This week was basically about exploring the idea of a society governed not by the government, but by the people. New media has opened up countless possibilities for people to interact, connect, communication and share information. What if we could use this technology to create a govern-less society, where the government are no longer in control, but we are in control of ourselves? That would really put a new definition on democracy – Power to the people. The crowdfunding campaign by JoatU was really interesting because the idea would actually be useful in real life. It could create a self-sufficient neighbourhood and fully utilise the resources that we have.
If we have neighbourhoods deciding what they want to be done, it creates the possibility of bypassing the gatekeepers. But what then becomes the role of the government? In Finland they have started crowdsourcing online, which means a law could be passed if enough people signed the petition. Therefore, effectively people would become the law-makers. However, this decentralisation doesn’t come without its problems, as it could result in chaos and people without a ‘voice’.
The government are adopting these new media technologies but their use is questionable as they raise issues about privacy, transparency and security. How do we draw the line between what is private and what is necessary information? Edward Snowden showed how fragile democracy really is in this new age, when a government claims to be about freedom, yet infringes on people’s rights to privacy. The government’s use of new media technologies creates many complexities in the struggle to balance privacy and security.
As Morozov (2013) says: “The more information we reveal about ourselves, the denser but more invisible this barbed wire becomes. We gradually lose our capacity to reason and debate; we no longer understand why things happen to us.” Everything we do now contributes to this mega data that uses interconnected databases and the algorithms that we involuntarily create. Morozov says that it’s all about preserving democracy, not just about our right to privacy. Solove (2013) raises an issue that I have never thought about before, and that is “the aggregation effect” – the idea that one piece of information can be extremely telling about someone’s behaviour. It drew my attention to the fact that every piece of information we reveal matters because new media has the capabilities of making something you thought was private not so private.
References
Morozov, Evgeny (2013) ‘The Real Privacy Problem’, MIT Technology Review, October 22, <http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/520426/the-real-privacy-problem/>
Solove, David (2013) ‘Why Metadata Matters: The NSA and the Future of Privacy’, LinkedIn, November 25, <http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20131125092647-2259773-why-metadata-matters-the-nsa-and-the-future-of-privacy>
ARTS3091 - advancedmediaissuess 