As technology continues to advance, more and more people are becoming aware of how not only technology can improve our lifes but how it can also invade our privacy. There is a split divide on whether one would want tech companies such as Google to track our online behaviour such as shopping. There are a vast amount of both personal and profit reasons for why tech companies would want to track the online activities of its users. The most popular and explained reason, is to monitor the behaviour ranging from Google searches to the websites we visit to enhance our online experience. Despite this being a very good reason and one many could agree upon,the backlash occurs when tech companies begin to know more about ourselves than ourselves,family members and close friends.
In 2012, Target successfully predicted that a teenage daughter was pregnant based on her recent purchases. Therefore, Target began mailing coupons for baby cribs and products, unfortunately the father found out about this and was enraged that Target could potententially be encourgaging his daughter to get pregnant. After confronting the local Target, the father was shocked to find out that he was unaware of his daughter's pregnancy. Although there may be some mixed reactions ranging from disgust to awe, personally I feel both. I have to admit it is strange and scary for a comany to store and analyze a plethora amount of information just to make a profit but I am also amazed at how accurate the algorithms are. It is amazing to believe that through our shopping patterns companies can use that to their advantage to make a profit. I can easily recall when I witnessed this event on the news and my father exclaiming how could that even be possible. I was merely a sophmore in highschool was not exactly surprised but more intrigued about the event. Fast forward five years and I can only begin to imagine how much more improvements have been made to the data science algorithms now. When thinking about the future of shopping, this is something that I would be interested in experiencing to a certain degree. It would be great for companies to personalize their suggestions to every individual. For example, when shopping online, I already see ads personalized for me given that I performed a simple Google search for, "Jordan III size 9". How much more incredible would it be if when shopping online one would see more of the products that they are interested rather than viewing the products they dislike? I feel as this would decrease the time we spend online but also has the potential to increase the amount of money we spend. There is no complete solution I can think of that would please both side but I do not mind trading my online activity for a great level of convienance. The downside to such a future would be when companies would suggest products are the unfortunate time. How many of us would be happy that companies study and know so much about us that they even knew when a passed family member passed away, or when one divorced?
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As I was reading, "The Code I am still ashamed of" I began to think about how I could relate to the author. Given that it was one of his first job and he was young, I feel as if I would do the exact same thing. I would feel troubled and in a tricky situation as I would want to please my boss but at the same time I would be doing something that I would not be comfortable with. Furthermore, I do not know if I would even quit my job but more along try to forget about it but since the author was pushed to quit his job due to his sister being prescribed to take the given drug. Aside from the reading, I was also able to relate the reading to another event. As soon as I was done reading the article, I went over to Youtube to watch the tea consent video, once there I was presented with an ad of Tai Lopez. Tai Lopez was advertising his book, "67 Steps to achieve everything in life". I had already watched the ad several times and had speculation whether it was legitimate or not but in the "related videos" section there was a video titled, "The Tai Lopez conspiracy". The video went on to discuss the legitimacy of Tai Lopez's intentions and his own work. Furthermore, the video talked about his past which I did not know about. Tai's past involved selling life insurance and saving enough money to purchasing scamming dating sites. One of those sites was, "EliteDating.com" where the customer was hooked into paying for membership by having an attractive model bot pose as an actual person. The hook was created by the bot engaging into a conversation with the customer and by the time the free trial had ended the customer would purchase the membership to continue talking with the "person" only to never receive a reply ever again. Not only would this play with the customer's emotions and affect their self-esteem but it would steal their money. Never in life did I think I could use my ability to code as a means to scam a person aside from the typical methods such as phishing and hacking. I immediately recognized other dating websites such as "Match.com" and wondered if they had any illegal practices such as EliteDating did. I realized that although the image on the outside can be percieved as positive in the inside it could be a completely different idea, mentality and vision. Both the article and video opened up my eyes to what a software engineer is capable of doing. I hope in the end, like the author we can all make the correct choice.
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AuthorFirst generation computer scientist that loves football. Archives
May 2017
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