Critical Thinking 1. According to surveys, millennials voice the strongest opposition to government surveillance. The Pew Research Center found that almost three quarters of millennials adjust their privacy settings to limit access to their information.81 Millennials seem to be willing to trade privacy for security online. In other words, they safeguard their data for fear of identity theft even if the process is cumbersome, but they worry much less about their privacy, for example, when companies sell their personal information. If facing the choice between safety and privacy, which would you choose? How concerned are you about privacy and security online? Do you watch your own privacy settings? (L.O. 1-5) 2. In her book Alone Together, MIT professor Sherry Turkle argued that increasing dependence on technology leads to a consequent diminution in personal connections. "Technology is seductive when what it offers meets our human vulnerabilities. And as it turns out, we are very vulnerable indeed. We are lonely but fearful of intimacy. Digital connections... may offer the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship." Do you agree that technology diminishes personal relationships rather than bringing us closer together? Do social media fool us into thinking that we are connected when in reality we bear none of the commitments and burdens of true friendship? (L.O. 1-5) 3. Consider the potential impact of gamification and wearable devices on your career. How do you feel about the tracking of employees and the monitoring of your vital functions on the job and outside the workplace? Can you think of other vulnerable technologies? What advice would you give someone who is not sure how to handle invasive technologies that may threaten privacy and security? As one expert put it: "We are living in the digital equivalent of the Wild Wild West and big data is a wide open frontier full of opportunity but fraught with unknown hazards and potentially deadly pitfalls." (L.O. 1-5) 4. Computer antivirus expert John McAfee claims that 4 Computer technological intrusions into our privacy degrade our humanity. "Google, or at least certain people at Google ... would like us to believe that if we have nothing to hide, we should not mind if everybody knows everything that we do," McAfee stated at the annual DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas. "We cannot have intrusions into our lives and still have freedom," he said.84 Do you agree with McAfee? Why or why not? (L.O. 1-5) 5. Ethical Issue: Although they don't actually pay people to act as fans on social networks and entice their friends to do so as well, some marketers employ machines, called bots, to inflate the number of their fans and Followers online. In third world countries, businesses trafficking in fake profiles, the so-called click farms, are seliing 3,000 followers for $10. Social networks try to respond by deleting fake accounts, and the likes earned in the process vanish too. Google has introduced an algorithm to eliminate spammers and other abusers of its systems, and Facebook and Twitter will probably follow suit. Why do some businesses resort to such measures? What might be the consequences of faking fans? How do you feel about companies and their brands pretending that they have actual traffic on their sites?