“if Google knows I’m sick before I do, is it ethically obligated to tell me? And if so—how does it tell me?”

This quote is from an article written by Mark Wilson called, “The UX Of Ethics: Should Google Tell You If You Have Cancer?”

My immediate response to that question is another question: Why and how does Google know I’m sick? The question forces us to face an uncomfortable truth that Google knows more about us and our thoughts, habits, lifestyles, desires, fears, etc. than we would ever want them to. And not only do they know it, but once they have the data, it is theirs to keep as long as they like. We generally tend to only think of data collection in the simple terms of what we search for and how often we visit sites, but the advances in technology and the always-on lifestyles we now lead lend to much more in-depth analysis. Wilson gives examples like, “Apple could measure if my finger taps were slower in iOS to flag a sudden cognitive decline. An accelerometer in an Android phone could easily track a sudden shift in my gate.”

To me, this is a level of intimacy that I would never desire to have with a massive company like Google. I do not necessarily think Google wishes me harm, but I do not trust them in any way whatsoever. Their agenda, their interests, and their narrative of what is or is not acceptable to do in the modern world almost invariably does not align with my own. That being said, I cannot speak for all people. In Wilson’s article, the general consensus from ethicists and doctors was, “Google, along with Facebook, Apple, and their peers, should offer consumers the chance to opt-in to medical alerts.” But knowing Google, this will more likely come in the form of having the option to opt-out. Having learned earlier in the semester about the power of defaults, I see this as another opportunity for Google to enlarge their portfolio on each individual user. Just think of the power of a search engine that simultaneously knows your health status and is paid millions in advertising dollars by pharmaceutical companies. I can see it now, “We’ve noticed you’ve been feeling depressed recently. We would like to recommend talking to your doctor about a subscription for Prozac. Using the link provided will give you a 6 month free trial.” Regardless of the benevolent perception Google wishes to maintain, they are ultimately a for-profit company that is continuously seeking ways to expand their reach and revenue.

Another important point the article brings up is that of the ever-increasing ability of artificial intelligence (AI), “As our lives grow more and more automated by the cloud, systems will be making all sorts of decisions on our behalf—sometimes out of safety, and sometimes just out of convenience. Understanding how these systems are thinking and acting on our behalf is crucial to trusting them.” Imagine that your phone has been tracking your gate, how often you run, your varying speed, etc., and one day you get a notification telling you not to go for a run because you have a high risk of getting a knee injury based on the data they’ve collected. Another example would be going to McDonald’s. Based on Google’s access to your credit card information and purchase history, you receive a notification telling you that you should not eat McDonald’s because you’ve had too much sugar recently and you’re close to getting adult-onset diabetes.

Some may praise the gods of technology at this thought, realizing we’ve finally come to the point that we no longer have to think for ourselves, consciously maintain healthy lifestyles, and can focus on the important things like having fun and not being too stressed about anything at all. For me, this sounds like the beginnings of a dystopian future similar to that depicted in the book, “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley.

Oblivious to (or more likely in spite of) my feelings on this matter (which I suspect are shared by many thinking individuals), Google will continue to charge ahead in whatever way they can. I am both nervous and excited about where technology will take us in the coming decades. Needless to say, it will be interesting.

http://www.fastcodesign.com/3058943/the-ux-of-ethics-should-google-tell-you-if-you-have-cancer

