Making the
invisible visible
In this week's tutorial, the class will
be discussing four contentious debates:
1.Edward Snowden, the NSA and issues around privacy, transparency and
security. Was Edward Snowden right to leak the documents he did? Or was the
secrecy of the NSA surveillance justified?
2.
Whether Facebook should be experimenting with people’s moods without their
consent.
3.
Whether Facebook, Google, Twitter, Apple and Amazon have too much power (or
not).
4.
Whether filesharing is only “piracy” or whether it holds the potential to
change the world via a new form of sharing.
I am going to link and share
some of my personal experience or opinion with these four topics. For the first
debate, it is similar to WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks has one ideology, to make sure
the information is equal to everyone. Let's put NSA secrecy data as information
stored in archives, and people who have the access to the archive are those who
worked in NSA. Snowden raised a question of Internet censorship in a democracy
country, claiming that any government in any country has no right to insert
regularization of free press.
If the information is really free in this digital era, then why is
Edward Snowden and Julian Assange charged with espionage? If the information
they leaked is false, will they be charged? However, government's charges
proved the information they have leaked to be true. Is the government acting
like fascism or communism that has strong control over censorship? I think in
some degree the Internet is a symbol of democracy, but it is not that free. People
are able to talk about and discuss daily matters, but when it comes to
politics, everything tends to be sensitive. If a country is democratic, then
its people should be the basis, and therefore they have the power and right to
access information from government as well.
I have no idea or comment on
the second debate since this issue is not that serious.
The third debate involves around
capitalism and it is pretty self-explanatory. Whether Facebook, Google,
Twitter, Apple and Amazon have too much power. All these companies are big corporations
that took a firm role and as a monopoly in certain areas. Facebook and Twitter,
different forms of social media. Google as the main search engine. Apple as a
media regulator and Amazon as online shopping distributor. I do not think these
big corporations currently have too much power, as in a way that it is not
influencing my life. Although Google is able to filter information and choose
which one to come up first and last, it is still providing information
regardless of their orders. Facebook, social media is unnecessary for some
people, and the society works perfectly fine in the past without Facebook. You
can join, and quite social media anytime you want, the same goes for Twitter.
Apple served as a way to regulate media contents, but there are several other
ways to access media contents such as online file sharing and pirating
regardless of copy right issues. Amazon provided a more convenient way for consumers
to buy products online, but it is not the only way for people to shop.
The fourth debate is interesting in a way
that I myself also use file sharing such as torrent and pirating. I do not have
to pay for media contents, but does that mean I am committing a crime? File
sharing of unauthorized materials is often regarded as copy right infringement,
and for example Megaupload is cracked down by FBI due to vast copy right infringement.
But is the government able to track down all websites that violate copy right
issues? The answer is no, and the trend of file sharing is likely to grow in
the future.
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