On Monday we began winding down the semester by discussing what is the most important dilemma surrounding the digital age. Most people agreed that it was anything related to data analytics, privacy rights and ownership of ones own choices online. Most of the articles that we also read for class Monday also highlighted this to some extent and also continued to suggest that this is a problem long overdue for discussion and lengthy parameters to control its effects. This conversation is also closely aligned with the thread I have been following all semester which is: who gets taken advantage of most in the digital age? It is often this question and the dense effects of privacy and data sovereignty that make this issue so complicated every day. It seems, if anything, that these are all things that are going to get worse before they get better especially considering more and more industries are trying to experiment with how they can incorporate machine learning more into their businesses and consumer experiences.
Its my conclusion that things are moving much faster than we may think making the task of regulation even more difficult. Such is the case with the deep fake videos. The same software that can help take these videos down is also the same technology used to make them more sleeker, faster and less detectable as being fake content. Bots on the internet make it harder to track down white supremacists because these same bots instigate and often create more supremacists in their path than they actually stop.
TJ, your comments regarding dilemmas of the digital age encapsulate some of the thoughts I too have had in the past week. You mention that, “if anything,” things will have to get worse before they get better; though mine is a somewhat pessimistic viewpoint, I tend to align with the “if anything” of it all. Likely, without our full acknowledgment, things have progressed past how we currently view our privacy as being infringed upon. Especially with our increasing reliance on technology as well, I wonder how much people will be able to protect and value their privacy. What if the cost of being unable to fulfill job requirements or social norms – a good example of this could be Google Docs and Gmail. This line of thought also touches in with what you are saying about the pace of technological advancement – the fact that products and services that are inherently biased are being put out on the market without much monitoring means that even if a protocol was put in place, the growth rate could be too much.
TJ, thanks for raising the issue of data sovereignty. I think this is especially important to keep in mind considering how much capital is being produced from the private data of citizens. I also share your concern that historically disenfranchised groups might continue to bear the brunt of these costs as social issues reproduce themselves materially and ideologically. This of course is just one of the many problems we now face from globalization and the interconnections produced by the internet.
Hopefully moving forward the possible of a discursive process of legal thought that includes identity groups with less power and social capital will become a more integral part of the production of technologies. It seems doubtful that we can contain the spread of tech, but hopefully we can steer and cajole tech in the right direction.