In today's modern society, people are used to the convenience brought by informational technologies, and we now enjoy things we couldn't imagine a few years ago. For example, through our mobile phone, we learn news and events around the world, explore outdoor activities around us, or we can learn about the traffic in the city by Google Map. In this modern world, information has become an essential component, and information has been extracted from every corner of our lives. We want to do more with our data, and we study more and build more convenient technologies.
At the same time, information sharing has become crucial to us because it's the fuel of information technologies. Suppose all navigation app, such as Google map and Apple map, stops sharing location to others, then many of us would get lost in the street; If everyone stops sharing their posts and photos, then there's no Facebook or Snapchat anymore. Information sharing is important to us, and how well our information is shared depends on how transparent they are. Normally, the more transparent the information becomes, the more we learn from it and use it.
What is information transparency? According to Turilli Floridi's definition: "It's the disclosed information constitutes a complete picture of the state of the organization at a given point in time". In other words, information transparency represents the way we explain things to others.
You might have noticed that there's a problem with information transparency: What if someone lies? or what if someone shares only half of the truth? As Turilli says: "The problem is that the elaboration processes that have produced such information usually remain opaque." In other words, information providers decide how their information becomes transparent, and often time they are not telling the whole truth. For example, Facebook tells everyone they have complete access and control of their personal information. It sounds like a good user account policy, but they never tell you that all your information is collected and analyzed. Basically, When do you like or share a post, or watch a video, Facebook knows them all. It has an algorithm to collect all your online activities, summarize them, and try to predict what kind of merchandise you may like. Then they contact merchants that sell those merchandise to give you adds. No wonder Facebook always know your favorite brands, right?
You might have noticed that there's a problem with information transparency: What if someone lies? or what if someone shares only half of the truth? As Turilli says: "The problem is that the elaboration processes that have produced such information usually remain opaque." In other words, information providers decide how their information becomes transparent, and often time they are not telling the whole truth. For example, Facebook tells everyone they have complete access and control of their personal information. It sounds like a good user account policy, but they never tell you that all your information is collected and analyzed. Basically, When do you like or share a post, or watch a video, Facebook knows them all. It has an algorithm to collect all your online activities, summarize them, and try to predict what kind of merchandise you may like. Then they contact merchants that sell those merchandise to give you adds. No wonder Facebook always know your favorite brands, right?
In today's modern society, we are hungry for information, and we want to use the information to study, to learn, and to understand the world better. But we must be careful of those "half" transparent information because they are chosen and often biased for the benefit of their provider.
Zhongfu,
ReplyDeleteI liked the topic, and you made some good points regarding the benefits of sharing information. You did a nice job of rephrasing Floridi's concepts in a more digestible way, but I would've liked to have known your stance a little sooner. Your conclusion was solid, but think the post would benefit greatly by stating that stance earlier.
There is a clear improvement from the first draft. You provide more examples of these informational technologies that simultaneously make our lives easier but also take advantage of us. You also show a deeper understanding of the subject by showing how cookies works and how these companies are able to market products to us. Moving forward, attempt to use less pictures to make the layout a bit more pleasing to the reader.
ReplyDeleteTo Zhongfu,
ReplyDeleteYou definitely improved from your first draft as your topic was much more clear and concise and the blog post had a clear, drawn narrative as well. The readings were tied in much more eloquently and transitioned much better when you changed topics in the post. I like your development on the issue of constantly connected information but there could be more analysis on your thoughts about it, and drawing more comparisons. Overall, it seemed you had a much better gauge of the topic and information you were presenting. Visuals could've been more informative and related to the topic.