"Becoming spies--for our own good" and bad

These two authors explore the possible negative effects of technology on culture and society. Andrejevic’s work focuses on the consequences of an internet culture that allows users to monitor themselves and others by use of a simple search engine or social networking site. Personally, I completely agree with what he’s getting at. By creating a blog, signing up for a Facebook or Twitter account, and even being included in a story in the local newspaper, people are allowing themselves (maybe unknowingly) to be searchable entities on the web. Despite the “privacy settings” available on some of these websites, the information is still present on the web, and someone, somewhere, has access to it. I recently discovered Twitter’s scary privacy policy, which caused me enough anxiety to close my account after doing a quick Google search of myself:

Our Services are primarily designed to help you share information with the world. Most of the information you provide to us is information you are asking us to make public. This includes not only the messages you Tweet and the metadata provided with Tweets, such as when you Tweeted, but also the lists you create, the people you follow, the Tweets you mark as favorites or Retweet and many other bits of information. Our default is almost always to make the information you provide public but we generally give you settings to make the information more private if you want. Your public information is broadly and instantly disseminated. For example, your public Tweets are searchable by many search engines and are immediately delivered via SMS and our APIs to a wide range of users and services. You should be careful about all information that will be made public by Twitter, not just your Tweets. (http://twitter.com/privacy, emphasis added)

As Andrejevic says, “...forms of monitoring that might once have been considered borderline stalking have become commonplace and routine—a fact with implications not just for the ways in which we represented ourselves to one another, but also for shifting expectations regarding privacy and surveillance” (228). I know that a great people use Facebook like this - as a tool for finding out information about a person before they meet them, and consequently judge them based solely on what is viewable on their profile. Barney talks about the possible effects of surveillance on workers in his piece, stating “Close surveillance stifles independent effort by promoting excessive conformance to norms established by higher-level authorities” (163). I can relate to both of these author’s points of view about the negative impact surveillance and technology can have on individuals. Barney talks about how democracy calls for all citizens to have access to new technology. It seems the more connected we become, the more control and access we grant to corporations, the government, and any curious individual.