Privacy And Technology

Privacy And Technology

Erich Schmidt, who was previous Google CEO, has been asked that: 'People are treating Google like their most trusted friend. Should they be?'. Schmidt responded that question with a very interesting answer as: 'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place? This answer gives a better idea of privacy level of cloud computing systems. There is no way that the privacy level of cloud storage can be equal to local storage. There are also security concerns as well. As long as you are storing your data on a cloud server, that you cannot interfere to the security measures of the systems, you have to rely to the security measures of the cloud provider.

But what if that system gets hacked and data of millions of people get erased by a hacker? Data storage turns out to be a really problematic issue in cloud computing concept. Another problem about the cloud computing is that you always have to be connected to Internet to access your data. You have to be connected to Internet to read and edit your articles, watch your movies and browse your photos. This high dependence on constant Internet connection of the system, demands from people to be connected to Internet all the time.

Living in an Online World

It can be said that modern people needs to be connected to Internet almost all day, even when he/she sleeps. The first thing we do is to check our smart phones when we wake to see if there are any new e-mails in our inboxes. When we are driving to our offices, we check the traffic via GPS based navigation systems. During the day, we do almost all of our productive stuff on personal computers. We communicate with our friends and socialize through social networks like Facebook and Twitter. We read news, listen to music and stream videos through various websites. Many people constantly update their status messages by telling all of the people what are they doing at the moment at Twitter. This is not an exaggeration, but an ordinary day of an ordinary person in modern society. Considering these conditions it is safe to say that we are turning into a digital society which is connected to a mass communication network all the time.

It is impossible to avoid the social networks and their increasing importance when we are talking about the concept of digital society. Today Facebook is the biggest social networking site with more than 800 million users by September 2011 and this number is increasing each day. People use Facebook to communicate with friends, upload their photo albums, create and attend to events, play games and discuss about various topics. Facebook changed people's habits, now many people prefers to celebrate their friends' birthdays via Facebook instead of more traditional ways. There are even obituary pages for people who passed away. Many people socializes through Facebook, but there is a question that how much of that socialization is real?

Tweet or not to Tweet?

Twitter is another example of the power of social networks. Twitter is a social network / micro blogging web site which allow you enter status updates, which are called tweets, and share it with the people who follow you on Twitter. Twitter has 300 million users by 2011 and it generates about 300 million tweets per day.

Twitter proved to being a very strong medium for organizing people in recent events called Arab Spring. Protesters mainly organized through Twitter. They communicated with each other and with world through Twiter as well. One of the most important examples of this situation has occured at Egypt. There was a huge censor over press about the protests in Egypt at the beginning of the Arab Spring events at Egypt.

It was impossible for world to understand what is happening in Egypt due to a limited information flow. Then protesters started to use Internet to transmit their message to foreign press. Egypt government shut off the whole internet connection of the country as a response to this. However this couldn't stop protesters to find alternative internet connection methods and transmit their messages through them. Protesters mostly organized their events over Twitter and Facebook. It is safe to state that Arab Spring can be considered among the first examples of the effects of social networks over society.

Corporations are aware of the importance of Internet and social networks. Today almost all of the big corporations and institutions have their own web sites and their own accounts at Facebook and Twitter. They are aware of the fact that they have to exist on digital domain to ensure their existence in real world.