This may sound quite cynical but I no longer believe in privacy. Privacy is defined as “A state in which one is not observed or disturbed by other people”. I don’t remember the last time I felt I had privacy. In today’s day and age, there is no such thing as privacy.
This week’s lecture particularly interested me. The lecture focused on the new extreme levels of observation. For example, “Whereas parents who lent or bought their children cars once had to rely on the police to enforce the laws … interactive devices allow parents to watch more closely than the police ever could”.
Can you think of a time and place where you have full privacy? I can’t… there are hidden security cameras almost everywhere, our TV’s can now record background chatter, everyday reward cards are giving out our details to third parties, the list goes on forever. Not to mention the immense amount of electronic devices that can be hacked into.
Hacking is an intriguing concept for me. The below TED talk discusses privacy and hacking in an interesting limelight:
The first few minutes of this TED talk shows a clip from a tech security conference with cybersecurity expert or hacker Keren Elazari demonstrating how he has worked out a security flaw in two different models of automated teller machines (ATMs). He publicly demonstrates his ability to make these machines spit out paper money. Elazari says in her TED talk “Barnaby Jack could have easily turned to a career criminal, but he chose to show the world his research instead.” This highlights that while there are many hackers hacking for the wrong reasons there are some like Jack who are simply pointing out vulnerabilities in the devices we use to live.
Nathaniel Hawthorne said, “by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time…the round globe is a vast… brain, instinct with intelligence”. I think this quote perfectly summarises today’s expansion logic of information networks and the phenomena of mobile connectivity and big data. It compares the globe to a brain because today’s borderless interconnectivity acts like a nerve pumping information around the world.
The lecturer asked us if we think surveillance is becoming routine in this weeks lecture. I think yes. Surveillance is a part of my everyday; is it part of yours?
ellenahoban 