Tech Savvy and Braindead

Posted on by serenitisparkles

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If you were born after 1992, your life will be completely consumed by the technological world around you.  You will have at least one device on you at all times that connects you to an invisible world called THE INTERNET.  Instead of physical interaction with people on a daily basis, you will communicate alone with a device that holds your entire life in your hands.

If all you know about the world is being connected to what many elders would call, technology, how are you in control of the world around you.  For a moment observe your surroundings.  Look at the person next to you sitting a few feet away and watch as they glare into that device.  A device so powerful it drains all of our attention.  Try interacting with that person and watch as they are drawn back to their device.  Will you ever really cherish life’s precious moments, or will you be expending all of your energy into a mindless piece of humanity?  Look around you once more and pretend it is 50 years ago.

The same person sitting next to you would have no choice but to look up and transmit the energy we all need to morally survive.   Real physically energy between us as people is necessary for humanity to survive, yet we can’t help but be connected.   Watch as the internet desperately sucks in your energy by creating standards that are soulless.  The commercials on every site flying by at every moment, put forth by the same companies that strive for your addictive nature.

You are a generation of young people absorbed by a non-living entity that has found a way to trick you into believing it is a way of life.  Run by private executives, with personal goals and purpose, the internet  has found a way to take life’s most precious gift in your life.  TIME is all we are given.  Time to experience and enjoy the warmth of each other.

Try to remember in your young life the last time you sat down and spent a significant amount of time disconnected to the internet and connected to a loved one.   These moments won’t happen very much in your life, if at all.  Your memories as you grow old and near the end will be spent mostly with a “thing”.  You won’t even understand life without the internet.  And if the private entities that run that “thing” decide to shut down or turn off, will you be left BRAINDEAD?

Stalked By Digital Footprints

Posted on by serenitisparkles

 

Stalked by Digital.jpgImagine a world where blood sucking corporations were in constant pursuit of our trail. Imagine that the closer they could get to you, the more money they would make. Imagine they were able to place a GPS tracker, watch every move we make, and witness every conversation we had.  They can even predict our next move. WELCOME to the world of BIG DATA and DIGITAL FOOTPRINTS.

Across the world and concentrated heavily in the US, there are businesses set up solely to watch our movements and study our habits.  There are devices designed to ensure the precise collection of every mark we make in the digital world.  They are like stalkers lurking in the darkness, recording everything about our lives, to then hand over our personal information over to the highest bidder.

If we all believed that world existed, we would all be much more careful of leaving a digital footprint trail. The reality is that everyday, with every click of a button and stroke of a key, we are creating a lifetime of digital footprints. We are volunteering personal and private data along with giving up our right to privacy to exist in a more “convenient” world. In this digital world, the end user (us)  searches for the easiest way through.  The more convenient the internet becomes, the more invasive corporations are in our personal lives.

As a corporation, using data collectors, called aggregators results in a 200% increase in sales within a 6 month span.  It is like pure gold.  Collecting these digital footprints allows a corporation to specifically target each user.  The aggregators  collect strings of data from each website you visit, all of your personal information(name, age, gender, location,  your most common websites (and any other website you have visited), and your social media posts.    They are not only collecting your clicks, they are collecting your context.

THEY COLLECT LITERALLY EVERYTHING YOU HAVE DONE ONLINE. They have millions of digital files identifying your long path of digital footprints.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights offers everyone the “Right to Privacy”.  Unfortunately for the internet, there is very little control, if none, over privacy laws protecting our personal information.  Unlike tangible places in the world, the internet is global and there is no worldwide policy that addresses the right of digital citizens regarding their digital footprints.  So there it is  digital citizens, we are subject to a world where everything we do is being tracked by corporations and governments, with little control over what is done with our personal data.  We are being watched by people we don’t have any relationship with and our most private data is available to anyone with enough money to hire these collectors.  The internet is becoming more important in our daily existence and if we do not become educated about the moves we make in the digital world, all of our freedoms that we enjoy in the physical world will be at risk.

In the words of Plato, “Good people do not need laws to act responsibly,  while bad people will find a way around those laws.”

Next time you tweet, email, create a profile, or post a photo, remember that not everyone using this data has your best interest at heart.   We will all die one day, but within the internet, our digital footprints will LAST FOREVER.

Is our inner voice following the leader?

Posted on by serenitisparkles

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If someone asked you to tell them about yourself and what you represented, would your answer be found on someone else’s Facebook page? I’m sure you have seen the same inspirational quotes and stories, the horrific acts of violence, and the newest billboard hits flooding the Facebook and Twitter news feeds.

With people spending 50% of their time on social media, it is very hard to tell what was derived from your own intuition and what was a result of someone’s post.  The bandwagon effect is real and is one of the oldest forms of human interaction.  It is an observation of social behaviour in which people tend to go along with what others do or think without considering their own beliefs or values.

The more lonely or socially incapable a person is, the more likely they will follow the bandwagon.  Facebook is an excellent example of the bandwagon effect.  A story is most likely to go VIRAL if there are key names leading the way such as famous personalities, musicians, and big brands.  Social media makes it very hard for an individual to gain importance through their own beliefs because the key to social media, is that what becomes VIRAL is what is considered important.  In the real world, for the survival and quality of our lives, standing up for our “gut feeling” is necessary.

In order for a person to live without regret, or to live the life THEY see fit, they must follow their intuition.  However, when the internet has found a way to be a part of half of your day, and 55 million people share status updates each day, how do we even hear what the voice inside is saying to you.

The fact is that Facebook and other social media networks are about following the leaders of the world.  The ones with the most followers are the ones that we follow and that we admire.  If they say it is a good idea, then chances are we will share that good idea to our friends on social media. We are entering a world where people spend most of their time socializing online, where, it is not the one with the voice of reason that is heard, but the one with the most popularity.

We have to remember that social media was derived by pop culture, it is a key player in creating followers around the world.    If you are trying to lead an individual path for your life, don’t spend too much time following the masses.   The moral of the story is, Listen to your gut because if you don’t then you are living someone else’s life.