The article “Should Google Tell You if You Have Cancer?” really drew my attention. While reading this I just felt pretty uncomfortable. I really hate how companies can keep all this information about you. I think that it is in no way Google’s right to let me know that I might be ill. I think that if someone were already Googleing symptoms they are already aware that they should probably go see a doctor. I do not think Google should be able to diagnose me. Doctor’s offices already have a crazy amount of laws that are placed to protect privacy. Patients deserve to have privacy and Google taking tabs on what someone is searching hoping to diagnose something just seems like a huge invasion of that privacy. I think that Google has already gone a little too far. It already knows my schedule and warns me when I have an upcoming concert that I am attending. I think it is weird that Google knows where I will be on certain nights. And now they want the ability to track my search history to try to diagnose me? It all just seems like way too much for me.
What this really comes down to in my head the question of whether or not you would take the opportunity to know when you will die. I would not want to know. I’d rather live in ignorance. I do not want Google to tell me without any sort of warning or anything. Maybe if they added a feature that warns you first (“We think you might be sick, click here to find out for sure”). I just think it would be really uncomfortable to go on my computer one morning to check the news or Reddit or Facebook and the first thing that pops up is “Google thinks you have pancreatic cancer. Go see a doctor”. That would totally ruin my morning.
One quote from the reading that stuck out to me was “As a result of the negative press, Google stopped running Flu Trends internally, and handed the data to third-party academics, instead”. I think this sums up how people feel towards them getting involved with diseases and treatments. People are creeped out about it. When they tried to do something like this before they ended up stopping it because of a great deal of criticism.

Digital Reflection

Podcasting is a medium that I stumbled upon while working at an accounting firm as an intern. The workdays there were very long for me but fortunately I got to use headphones to listen to music or whatever. So after about two days straight of listening to just about every song I had on my phone, I got really bored. So I started to listen to stand up comedy, which then led me to realizing many of my favorite stand ups have their own podcasts. This got me really into podcasts. I use it primarily for funny podcasts. My favorites being, Comedy Bang Bang, Monday Morning Podcast with Bill Burr, The Joe Rogan Experience, You Made it Weird, and Doug Loves Movies. I do not listen to anything besides comedy or interview (I occasionally listen to WTF with Marc Maron or The Nerdist) podcasts. These hour to sometimes two-hour long podcasts made the workday way more fun. Hearing comedians talk and interact with each other and their friends was a phenomenal way to pass the time and I became a fan of podcasting. I still religiously try to listen to all the shows I listed. To me podcasting is all about comedy. But after class I realized that it could be so much more.
I have always heard about Serial but have never really given it chance. I know that is what really made podcasting as a medium take off and hit the mainstream but I just can’t for some reason force myself to listen to it and this may in fact just be the inner hipster in me trying to be different and not conform and listen to what everyone else listens too. But in class they also discussed that podcasts can also be directed towards certain races. Podcasting is really for everyone. There are so many shows that every person could probably find something they would enjoy listening too. Although I tend to only listen to comedy-based programs I do admire that people have made really educational or interesting podcasts and that there is really no standard format for a show. A podcast could be about anything and be as long as they need to be. It’s not like radio that has strict schedules that they abide by. I have listened to a podcast with Joe Rogan that was near 5 hours long. I did not listen to it all at once, but the fact that something like that even exists makes me believe that podcasting has no limits. When the second podcasting reading said that podcasting is very much like radio except one can do it from home, it caught my attention. I do not agree with this at all. Maybe I don’t listen to enough radio programs to really know but the podcasting medium has no bounds. It can be about anything; it is uncensored and has no restrictions on what they can talk about. I very much agreed with the quote, “Perhaps one of the most notable departures these podcasts make from traditional media conventions is their embrace of a free-flowing, flexible, and conversational approach, including the use of a wide range of vernaculars”. I think this sums up why podcasts have become something I really love. It is flexible and it just seems more real and conversational. While listening to podcasts I get to feel like I really know the hosts and even the guests personally even though I have never met them. This is all just because I get to listen to really interesting or funny conversations of theirs at least once a week. I think that podcasting is definitely a great medium and will hopefully continue to gain in popularity and push the boundaries of the medium.

When I first learned about YouTube I couldn’t get enough of it. I loved the immediacy of it and the easiness of it. It started to deeply cut into the time that I would normally use for television. YouTube made it so easy to find really anything I could possibly want to watch. But I still ended up watching TV. I would watch afternoon TV, which is generally reruns of shows and stuff I have already seen, because it was relaxing. I can turn my brain off and the TV would never stop displaying images and sound. I don’t even need to be actively thinking about what I am looking at or hearing. But YouTube demanded my attention. If one video ends I have to make the constant decision to change the video to something else. YouTube needed me to be paying attention. Also YouTube does not allow me to stream live TV shows the times they air or watch sports live. So even though YouTube cut into my normal TV times, I still ended up using the TV quite a bit.

But, everything changed with Netflix and Amazon. Now practically anything I would want to watch can being accessed on both of these platforms and I can use them on my TV so my cable box became nothing more than a dust collector. I do not even have cable at my apartment here. I strictly use YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon to watch whatever I want to watch. So this leads to the question on whether or not the rise of YouTube, Amazon, and Netflix have killed TV. Really the only things TV has going for it right now is news and sports and older users still watching. A lot of older people, like my parents, still watch cable TV almost daily. It would really take a lot for them to get rid of it. So it is people who have gotten used to the TV that still use it primarily over things like Netflix and YouTube. TV has to start finding ways to compete with the programing available to Netflix, Amazon, and YouTube offer. They are all creating original series now that have gotten a lot of popularity. This means that TV has to start finding more quality programs to put on air because people will not put up with watching a bad or poorly written show, if then can watch something they actually like online. TV is dying and they need to start being more creative with their programming if they want people to plug back in and use their cable boxes again.