Internet and Privacy

The use of internet has been increasing over a decade. Almost 40% of world population are using internet. Not only developing countries but also developed countries are significantly showed the growing of internet users. It means that our world is becoming smaller when in the future everybody worldwide, virtually is connected through internet. World is only a global village now.

Internet users share a lot of information on internet. There is data explosion which is being produced and accessed. In 2012, totally 2.5 quintillion bytes of data was produced daily. More than 2 million search queries are being done every minute by Google, more than 100 million emails are sent every minute and 350 GB of data is processed on Facebook every minute. 

Privacy becomes the new concern. Privacy itself can be simply explained as the right to be autonomous or have some space. A lot of people use internet service without being aware about the issue of privacy. We don’t really know what happen to the data we leave, where the data is gone and who will access the data. The fact is we create digital footprint when we use internet.  

Do we have control of our privacy? David Brin argues that privacy is impossible. According to Brin (1998) in his book that “powerful (government and corporation) will have privacy-invasive technology”. He argues that ideally both the powerful and the common people have the same capacity to monitor and check each other. It is a basic human nature that people enjoy dominating and gain some advantages from other. So, there is a skeptical view in the future about internet privacy issue. The equal transparent access of internet is still a utopia dream.   

Reference:
Brin, D (1998) The Transparent Society. Harvard Journal of Law & Technology 12(2), pp. 514.

Artificial Intelligence

In the history of humanity, brain has been given special place in which all of our life is rely on. Our brain is the most powerful tool compared with smarter computer. In spite of all of its amazing functions, we still find the limitation of our brain. Today, some efforts are being made to improve the function of our biological brain. The collaboration between science and modern technology are working together to develop digital mind.

Now day, human capacity plays vital role. Humans are still the main important resource. We still depend on human to operate robot or machine. Humans are still the master behind the machine. Consequently, there is some chances to have some mistakes. Human error still occurs as the problem. As an example, we dream about smart car that can reduce the possibility of accident.

In the future robot might think like human. Intellectualism is not only possessed by human. Machine would be able to perform more complex task. Robots are becoming more alive when they can have the capacity to “think” analytically and solve problem. Even today, we can find the growing of daily devices that work autonomously, example robot vacuum. The replication of human artificial life in laboratory improves better chance of machine to become more independent.  

The development of Artificial Intelligence also brings fundamental impact to our life. Human life will be radically changed. Our desire to create smarter machine make our future unpredictable. There is dilemmatic problem. Will we still be able to control the machine? It is fundamental question because we cannot tell what a smarter machine will do, because if we could, we would already be that smart. The smarter machine will be a new era and become common. At the, this is can be seen as the end of human era. Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended (Vinge, 2003).

Reference:

Mahoney, M(2003). The Social Impact of Artificial Intelligence [Online]. Available at: http://mattmahoney.net/singularity.html [accesed: 12 November 2013].

Ubiquitous Computing and Surveillance society

Have you ever wondered if our physical world totally interconnected with data or virtual world? It will happen when there is a fusion between physical and digitally world. Andreas Schleicher said ““The next step is to Internetable physical objects — connecting people with things and even things with things. The Internet of Things will enable connectivity not just between people and their computing devices, but between actual, everyday things. By enabling connectivity for virtually any physical object that can potentially offer a message, the Internet of Things will affect every aspect of life and business in ways that used to be the realm of fantasy — or even beyond fantasy.” South Korea is an example. In Seoul, the ubiquitous city or Digital Media City is being implemented.

Future life style in human history is about to start. Ubiquitous computing covers a lot of aspects in our daily live from surveillance system to microchips for food. Some people say it is smart living system. The reason why it is called smart living system is rely on its capability to recognize our needs. Everything is contained in small sticker that will recognize our preferences for example, what food we like or book we would like to read.

Ubiquitous computing leads the emerging of surveillance society. Entire environment is merged together with internet. People as well as physical object would become readable. With the use of wireless electronic devices, people information and their location will be stored and easily monitored. The chance is getting bigger now that everything could be exposed. 

