Week 6: Pondering Privacy Problems

Question 2- Blog
Coming from L.A., I think there was definitely a demand to be on top of the newest and greatest technology. This is why I created my Twitter account, just to see what all the fuss was about! I never really use it to post about myself, as I much prefer to see how other people are using it. I am more a user of Facebook, and I think that’s where the privacy issues are more problematic for most people.

Personally, I am pretty mindful of observing how other people will perceive my profile based on my photos, “about me”, statuses, etc. I have definitely gone through my photos thinking, “I wonder if these represent me in the way that I want”.
I think I’ve always been pretty mindful in that aspect of “privacy” and my profile is set to as many privacy settings as I can think of. In fact, my last name isn’t even on Facebook because when I first made it I was still hearing my mom’s voice repeating, “don’t give out too much personal information”, and therefore I just stuck with the letter “A” as my last name (haha).

Though the last name thing was from the beginning, it was actually a more recent thing that I adjusted the privacy settings on my Facebook. Last year (freshman year of college), I posted an album on my Facebook. My mom called me and said “did you know your album pops up when I google search you?” I was shocked, not that there was anything inappropriate about the album (most likely a comforting concept for my mom haha), but I couldn’t believe that even with my account set to private that I STILL had to manually adjust the setting separately for a photo album and that it didn’t just automatically put two and two together that my profile is private so obviously I want my photos private!

I think that “loss of privacy” is an accurate and inaccurate term. In a sense we have control of what is private and public; for example, if you join Facebook, you know whatever you put up there could be fair game. But in the other sense, there is a loss of privacy which was proved by my photo album story; even when we put in the effort to control how much is available to people, there are loopholes that we can not avoid. This is clearly a drawback to these social networking sites. But I believe there is always a good side and a bad side to every situation, and I am still an active Facebook user so for me the good outweighs the bad.

Even so, I do worry about my privacy, and that’s why I have those days where I filter through my Facebook and think “Is this how I want to be represented”; I know that by participating in these social networking sites, I am taking on responsibility to monitor what I do and do not want shared, and I think this concept is something that helps prevent me from “over sharing” something to other social network users.

Slang, "Sup", and Socializing

Week 5 Response

Free Topic

So this week, as I was thinking about what to write about for my blog, I became distracted by an email I saw my friend typing to a teacher. The email had abbreviated words (ex: “cuz”), which is something I would expect to receive from a friend in a text or on Facebook chat. I couldn’t help but consider how much of an impact technology has had on how we communicate, socialize, and even present ourselves through these technologies (especially in regards to grammar).
This makes me consider a research paper I wrote last year, where I decided to research the evolution of the “love letter” and communication during wartime. The research I found really correlates to what we are studying today. The way we convey information, and even what information we decide to convey, is very different than the content in previous times. Before, people wrote these long, eloquent letters that would be sent from overseas, with beautiful details and wonderful handwriting. Now, I receive texts saying “Waddup”. Was it really THAT time consuming to add an “h” and a space to spell “what’s up”?? (*haha*) which is hardly a real sentence to begin with! We have learned to shorthand, abbreviate, and incorporate slang into most of our conversations through technology. Mostly this occurs through texting and facebook chat/AIM/etc. I never thought of it before, but NOW it seems like such a silly concept that we couldn’t add the 7 extra characters.
I think the reason I started writing about this is because I realize how often I’ve seen my friends write emails to their teachers using text slang and always thinking it’s so funny how built in some of that can be. It’s like a bad habit that no one consciously realizes. I am even guilty at times; when I write my mom emails sometimes I get too lazy to capitalize the “I” haha as if that’s REALLY that hard! But on Facebook chat there’s no need for that since the person I am typing to is sending me responses like “cuz” instead of “because”.
In class when we had to write down a question and pass it around to one another, I wrote “do you believe that technology has negatively or positively affected our communication/social skills”? I got really interesting responses that I agreed with. Most of us agreed that technology did make people a bit negligent about their grammar and punctuation, even in more professional/school-oriented situations. But on the other hand (as there is always two sides to every story), technology has also enhanced our ability to communicate on a global scale. We can communicate instantaneously, which is obviously a big reason why short hand has become so popular, and with people from across the world that we would NEVER be able to get in contact to so quickly.
I realize that, yes many of us may accidentally forget to capitalize our “I” in an email, but technology can also benefit our communication skills in the sense that it can happen on a internationally. Also, the internet and other technologies have opened the door to personal expression and given a voice to many people who would never be able to experience that in the real world. As is true with most things, you can’t have the good without the bad!