Over the last few weeks, we have been discussing technology and its influence on our society. Last Wednesday, we were discussing the privacy issue of technology and whether our generation would accept a brain chip instead of headphones. This made me wonder, is technology turning our society more dystopian with less and less privacy?
There is a show on Netflix called Black Mirror, which shows the side of technology that sometimes we ignore. The show has very dystopian like properties and each of the episodes is different in its own way. Many of the episodes show what life would be like if technology was transparent, everyone could see what you are doing and vice versa. In today’s world, privacy is something that people guard, but are we moving away from that?
Companies have developed different devices that respond to voice commands, such as Alexa and Google Home. These devices have to continuously listen around them and wait for the command word to “wake them up”. Many have gone against this to say that the companies that made these devices could, in turn, keep a database of everything everyone is saying. Still, with this threat, customers still buy and continue to use these technologies, sacrificing their privacy for simple technological commands.
Privacy and technology have always been a controversial issue. I encourage you to look at some episodes of Black Mirror for yourself and see if we are headed in a direction of transparency. Some episodes containing privacy include season 1 episode 3, season 3 episodes 1 and 2, and season 4 episodes 2 and 3. These episodes highlight different aspects of transparency and what happens when everybody knows everything about a person, and the effects of it.