Ubiquitous computing brings an impact to the construction of social life. Society is become synchronous. Our surrounding will support whatever we like. Then, it will cause interdependence relation between human and the object. At the end, it fundamentally changes social practice. The fact is human is still human who enjoy the domination over another. The phenomena of ubiquitous computing and surveillance society provide more chance to be misused by wrong power to monopolize the game and gain some advantage of it.

Reference:
Taylor, D. (2007) Ubiquitous Computing May Build Ultimate Surveillance Society. [Online]. Available at: http://www.infowars.com/orwellian-ubiquitous-computing-may-build-ultimate-surveillance-society/ [Accesed: 10 November 2013]

Should Internet be Free ?

Should internet be free?

This question is really dilemmatic. We firstly can trace back to the origin of internet itself to get better understanding about this topic. Today, approximately 30 percent of world population is internet user. The term internet emerged in 1974 and had its utopian dream to create a transformative technology for better world.

One of the basic aspects leading to this globalized world is technology. Transfer of information and the way people communicate is getting much easier. Internet has significant influence to the future of mankind. It brings a lot of temptation that can be seen as the threat to some aspects like cultural, economic and political. For political and cultural impact, internet can be seen as the source of power to communicate agenda and influence other. Internet is the new arena of struggle of soft power. The hegemony of westernization value and capitalism will affect people life. Collectivism society is replaced to western individualism society.

Internet also challenges traditional state sovereignty. There is interconnectivity among every single person across state boundary. This phenomenon creates new identity of virtual society that can express and cooperate without being represented of political system of traditional state process. Every person is the representative of his own self. It creates more bound and understanding because people are free to express their idea and share their common perception. The concern of world issue is not the monopoly of political elite. This is the spirit of cosmopolitanism. “More broadly, it presents a political-moral philosophy that posits people as citizens of the world rather than of a particular nation-state. In this regard, cosmopolitanism represents a spirited challenge to more traditional views that focus on age-old attachments of people to a place, customs, and culture. Cosmopolitan emphasis on social bonds rather than nation-states lays the foundation for its view of society ultimately evolving toward harmony and away from conflict” Benning (2007) Encyclopedia of Governance. The idea shares basic similarity with Barlovian Cyberspace. Barlovian Cyberspace declared the freedom in virtual world for anyone to express his believes without fear. Barlovian has optimism that they can result more fair and human than what today government has made.

In developed country internet is something luxury. Government is the agent of international capitalism. Through domestic policies they prolong the dependency of internet and absorb the profit. Internet is seen as industry rather than source of knowledge to develop their own citizen. They monopolize internet because internet as the source of intangible power that can be used to manipulate or educate. This rivalry will happen between government as legitimate institution and new virtual movement to liberate the access of internet accessibility As what Jari Peltola said”Cyberspace is not a free frontier but only a new battleground for both old traditional keepers of power and the new virtual rivals to command and conquer".

Reference

Benning, F Joseph (2007) Encyclopedia of Governance. California: SAGE Publications. Inc

Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality itself is an innovation to enhance human perception by creating 3 Dimension virtual object which can blend together within space in the real world. Although it claims to the part of the reality, Augmented Reality definition is debatable since it is basically an illusion recorded as technological data.

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Actually Augmented Reality firstly appeared in 1990s. Today the term of Augmented Reality or AR is becoming popular not only in limited group of society whose concern in media and technology but also in industries, military and entertainment.

Augmented Reality will bring a lot of contributions to human productivity and the way people interact. For People with their mobile phone can simply access every source of information easily and effectively through the interactive function provided by their device to locate or reveal real visual of particular data like the address or description of people they meet. How easy our life can be if everything has their own virtual model that we can avoid the risk of misinterpretation or miscalculation. Augmented Reality can be very useful in education example to learn history better by recalling historical events in present day. 

As well as its contribution, the implementation of Augmented Reality may be controversial. Technical implementation of AR in our life will be bias especially the clash between privacy and the freedom of information accessibility. sooner or later it will be our future challenge by creating possible treat, example misused of copyright or intellectual property right. Augmented Reality also has its basic problem in how accurate will it be to represent or correctly match with the reality.  

However, history has recorded that human life is dynamic. The shifting from old mass media to new media and now in our digitally world sometimes makes us confused. The only way that we should do is nothing. Let it flow and be the part of it.