The Price People Pay For Using New Technology Is Their Freedom and Personal Relationships - Essay Example

The price people pay for using new technology is their freedom and personal relationships Name: Institution: Date: Currently in the western societies more people have been employed collecting, distributing and managing information than in other careers. Millions of miles of wire, optical fibre, and air waves connect people, their computers and many other information handling devices together. We are living in a society that can be labeled as an information society (Joinson et al, 2010). The challenge and question that is facing many people is whether this is the society that we want? Leaving the home without mobile phones or no being in position to maintain constant communication using the Internet is unimaginable in the current world and very unbearable to many people. Family, colleagues, and friends expect to contact us any time despite of the distance or time between us. People check mail regularly as well as respond to text messages almost instantly (Wang & Wellman, 2010). Technology has come with the price we have to pay in terms of personal relationships and freedom. Constant communication using mobile devices has been criticized for disconnecting people from those who are physically around them. Many people complain they do not get visits from relatives with the coming of mobile phones. People prefer to meet in social places and call to ask about how others are doing instead of visiting them. Groups have been started on social media where important things can be discussed without face to face contact. Personal relationships have suffered where spouses pick up quarrels and accuse each other of spending more times in social media sites instead of engaging in meaningful conversations for the purpose of bonding and being intimate with each other. In many social places where people could engage in conservations with strangers it is no longer the same. People prefer indulge with their phones and chat to friends or strangers online instead of interacting with those people they can see (Christofides, Muise & Desmarais, 2012). Pastors have complained of people who get engaged with their mobile phones when the church service is still going on. In many places of worship there is always a polite notice asking people to switch off their mobile phones when getting into these places. Personal relationships can be hurt by new technology when individuals do not apportion their time properly and make the other person feel ignored and neglected. New technology can be used for increasing interaction or a source of distraction when one is not interested in engaging with the person close to him. Personal relationships suffer because of constant interference and distractions from many quarters. Breakages in relationships have increased due to interference of third parties and providing of unsolicited advice by ‘social media experts’ (Wang & Wellman, 2010). People cannot enjoy an intimate conservation without someone getting suspicious or even recording if he or her things what is saying is funny. Private information is leaked in social media forums causing heartaches and divorces. People have to be extra careful and those who become careless are severely punished through shaming and judgment. Embarrassing vides, texts, chats and emails have been produced as evidence for existence relationships when one party was denying. Parents are finding it hard to relate with their children who take upon themselves to copy many things that they witness on the internet. The internet and coming of mobile devices has changed the way people relate since so much information is available on the internet. One can rather search for information on the internet than meeting up with friends to learn about something he is not familiar with (Scherer, Craddock & Mackeogh, 2011). Policymakers, researchers journalists, and popular pundits often note that digital technologies have the ability of disrupting personal relationships as well as delivering uninvited content hence the term ‘friendly spam’ from relatives and friends where one is bombarded with forwarded messages that someone believes will interest them. Experts in child development are worried that phones together with personal computer devices distract parents from their children and vice versa and hence preventing engagement into nurturing conversations (Wang & Wellman, 2010). Technology enables children to access violent video games, pornography and engage in cyber-bullying as well as other forms of online harassment. Child development is interfered with. The way children relate with their parents change. It has been noted that pre-teens make use of their mobile phones during family gatherings much to the chagrin of their parents hence making them lose on bonding and establishing rapport with relatives from extended families. In some circumstances some children have said to be maintaining friendship with strangers during class time at the expanse of learning and establishing relationships with their fellow pupils (Joinson et al, 2010). Many people are preoccupied with posting status update on social media such as Facebook and instagram and neglecting their own children who look for comfort elsewhere. In spite of the challenges of new technology, mobile communication is thought to be strengthening relationships with people we already know. Mostly we emphasize the harm done in face-to-face relationships but we have to realize most of the time people are online with people with whom they have face-to-face relationships. Personal relationships can be enhanced through mobile communication technology (Scherer, Craddock & Mackeogh, 2011). People send text to spouses and friends in coordinating social activities. Parents make use of mobile technology as means of checking on college students or younger children. The multiple means of communication do not necessarily compel people to choose between paying attention to one party or the other. Technologies provide a crucial way of connecting where families scattered across the globe can stay in touch without travelled