Sometimes there are people smart enough to not trust technology. Those people are either old, are Karen’s, or just people who see no value in using it. I can’t say I’m any of those on record but I have seen what privacy can mean to a device. And spoiler alert, it’s not much. The internet can be a hoax, but it is also helpful while writing. This is according to Lindsey C. Kim in her work ‘Understanding and Maintaining your Privacy when Writing with Digital Technologies’ (2022).
Technology is something that learns. It’s something that creates and destroys and is helpful and useless all at the same time. It’s not impressive. At least, I’m over the excitement of it all. I’m just scared of a chip potentially being in my brain. Anyways though, privacy. How can technology help with privacy? Well, it is the one thing that we have some control over. In real life and on a device we have access to block someone out of our lives. The good thing is that technology has become an easily accessible safe space and a lock box for passwords, contacts, and more. Keep the ‘easily accessible’ part in mind.
What most people don’t know or see is the metadata. Metadata is close to invisible and is something that a good chunk of people don’t care about. Think about this: when a person opens a website and accidentally closes it over a certain period of time, how do they find it again? Luckily for them their device records the data of when they opened it, when they closed it, etc. etc. My FBI agent watching the device is always getting a kick out of everything I look up. But with every article that is opened, it adds to the personalization on the device. Yay.
Now with the scary stuff out of the way, how does privacy help with writing? Kim makes a good point when describing how technology writes with a person. I personally am 50/50 with my device only because I hate how it loves to mess with my writing style. Yes, I am aware that ‘wouldn’t’ve’ isn’t a word, but that is how the character I write speaks, Google! What I like about it is how it can decide whether or not it wants to spell check me.
I am the worst when it comes to spelling, so writing on a device has helped with that. Other times it just leaves me hanging. To not make me feel alone, Kim says, “To put it differently, I have agency over these networked technologies, but these technologies also influence me and constrain my agency in certain ways” (2022). The other thing I don’t mind is that it always saves what I write. If I were to share my work with someone else, it’s then easy to give proper access.
That is where we get back to the ‘easily accessible’ part. Once sent, it stays in my hands, but I have no idea what the person will do with it after. They have the opportunity to make a copy of my work and send it to someone else. Then the process continues and continues. Or it might just be my trust issues talking. That’s also why I get a little nervous with writing on platforms I am not familiar with. Not only do I not have full control over the site, but so many other people can just see and take my work and change it to their liking. In Kim’s article, she says that it can be incredibly invasive and inappropriate for a third party to have access to your personal work on a program.
In a school setting, things can get a little more tricky. Not only with the invasive part of it, but how companies create their websites specifically for students. In an article by Martha Fay Burtis ‘Messy and Chaotic Learning: A Domains Presentation at Keene State College’, she talks about how students can be misled by technology. It is engineered to provide functionality. However, if the website isn’t easily accessible, the student comes to class completely unprepared and will blame the website.
That is something I have done before, I can’t lie. It is a good connection to what Kim is referring to because technology is made to help a student, an employee, or just an adult looking for a baking lesson. It’s made to be there, and even if it’s wonky and has so many claims against false security, “there is no keeping our students off the Web. They are on it all the time. I guarantee they are already making mistakes”(Burtis, 2015). Unfortunately, it is just how kids learn the easiest these days. It keeps them stimulated and makes a lot of process’ easier for them.
So, how do I protect myself while using technology? Well, for one, I use a google extension. It gets rid of ads and it is bliss and yes I will be gatekeeping even though I’m sure so many people know about it. On another hand, I just try to avoid platforms that have low ratings and try to be super careful about where I publish too or with. I am always one to get an opinion first and go by majority rules…which has led me to a lot of wrong decisions.
However, a decent amount of the time it holds my hand and guides me in a direction when it comes to learning about specific things. Is it always completely correct, not even close, but it ends up helping so much more when you can get at least part of the answer quicker than you can open a textbook. And trust me, that textbook ain’t going anywhere near me.
Leave a Reply