Ethics and Information as a Commodity
Information has become a commodity. One cannot ignore the debates about information shared online on a personal basis, as well as the more serious situations such as Wikileaks and Bradley Manning.
I find myself conflicted when it comes to these discussions because the question is so much more than what information should be shared and should not be shared and by whom. On one hand, I believe that information should be free and available. While I understand the need to keep classified government documents from the public eye in order to protect the safety of others, part of me has cheered at the efforts of Wikileaks. I have cheered in part because I challenge the motives behind efforts made by any government to “protect” it’s own efforts and population. Consequentially, however, we must ask who specifically is/was affected by the release of said data.
On the other hand, the fact that our level of personal privacy is progressively disintegrating troubles me. The theft or usage of information gleaned from social platforms—often by the platforms themselves—disgusts me when efforts have been made by users to protect that information. Companies say that we voluntarily give them the information and it’s our responsibility to safeguard it. I support that. What I don’t support are the actions taken by these companies to exploit loopholes in order to get what they want in terms of social status by way of data hijacking.
What it comes down to are ethics and ethics applied at both the micro level and the macro level. Should people have the right to know what their government is doing—especially if it involves things such as torture or genocide? I think so. Should people have the right to pilfer through your search history on Google simply because they can gain access to it? I think not. These are two questions of ethical behavior on opposite sides of the spectrum whose answers might mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.
Ethics and context will forever be at opposition with one another. No matter how much the world would love for life’s happenings to remain black and white, the experience of life itself is subjective and conditional. In terms of the transfer and distribution of information, should we not be questioning the factors and environment of a given scenario before passing judgment? Why then do we fail to do this more oft than not?
Technology is awesome… or not?
I have a love-hate relationship with technology. On one hand, it fascinates me to no end. I’m endlessly amazed at the way in which it can bring strangers together for positive ends—whether it’s via Couchsurfing or Twitter or Crowdrise. I love the fact that something awful can happen in the lives of one of my volunteers at the studio and within minutes, via email, everyone can be notified and people come to the aid of someone they know very little outside of said yoga studio. I love the fact that we can have a global conversation about political issues such as WikiLeaks or tuition rates at schools and universities worldwide all via Twitter.
What gets me down are the anthropological and cultural consequences of technology in terms of human sociology and abstract thought. On one hand, technology and the internet have the ability to stimulate the brain and expose us to different cultures and ideas. Yet, on the other hand, the internet is becoming the primary source of information dissemination and I can’t help but feel that it simultaneously conditions us to be sheep and is entirely biased when it comes to the search providers. Technology has allowed us to become lazy in using our brains to do simple tasks such as calculate tips or find our way around an unfamiliar city using our memories from the last time we were “here”. Will we retain any of the information we pick up when researching something that interests us or will be trust the computer to be our memory for us? Will that be the future of the human brain—entirely dependent upon technology to exist and function?
Google and New Imperialism
Sometimes it seems that Google is simply a cutesy version of the government with their endless supply of information and their simultaneously endless and ubiquitous supply of funds, which appear to be used for a new acquisition every other week -roughly eighteen this year alone. I mean, seriously, where do they get all of this money? Is this the new, shiny, modern version of imperialism for the 21st century? Instead of racing to take over as many countries as possible, it’s, “Let’s see how many companies we can acquire and add to our media empire!” Google can be the government, Apple can be The Church with Steve Jobs as the Pope and Silcon Valley the new version of Rome, and Facebook is some off-kilter version of the phonebook on steroids.
It begs to note, however, that Google has become the primary information medium. Yes, it’s thorough, but can the lens of Google be entirely trusted? Should it be trusted? Traditional imperialism was about conquering the world through the procurement of land, which led to the concept of certain nations as “world powers”. If Google serves as the example of new imperialism, what does that mean for the classic definitions of government, community, and communication? Information equals power, so what kind of power does that yield for the chief supplier of such knowledge?
