I’ve yet to realize up until recently just how much everything we do on the internet has a butterfly effect. For example, when I scroll on Ulta.com I will click on my favorite NARS concealer or blush. Next time I open my web browser to search what time the Cowboys are playing, an ad for NARS makeup products will pop up. Lindsey Kim explains the importance of internet safety more thoroughly in “Understanding and maintaining your privacy when writing with digital technologies”. Kim explains what metadata is, telling us how it creates our algorithms or “personalizing”.
This “personalization” in my opinion leads to more people being unproductive on their computers. Also spending all of our money because of the ads we are seeing. Algorithm and personalizing also stop us from doing what we got on the computer to do in the first place. With the constant ringing and dinging from all of these apps, it becomes hard to focus. Kim states “Constant notifications are problematic for writing….they divert our attention away from our writing”. Which I can vouch for, getting distracted by my phone even while writing this post!
In “Messy and Chaotic Learning” by Martha Fay Burtis, she introduces the idea that online protection does not work well. She begins addressing the political aspect of media. This is important because we began to see the shift in the media. Also how it can be swayed one direction or another. I concluded a common theme from both readings. It is that this is an issue larger than the individual internet user. Burtis says, “at a table with people who deeply understood the issues at hand, I remember a sense of “Well, what can we do?” This proves that even people who study this for a living can only protect themselves as best they know how to. It is important that the rest of us follow suit and protect ourselves. (our internet self!) 🙂
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