The article I chose to read was “The Year We gave Up on Privacy” because just by reading the title It grabbed my attention and I was curious about what I will be reading about. From the title, I can tell it was going to be about people’s privacy being invaded by someone or something and I was too curious to know. After reading the article I also agree how a lot of information and data is being exposed online, due to pandemic people are now using technology to communicate with friends, family, employers and instead of commuting to work or work, zoom, google classroom and other apps are being used to stay connected. Even just grocery shopping, online shopping, and buying other necessities are all done online. Everything changed because of the pandemic, so has our privacy, people are now having to give up their privacy to keep up with their new lifestyle and it’s scary because we do not have control over where our data goes and how it is being used.
The author, Sara Morrison shared her own experience with how she used to avoid sites and services that could possibly collect her data but that changed when quarantine started. Morrison expressed how she gave away tons of her personal data online from delivery services, online shopping platforms, and virtual meetings. She decided to download a digital contact tracing tool to see where her data could be released, who wouldn’t want to know where their own information goes to, who could take this and how can they use it. People should learn more about this and be more aware of what’s behind the use of giving away data because today, technology is evolving quickly and fast, but there’s also a bad side to this too, such as exposing credit cards, personal phone numbers, etc. It’s crazy that just by a single tap or a click you can have your information put out into the web without knowing or understanding what could happen.
Lastly, “Navigating Genres” by Kerry Dirk talks about genre awareness can benefit us as writers because It “starts to see how specific choices that writers make result in specific actions on the part of readers”. I can connect this to why I picked to read “The Year We gave Up on Privacy” is because I gravitated to the title because I think that the title reflected the genre of the political blog or maybe lifestyle blog where she also included her own experience.
I enjoyed reading your post. I was initially going to read the article you chose, since coincidentally I heard of this same topic on the news. Eventually, I read another article, so your post helps fill me in. Unfortunately, we’ve given up our privacy to keep up with the changing world. Although it was easier to shop outside before, the pandemic has made it a real struggle. It is safer to just shop online most times. However, we are sacrificing our privacy, it’s true. I’ve heard the expression, “Ignorance is bliss.” Not to say that the public is ignorant on the consequences of modern technology, more like not aware to the extent of the matter, nor interested. It’s kind of scary to take the initiative and find out where your information is going, and if you’re powerless against the reality. So the public majority is more comfortable not knowing the truth, and we’ve just “given up our privacy.”
I agree that the pandemic has to know made us completely online and exposed our lives because everything is now done online. But I also believe that we had already given our privacy away when the internet was created and when smartphones were invented because these phones have “Siri” who listens to our conversations all day long, tracks our location, sees all our pictures, and the list goes on. Our privacy has been taken and we will never get it back because it has gone too far.