The Scariness of Technology

    I looked at some of the TED talks and they're very informative. However, nothing compares to the way I reacted to a Netflix documentary known as the Anti-social Network. I hope it's okay for my professor if I go in-depth about this documentary because I think the same things I mention directly apply to what he's looking for.

    While having Corney sketches mixed within it the documentary, they conclude and become very impactful among everything else the documentary tells its audience. They revolve around kids trying to go without their phones, and how it literally breaks some of these people's mentality to not have them. The impact on children can't be understated as social media is essentially the other half of your world, or how you view your world depending on the ways you look at it.  Either scenario is bad, and I'm aware that I grew up at the beginning of the social media stage without being fully immersed, and I believe I can say the same for my age group of Highschoolers. However, the picture they are painting now is terrifying, and kids need to be aware of how much of the social media activity controls their social life.

    This whole picture that is painted of Highschool life is directly intertwined with very serious and dark interviews with the people who created these original foundations for the applications we see in use today. I want to address how crazy it is that only 8-10 major corporations are involved with scary levels of awareness of each and every user on their platforms. We learn that these people have the best of intentions, and can't deny that social media and the applications that are based around them have had an immensely positive impact on our lives, in terms of efficient information acquisition. We reach a point where things have gone too far in some places and lead to thoughts of these kinds of technologies being too advanced for our own good. The way they put is that this would be the AI takeover of our lifetime, but it doesn't involve killer terminators and Arnold Swarntzenagor but overexposure of our privacy and information where every company could have the knowledge to be a danger to our communities.

    At the end of the day, it comes down to what each application has known about you. In the skits of the children in high school they are controlled by here phones to take as much time away from the kids as possible to get them to be using their applications. They send notifications accordingly and learn more about you every second. These are computers that are generating all of these statistics, and the knowledge these computers possess, are the issues. These kids are sucked into their phone and their phone is learning. We need to be aware of how much we are using our devices, how much time they want to take from us, and how much they know about us. Your phone controls a lot of your information, and if we don't overcome that, it could spell trouble.

    If we stick together and keep a level head and a clear mind. We can overcome the path these companies have put us on. Now I'm going to go watch these ted talks and see how much they're reinforcing these issues.