School Stuff

OTS2

TV10 // On The Spot 2

One of the most valued privileges we possess as humans is privacy, and yet we feel the need to update and improve technology so much and so often that privacy is almost unattainable in this day and age. Devices and programs like Siri, Alexa, Google Home, sink their teeth into our personal files, our pockets, our homes. Despite an outcry of conspiracies, horror stories, and dystopian predictions that are all too similar to today's society making their way into the news, the internet, and even literature, we continue to allow these devices into our lives. In George Orwell's 1984, technology is a vessel that directly imports video and audio footage of people's everyday lives to the government, an act that is tokened by the phrase "Big Brother is Watching You." The difference, perhaps, between this Orwellian dystopia and society today, is that our fear lies not within the government, but in advertising. We refute the idea of propaganda, and yet we allow devices into our lives that are created for this exact purpose. In 2017, Burger King released a commercial in which they voice the phrase, "OK Google, what's in the Whopper Burger?" Evidently, many consumers reported their Google Home devices reacting to this trigger phrase and then proceeding to state the ingredients as listed on Wikipedia. If companies can hijack our home devices by uttering a simple phrase in a commercial, what's stopping them from embedding propaganda and advertisements into every facet of our lives? In an email exchange in 2018, Apple stated that while they as a company do not release consumer information, they "cannot monitor what developers do with the customer data they have collected, or prevent the onward transfer of that data." This means that when we allow apps access to our cameras, microphones, and contacts, companies like Apple can't stop them from selling or using our data to target us with propaganda. That really makes you wonder why developers want our information, and what they're doing with it. Next time, I'd think twice before pressing that "allow" button.