to meet (Joinson et al, 2010 Siblings can look for look for work anyway without fearing that will lose touch with their loved ones. A challenge that these technologies pose is how to concurrently engage in more than one interaction at the same time so that nobody feels ignored. New technologies usually permit us to feel that we are in control of what information is shared among us and hence leads to increased feelings of privacy. Control and privacy can be an advantage to those dating online since they can control the amount of information they share about themselves and when to share. The control usually offers a feeling of comfort and safety. We do not have control over what others to the communication that we have initiated in terms of emails and texts since what we consider private can be forwarded or shared to third parties. Other people can post videos or pictures hence initiating gossip or rumours that can go viral. People find information about others online hence an effort of controlling information becomes an exercise in futility. New media through enhanced technology is characterized by convergency, digitality, virtuality, interactivity, and hypertextuality. Digilitization is the prominent feature of new media (Junco & Cotten, 2011). On the other hand, building intellectual capacity is vulnerable in many ways. For instance, the intellectual capacity of people is interfered with when they lose their personal information without anyone compensating them for it. The social contract that people have to deal with in the current information age includes threats to human dignity. Personal privacy is at stake. There are two forces that threaten personal privacy hence freedom. One of the elements is the growth of the information technology that has brought about surveillance capacity, computation, communication, retrieval, and retrieval. Another threat is the enhanced value of information for decision-making. Information has become increasingly valuable to policy makers hence leading to invasion of private space by them. Autonomy entails a broader issue of human dignity (Bansal & Gefen, 2010). This is the obligation of treating people not only as means but as worthy and valuable. Personal information is regarded as an extension of the person. To be able to access this information is like accessing the person in intimate way. When personal information is sold or taken against the will of the person it becomes as if some part of the person has been alienated and valued as a commodity. In such circumstances a person is just treated as a thing. Privacy is more crucial since as a safeguard of freedom within relationships among groups and individuals. When someone is aware that his dispositions and actions are ever being observed, criticized and commented on then it is harder to engage in something that is against the accepted social behaviour (Joinson et al, 2010). It is not a must for a direct threat of retaliation to exist. Visibility in itself offers a direct method through which norms are enforced. Many people are afraid of standing apart or being different if it translates to piercing scrutiny. New age technologies have increased surveillance and intrusion into private space. Photos of people can be taken when they are not watching and posted on Facebook or any other form of social media like What Sapp or instagram. Public shaming has happened where people engaging in deviant behaviours have been secretly recorded and their videos shared online without their consent or knowledge. Personal freedom has been interfered with advancement of technology. There countries where personal conversations on telephone are listened into in the name of ‘national security’.(Vitak, 2012). People are afraid to express themselves freely when they are aware that some part of their conversations can be retrieved and used against them. Personal freedom has drastically shrunk. People are afraid to be themselves for fear of being victimized in one way or the other. New technology has closed some of the freedoms that people used to enjoy. Deliberate penetration into an individual’s protective shell leaves naked and a subject of ridicule and shame and automatically put him under people who know his secrets. In such circumstances one is forced to conform (Rosen & Wittes, 2013). The pervasive surveillance is enough to keep the citizens under control in dictatorial regimes that are afraid of uprising or revolutions. In some circumstances, however, new technology has helped in coordinating protests and causing bad regimes to be uprooted from power. Consequently privacy being protection from excessive scrutiny is important if people are free to be whom they what to be. Any individual requires some room to break from social norms in order to engage in small permissible deviations that are crucial in defining the individuality of a person. We should be able to think outrageous thoughts, make scandalous statements and sometimes pick our noses without being criticized or judged because we are continuous under surveillance with the use of new technologies! We need to sometimes to behaviour in a manner that is not dictated by the surrounding society.(Vitak, 2012). When every action, word, appearance, and thought of an individual is recorded and shared on social network that can be accessed by the rest of the world, then we lose the freedom of being ourselves. The collective intelligence of billions of users on the Internet as well as the digital fingerprints that the numerous users leave on Websites, come together to make it more likely that every intimate photo, every embarrassing video and each indelicate e-mail can be attributed to its source regardless of the wish of that source (Smith, Dinev & Xu, 2011). This kind of intelligence creates the public forum more public than ever. Celebrities have found their embarrassing moments being shared online without their knowledge or consent. Public shaming on the social media sites has resulted in some victims committing suicide. The private place and freedom has been lost. People in showbiz cannot engage in intimate conversations without being quoted out of contexts