population has internet access and I would like to see it get to 100 percent. Internet divide is what cuts people off from family, or prevent business arrangements. I believe it will better us as individuals to have access and being able to use the internet no matter where we are in the world.
The aspects I would like to see change is the issue of “privacy”, as I want more access and usage worldwide. The problem with this along with the issues of today privacy policies, it would mean more sensitive data falling in the hands of the information rich.
How we can change that in the future, is if our government steps in and put in place policies that protect people online life, thus making those platforms reevaluate and restructure their companies’ policies to fit within the confines of the law. I found an article “UN committee calls on countries to protect right to privacy” that’s show the work in progress that is being made to achieve this goal, it talks about the UN committee reaching out to countries to hold private companies responsible to respect human rights when dealing with personal data.
I am optimistic that this is something that will come into play, I believe the government will enact policies in order to protect their citizen’s information. Andrejevic used Gehl quote to illustrate the true cost of misleading policies, “In a typical Web 2.0 site, there is a surface, where users are free to produce content and make affective connections, and there is a hidden depth, where new media capitalists convert user-generated content into exchange-values” (279) Here we can see that “free” isn’t really free and the price we pay we are unaware of it, the invisible exchange of our sensitive data for money. And if they don’t do anything to prevent that their citizens would be a watering hole for new media capitalists.
1) Do you think it is necessary for the government to step in or do you think companies should just be more ethical about their privacy policy?
2) Would better access to the Internet worldwide change where you decide to live?
To answer question # 2, I do think having a better access worldwide internet would help me to decide where would I like to live. I believe that it will save me time and money. Maybe the future is VR. I recently used the VR set on the New York Times website to watch the news, and I liked the experienced because it felt like I was there. So, maybe real estate businesses in the future would be able to give VR tours or their houses locally and internationally. Great post.
For question #1, I think it is a little bit of both. I think companies could learn to be more ethical when it comes to privacy rights, and government should step in as a last resort. Meaning, if companies are not going to do the right think with online user’s privacy, the government will have to step in and have them abide by certain rules.