In the past few weeks I had the unfortunate experience of learning the difference between cyber harassment and cyber stalking. Unfortunate not because learning it was unhelpful or boring, but because it even exists. The sole fact that such activity goes on and requires lingual differentiation is disgusting. Danielle Citron in her book, Hate Crimes in Cyberspace, briefly summarizes the difference: “Although definitions of these terms vary, cyber harassment is often understood to involve the intentional infliction of substantial emotional distress accomplished by online speech that is per sis tent enough to amount to a “course of conduct” rather than an isolated incident. Cyber stalking usually has a more narrow meaning: an online “course of conduct” that either causes a person to fear for his or her safety or would cause a reasonable person to fear for his or her safety.” The extent to which these forms of cyber bullying go are beyond belief.
As someone who has used the internet since I can first remember, I have always been aware that being online comes with a responsibility to use caution and wisdom. It can be a dangerous place and most people are only looking out for themselves. I have witnessed cyber bullying many times, but for some reason it has never really made the impression that the sources we learned in class did. I think the difference is that for the most part what I have seen appears impersonal. YouTubers threatening each other and calling each other nasty names, friends on Facebook giving each other a hard time, or even tweeting something mean at a personal account. All these can be linked to a specific person but they don’t have the level of depth that cyber stalking might. They don’t make you think, “This person explicitly wants to hurt me. Not because of who I am or what I’ve said, but they have a personal vendetta against me as a person.” That kind of thinking is disheartening as a human being.
The worst part, is that there is no good solution to this problem. Because of the anonymity and ease of access to the internet, the only course of correction would be through censorship, limitation of free speech, and government surveillance. I am fully against all of those and almost nothing would be able to persuade me otherwise. I would rather have an anonymous idiot stalking me than the government looking over my shoulder telling me what I can and can’t say. That being said, the only other solution I can think of to stop cyber bullying is just raising better people. But raising citizens to be empathetic and compassionate is easier said than done, otherwise I hope we already would have done it.
I do have a suggestion for one small step in the right direction. Since we cannot control the bullies and their abuse of others, what we can control is our reaction to it. Clearly some of these instances can cause serious ramifications in real life: women being sexually harassed at their homes or workplaces, people have nude photos distributed to their friends and families, identity theft, possible mental trauma from constant online harassment, and the list goes on. The people that have things like that happen absolutely need a place for their voice to be heard and they need resources to help them cope and recover from whatever the abuse is. But what needs to stop is serial victimhood. I have seen recently a rise in serial victimhood and I believe it is a cancer to society. It is almost trendy to be a victim of something. What many of these people do not realize is by drawing attention to themselves for something not worth complaining about, they take away attention and resources from real victims. This extends beyond the cyber realm and into all aspects of life. Of course the line needs to be drawn somewhere between serious and ridiculous instances of harassment/hate/assault/violence or whatever it is, and that is a hard thing to do, but it needs to be done. I think we have somehow created a culture of thin-skinned people that are easily offended, immature, attention-seeking, and often very spoiled. Many of these people are probably the ones who have become so bitter in their own lives that they go online and take out their frustration and anger by harassing or stalking someone so they can feel powerful. All of this comes from a severe lack of character.
For more reading on this I will link to a favorite essay of mine written by none other than the great American Theodore Roosevelt:

http://www.foundationsmag.com/tr-character.html

Podcasts are an enigma to me. They have been around since the 1990s, and have had a user-base since then, but seemingly have been unable to gain the kind of momentum to really become a household term. People either listen to podcasts or they don’t. There does not seem to be very many people who just dabble in podcasts here and there. That trend seems to be changing in the past few years though, as ways of downloading and streaming podcasts become more numerable and more easy to access.

For me, during the days before the smartphone, I never listened to podcasts for two reasons. One, I was just too lazy. My MP3 player (yes, I was one of those freaks who had an MP3 player not an Ipod) only had a certain amount of memory and I usually kept it almost filled with music, my number one audio priority. And even if I did want to put a podcast on me player, having to download the podcast, remove a certain amount of music, and then upload the podcast just for a single listen (does anyone listen to podcasts more than once?) seemed like more work than it was worth. Also, listening to podcasts on a computer rather than my MP3 player didn’t seem like a viable option either. I did not yet have a laptop, and was limited to the use of the family desktop, not exactly ideal for listening to a file that may be an hour long.

The second reason I never listened to podcasts before the smartphone era was just plain ignorance. I knew what podcasts were but I had almost no knowledge about what types of podcasts were available. I’m sure there were podcasts out there that would have interested me at the time but I did not have any friends that listened to podcasts to direct me to them and I never spent the time researching. So looking back, the reason I never listened to podcasts is my fault, but that has changed.

