Jessica's Blog

Are Companies Over Stepping?                 It has come to people’s attention that companies have started using purchase history and likes on social media to suggest products and advertisements that they think buyers will like.   This could be extremely helpful in a sense, but is this a violation of privacy?   A fantastic example of this is a story that got out about target sending advertisements for pregnancy items to a fifteen year old girl, weeks before she told her parents she was pregnant.   While it is amazing that target was able to pick up on that just based on the girl’s purchases that is quite a risky assumption to make.                 Personally my opinion on this technology is split.   I think it’s really cool that they can collect data on what each individual likes and use it to suggest items yo...

Connecting and Dividing Humanity                 In a political context, the internet can both connect and divide humanity.   Social media sites have completely transformed the world of politics.   Political leaders all over the world use the Web to communicate with the people.   It is important to people that they have a voice, and if higher powers try to take it away, the people will find a way around it. A great example would be the Iranian riots by unhappy citizens after the election in June 2009.   The protestors turned to twitter to communicate with each other and share with the world what was happening.   A video of a young girl getting killed hit the web, and people all over the world were angered and wanted revenge.   Millions of tweets were sent out, and the state was not happy.   They responded with Riot police and a ban on media inside the country.   T...

The "Great Leveling of Humanity" In today's world, almost everybody uses the Web.  From kids with IPhone's googling things, to researchers in labs studying, there is something useful for everyone.  Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, intended for the Web to be a way to provide and share information with the world using the internet, and that is exactly what happened.   It has completely changed the world, putting all the information you could ever want to know right at your fingertips.   Technology is more advanced today than it has ever been, and it will only continue to improve.   But it wasn’t always this way.   Berners-Lee successfully launched the Web in 1989, and it has only grown.   It’s faster, more easily accessible, and almost a necessity at this point.   Almost everyone accesses the internet at least once a day.   Businesses have migrated to the web, some are even exclusively web based.   No...