What’s your own vision of the future of digital communications?

In the future, I see mass surveillance being taken to a different level. People may have video cameras installed in them that can watch and record everything you see and hear. An example of this is the episode of Black Mirror below: (good episode, btw!)

The reason for this is because Government agents and other security type personnel’s (like airport security, for example) would be able to rewind and see what you have been doing. This would be a way to watch the people even more. And people may be okay with it because they want the perks that would come with it, it can benefit them.  In Black Mirror, you can delete what you please, but if this is made anything like the Internet, we know that nothing is permanently deleted.

In Mark Andrejevic’s article Surveillance and Alienation in the Online Economy, he speaks upon surveillance in the online economy so that corporations can advertise to us, make profit off us, and so fourth. But the idea of the paper still stands: surveillance is a form of power being sought out, and for those in power to control the people, like stated in this quote: “the paper emphasizes the importance of supplementing privacy critiques with approaches that identify the ways in which new forms of surveillance represent a form of power that seeks to manage and control consumer behavior” (1).

What present aspects of digital communications would you like to see continue and even expand?

I would love to see the language interpreter tool progress. There is such a thing as one, for example Systran, but is it accurate? Here is the site for Systran, and here is a blog from them.

There are many phrases and words that mean different things, varying on what languages they are, so an exact translation, word for word (like translation sites do, for example) would not help much. A communication technology that would translate words as sentences and phrases together would be better, if possible.

What aspects would you like to see change and what would be required to enact those changes (policy, technologies, norms, ethics, behavior, etc)?

I would like to see the violation of our privacy change. I think we should be entitled to privacy when using our phones or the Internet to send messages and make phone calls or video chats. The changes that would have to be enacted are changes in policies for websites and laws, change in norms and behavior as well. The Government will always try to make themselves seem to have a good reason for violating the privacy of the people.

Do you think if enough people protest and refuse to use certain sites, along with using a private browser, the Government and companies would stop watching us the way they do now?

A tool that translates language sounds great, but will it cause something terrible? Something like the death of learning a new language?