or their photos being shared online and rumours started around them. Personal relationships have been interfered with for such people since they cannot relate freely without being mistaken and judged. A photo of a man holding another man’s hand can go viral on the internet as being gay couple if the individuals are famous (Shirazi, Ngwenyama & Morawczynski, 2010). The capacity to develop the unique individuality of a person is crucial in any democracy that values as well as depends on creativity, free exchange of diverse ideas, and creativity. Democracy draws its vitality from here. Mobile technologies are used to stay connected but this constant accessibility can be more often than not intrusive or in some circumstances abusive. An individual can feel overwhelmed by the number of messages that he or she can receive. Stalkers have found an easy way of bombarding their targets with love messages through texts and emails. The constant connection can result into many paradoxes (Joinson et al, 2010). There is lack of independence with this flow of information. Dating partners are many times annoyed when their partner frequently interrupts them when they are having a social time with friends. Some people who are dating have even come up with rules when not to interact. Workers are annoyed when office work follows to their homes in the evenings and over the weekends. Personal freedom is vastly infringed. Some organizations have started to set policies that limit use of emails during the weekends so as their employees do not feel constantly on call or overwhelmed with work. In recognition of an individual as a being who is autonomous, an end in himself, it comprises of letting the individual to live his life in the way that is appropriate to him (Vitak, 2012). Despite there being limits to this, one of the important ways of ensuring an individual is in charge of his life is the choice of whom to interact with through relationships and what kind of relationships to have. Consequently when one is not able to control who possesses information about him, then he loses his considerable autonomy and personal freedom. Losing control of personal information can be likened to losing control of who we are and the people who can relate to use at a personal level and the rest of the society. The social life of a normal person is varied and rich, entailing various different roles as well as relationships (Junco & Cotten, 2011). Each one of them needs a different persona or a different face. This does not translate to fraud or deception but different aspects of the person are divulged in different roles. Thus control over personal information as well as how and to whom it can be revealed, therefore, plays a crucial role in the capacity of an individual to realize and choose his place in the society. On a personal level someone should be able to choose his personal friend. New technology sometimes makes strangers able to access personal information and contacts us as sales representatives, ambulance chasers, agents and brokers (Rosen & Wittes, 2013). Personal freedom has been curtailed to a large extent and no one is allowed to be himself without scrutiny from the public or social groups. Conclusion New technology has brought many benefits and enlightened human life. Access to information is a button away and one can relate to people millions of miles way. Virtual groups have changed the way organizations carry out their information without physical offices. New technology has enhanced communication and made the world a global village. Whereas access to information has created many avenues for learning and communicating, it has also interfered with personal life. Personal relationships and freedom is the price that people have to pay for using new technology. The privacy space has been drastically reduced and what can be private one minute can get into the public domain the next minute. Cyber-bulling and stalking has been enabled by the new technologies. People are able to access private information using new technology and share it publicly or use it to extort money from their victims. Dictatorial regimes are using new technology to increased surveillance with the aim of controlling the masses. Governments are using established institutions to crackdown on dissidents and destabilize any form of opposition. Freedom space has drastically reduced. Personal relationships have suffered where technology has become a distraction of getting intimate or engaging in meaningful conversations with colleagues. People prefer talking to strangers than engaging intimately with people close to them. We can no longer be who we are for fear of being charged or condemned by the public or the society that we come from. Children development has been interfered with because children can access an array of information that is detrimental to their growth and development. Parents have lost control over their children as new technology takes over another role as an omnipresent parent. New technology has changed the way people relate and reduced face to face contact that is important in many circumstances. Many people prefer to have meetings using social media sites than meeting fact to face to talk out issues and have the benefit of understanding the nonverbal communication. Whereas social media has enhanced communication, it has interfered with personal relationships and shrank the personal freedom through infringement of the privacy space. Many things that were regarded as private are being shared through social media sites. References Bansal, G., & Gefen, D. (2010). The impact of personal dispositions on information sensitivity, privacy concern and trust in disclosing health information online, Decision Support Systems, 49(2), 138-150. Christofides, E., Muise, A., & Desmarais, S. (2012). Hey mom, what’s on your Facebook? Comparing Facebook disclosure and privacy in adolescents and adults. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 3(1), 48-54. Joinson, A. N., Reips, U. D., Buchanan, T., & Schofield, C. B. P. (2010). Privacy, trust, and self-disclosure online. 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