Ease of access changes everything. Once smartphones could stream from the internet and once websites starting creating apps that make finding their content even easier, podcasts seemed much more friendly. I also think that pricing of Apple products instilled the mindset in my generation that computer memory is a scarce resource and must be used sparingly and wisely. That being said, I never wanted to commit X amount of megabytes to something I would use only once. But with the availability of streaming, I have no quandaries about podcasts.

My first podcast addiction was like many other listeners: Serial. My friend introduced Serial to me on a road trip to Montreal and I was hooked. There is something simultaneously relaxing and gripping about the way Serial is presented. The absolute in-action besides keeping your ears open and tuned in lets me drift into a mindset that could be described as tranquil. But the story itself was fascinating and well-told. After the first season of Serial I did not actively look for more podcasts but have been open to them when they come across my path. I really enjoy listening to them while doing a mindless task like folding laundry. I know that I will continue to listen to podcasts and I am glad I was introduced to them.

-Ryan Frawley

I just did a presentation in class on the future of TV and the role digital programming like Netflix and Amazon Video are going to play in our entertainment-led lives. So while I could talk about what the studies say and what the statistics show, here I want to relate my personal experience and predictions.

Television is an international phenomenon, just like fast food is. And just like fast food, I think that while television is available worldwide, it is used and abused more in America than anywhere else. We have perfected the culture of consumption here in the land of the free. We consume everything from food to clothing to vehicles, but most prominently, we consume digital media.

“The average American watches more than five hours of live television every day…The average American then spends another 32 minutes a day on time-shifted television, an hour using the Internet on a computer, an hour and seven minutes on a smartphone and two hours, 46 minutes listening to the radio.” (http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/average-american-watches-5-hours-tv-day-article-1.1711954)

I thank God that I am not part of that demographic, at least as far as the watching live television goes. I probably spend much more time on average on my phone and on the internet though. The reason I am thankful for that is from the observations I’ve made about myself over the years. When I consume more television in a day I am consistently more lethargic, I am unable to focus or concentrate as well for the rest of the day, my mind defaults to haziness and a desire to either continue binge-watching television or go to sleep, and I am more prone to eat junk food. Basically I become a lazier, lesser version of myself.  I am not saying this applies to all people, but I have found it to be true personally. If I want to be productive on any given day, I have to actively avoid watching TV. This includes live television, Netflix, etc. And when I do consume this type of media, I almost always find myself lacking in self-control and watching more than I initially wanted to limit myself to. I tell myself I’ll just watch one episode of Parks and Rec on Netflix with my lunch then I’ll start my homework. Two hours later I have watched four episodes and feel much less inclined to work and much more inclined to procrastination. What I am saying is this: Digital media VERY easily becomes an addiction. An addiction to which the American population has grown especially comfortable with and susceptible to. While I know it would be foolish to say this definitively for all peoples, I am confident that it is rule that works for the majority of the population.

Now, how does this fit into the future of live television versus digital programming? I do not think that television is dead or dying, but it is shrinking. Television has been the giant in entertainment and information for a long time, competing only with books, magazines, newspapers, and radio until the birth of the internet. It had little competition, so just like the only lion in a savanna,  it grew very fat and happy and lazy. So with the innovation of services like Netflix and Amazon video, who cater almost perfectly to their millennial audience, television service providers will lose membership, and thus shrink. But I do not think it will actually die anytime soon. It has been king for a long time, and will not give up the crown easily.

Internet streaming has not yet reached the level of ease that it is preferred for live events such as sports games and political affairs. That being said, television will always trump internet until it has, because television is all about convenience. Have you ever witnessed a sports fan trying to watch their game and almost going insane at the slightest inconvenience or obstacle, such as dead batteries in the remote?  People watch TV so that they don’t have to think. The mindlessness is relieving. So, digital programming and internet streaming will not overpower traditional television until they can reach the same level of mindlessness as and convenience as flopping down on the couch, pressing the power button, and zoning out.

-Ryan Frawley