Challenges Facing the Individual and Society in the Digital World
Units 8 to 13 in this course have dealt with a series of challenges facing the individual and society in the digital world. Based on all the material included in at least 3 out of these 6 units, provide your own analysis of those challenges.
Tips: You might want to address questions such as: what are the challenges referred to in the exam question? why did they emerge? are they really new? are they interrelated? could they be successfully met?
Notes: While the essay should be based on the Winter term material, some very brief references to the Fall term material are allowed if needed.
The same formatting rule as in the Fall exam applies: double space, 12 p. fonts, no notes or bibliography but direct quotations still require information about their sources.
No more than a total of 5 lines of quotations are allowed.
Hi, please only these links here and read the instructions I put carefully.
https://www(dot)huffpost(dot)com/entry/how-psychology-will-shape_b_5534545
https://www(dot)washingtonpost(dot)com/technology/2021/09/24/remote-work-from-home-surveillance/?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=wp_news_alert_revere&location=alert&wpmk=1&wpisrc=al_technology__alert-economy--alert-tech&pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJjb29raWVuYW1lIjoid3BfY3J0aWQiLCJpc3MiOiJDYXJ0YSIsImNvb2tpZXZhbHVlIjoiNTk3NmU2YzY5YmJjMGY2ODI2YmQxMDA3IiwidGFnIjoid3BfbmV3c19hbGVydF9yZXZlcmUiLCJ1cmwiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy53YXNoaW5ndG9ucG9zdC5jb20vdGVjaG5vbG9neS8yMDIxLzA5LzI0L3JlbW90ZS13b3JrLWZyb20taG9tZS1zdXJ2ZWlsbGFuY2UvP3V0bV9zb3VyY2U9YWxlcnQmdXRtX21lZGl1bT1lbWFpbCZ1dG1fY2FtcGFpZ249d3BfbmV3c19hbGVydF9yZXZlcmUmbG9jYXRpb249YWxlcnQmd3Btaz0xJndwaXNyYz1hbF90ZWNobm9sb2d5X19hbGVydC1lY29ub215LS1hbGVydC10ZWNoIn0.bORUvz7uvYfv4n7HRjo_zWmBZnzOB9qfs4Kpig945dw
https://foreignpolicy(dot)com/2015/06/03/why-technology-hasnt-delivered-more-democracy-democratic-transition/
https://theconversation(dot)com/social-media-can-be-information-poison-when-we-need-facts-most-100495
Challenges Facing the Individual and Society in the Digital World: Analysis
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Challenges Facing the Individual and Society in the Digital World: Analysis
Technological Challenges
While technology promises an unprecedented potential to improve human life in society, it also poses challenges in equal measure. Disinformation is one of the issues exacerbated by the emergence of social media platforms where unverified rumors, claim, and speculation rapidly spread faster than veritable facts. For instance, following the mass shooting in Toronto, rumors subdued facts about the incident owing to the speed that eclipsed the accuracy in social media platforms that traditionally abhor an information vacuum (Kurasawa, 2018). The second challenge is the issue of democracy, which has become increasingly impossible to achieve with the advancement of technology. Yet, although technology has promised robust tools to enhance and empower a democratic society through digitalization, mass access to smartphones, video-conferencing, and social media, these tools have become the antagonist in stagnating democracy (Carothers, 2015). Privacy is also at a crossroads as corporate surveillance becomes commonplace in workplaces. This challenge was particularly common during the implementation of permanent remote work policies following the government-imposed social distancing and closure of businesses to arrest the spread of the coronavirus (Abril & Harwell, 2021). As workers moved from office to work from homes, bosses could track screenshots and keystrokes and recognize faces through sophisticated technologies. Finally, technology has been integrated into social media marketing and has introduced a major inability to detect the context of human behaviors with preciseness. Machine learning algorithms, such as natural language processing, are used to track keywords on social media and recommend products, thus completely losing the human touch in traditional marketing practice (DeMers, 2014). Therefore, although technological advancement seems to provide seamless ways of living in society, these developments have also introduced disinformation, democratic challenge, privacy issues, and a loss of human touch in traditional marketing practices.
The Genesis of Technological Challenges
Various motives drive the emergence of technological challenges. Modern societies and individuals need instant access to news. This void that traditional media, such as the printing press, assumed for a long time has been filled by social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat (Kurasawa, 2018). However, misinformation spreads fast than authentic information due to the time needed for investigation and verification. Besides, social media platforms represent an attention economy, incentivizing inaccurate viral and attention-grabbing false information. In the democratic spaces, much has changed over the last decades with the tremendous ease in information and data sharing, which has ultimately hampered the very democracy or political system aimed at empowering individuals (Carothers, 2015). There are now serious institutional weaknesses and poor public confidence with the introduction of sophisticated networking tools. Democracy and foreign policy experts argue that while new technologies provide critical tools to empower individuals, they have stagnated democracy. The issue of privacy and corporate surveillance has emerged with the growing need for freedom among workers who have increasingly preferred working from home rather than reporting to offices daily. However, this trend became a norm with the closure of businesses and other government restrictions, such as social distan...