Facebook Privacy: A Virtual Panopticon?

Ever since Facebook became part of our popular culture it has been continually criticized for its privacy options and what they can do with our private information. Although it has altered these settings it is still not completely private from the company as they own everything you put on the site and it is impossible to 'completely' delete your account. But more importantly, Facebook has changed the way that we view and present private information which begs the question; what do we consider private information these days? I'm sure as recently as the 1990s no one would have predicted or even wanted every aspect of their life to be made viewable to anyone we consider a friend or even more so any random person on the internet, but yet today we have no problem with putting up personal pictures and details about ourselves right down to who we're in a relationship with.
  
This brings up the idea of the panopticon which is a building designed by Jeremy Bentham where in an institution a building would be place in the centre of a circular room allowing the guards to be able to watch the prisoners at all times without them being able to see the guards causing them to be on constant alert. How this works with Facebook is that we can never tell when someone is viewing our profile and therefore it makes us feel like we should always present ourselves in a way we want to be seen as even if we are not online, our avatars are constantly there.

 

Clive Thompson discusses in his article how the introduction of the Facebook news feed made people irate at first because they felt the things they were putting on their profiles were private and news feed allowed anyone to see it on their main page. Eventually people got used to it and felt that it was alright to give up our privacies because we could now view everything about everyone else. So even though Facebook is a public website, people still felt that what they were putting online was considered 'private' which makes us wonder what we really think of as private these days.
  
With our online avatars being accessible 24 hours a day even though we ourselves are not, it changes how we present ourselves to others so as not to show the full story of our lives but rather just what we deem to be acceptable and showing the good without the bad. In an age where we are constantly surveilled on a personal level it's hard to let up on our professional facade we convey, how much is it going to take before we finally realize Big Brother is close to being a reality?

Blurring the Line Between Digital Native and Digital Immigrant

The idea of what a digital native truly is can be a heavily debated topic. A native in layman's terms is essentially someone who was the first to own or be a part of a place. So technically in that sense I myself can be considered a digital native. But when looking at various definitions on the internet, they believe that it is someone who has been brought up in this age without any prior knowledge which would therefore make me something known as a digital immigrant as I was born slightly before it and therefore "immigrated" into the world. Would you consider someone who is 40 to be a digital native? Of course not. Will the fact that kids nowadays have not lived in a time without digital technology become a problem in the future? What kind of effects will this have?
 
Take for instance the baby who doesn't know the difference between an iPad and a magazine. Although this may seem like an extreme example as they're only 1 year old, it's interesting to think that when that child gets to be a teenager magazines may not even exist. Something that seems so normal to someone like me would be an archaic piece of history to them in such a short span of time. With technology evolving faster and faster it's almost impossible for us to keep up, and like how someone born 50 years ago is having a hard time adjusting to the technology of today, my generation may have a hard time adjusting in less than half that time. Inventions since the 1950s have been extraordinary and that doesn't even show the incredible advancements we've made since 2004 like how computers have become so dominant in our everyday lives to the point where without them we are lost.

 

The idea of history repeating itself, as in slowing down our technological progress to a plateau for a while, seems to be highly unlikely at the rate we're currently going. Notions of an AORTA (Always On Real Time Access), a term coined by Mark Anderson make us believe that sooner or later we won't be able to escape this technology and it will always be a present factor in our every day lives. What this means for digital immigrants is constantly trying to keep up with things that are expanding at a pace faster than they can learn. And soon enough, digital natives may even find it difficult themselves despite being surrounded by it since birth. CNN's Oliver Joy writes in his article that there are still many places in the world, like India, which are ever expanding their technological boundaries but plenty of the younger generation would not be considered "digital natives" due to their limited access leading to digital hierarchies.
 
The effect this can have on the world could be seen as a positive as we make our way past these supposed "primitive" technologies of the past, but at what cost? By constantly expanding our technological boundaries we are at once making ourselves better and outcasting ourselves at the same time. One minute you know everything there is to know at the time and suddenly you fall behind. At this rate it looks like the only thing that's going to be able to keep up with this growth are the machines themselves, and I'm not willing to let Skynet take over while I'm still around.

Fans Make All the Difference With the Internet

Earlier this week, the television show Veronica Mars which had been off the air since 2007 was in talks to start shooting a film to conclude the series. In order to fund their project and see if there was any fan support, they turned to Kickstarter which is a website that allows for people to show off their project idea and give incentives out, like if you donate $100 you get a signed t-shirt, for people to donate money to fund it. What's particularly interesting about the Veronica Mars film is that it reached its goal of $2 million within 24 hours and still has over a month before their donation period expires showing just how devoted the fans are to the franchise. What this really shows is just how easily the internet has made it for fans and artists/businesses to interact with their favourite shows or products. Not only could fans just interact with these people, such as through Twitter, but now they can actually influence the outcome of a products life.
   
Even though donations to support artists are nothing new, it's the idea and medium with which they do it that makes Kickstarter so interesting and fresh. With the added incentives for donating a certain amount, it makes the fans feel as if their donation means more than simply just throwing money at the idea and gives them a greater sense of involvement.

  

The participatory media of the internet in general have garnered a lot of responses from fans and due to this cult favourites like Arrested Development have been renewed for more episodes through funders like Netflix. So what does this say about the future of the internet? It shows just how easily something can go from just an idea to a reality if enough people feel it is worth their time. In the past this could never have been possible because without any sort of sponsored backing it was nearly impossible to organize the public in a way to get to this point.
   
Through the likes of Kickstarter we are beginning to see things which may have never seen the light of day be put up on the web for all the world to see and decide if they want it to be a reality. We've gone from just having online petitions for change to having the actual thing put in front of us with our own money being the one responsible for deciding whether it happens or not. The question is, are you in or are you out?