TEXT 1
The Surveillance Society
Secrets are so 20th century now that we have the ability to collect and store billions of
pieces of data forever
By David Von Drehle Aug. 01, 2013
Privacy is mostly an illusion. A useful illusion, no question about it, one that allows us to live
without being paralyzed by self-consciousness. The illusion of privacy gives us room to be
fully human, sharing intimacies and risking mistakes. But all the while, the line between
private and public space is as porous as tissue paper. The adulterous couple sneaking off to
a hotel: Is someone following them? The teenagers skipping school to visit the mall: Will
they bump into a woman from Mom’s book club? The solitary motorist thrashing an air
guitar at a traffic light: Will the driver in the next lane look over? Like children of a certain
age who think closing their eyes will make them invisible, we assume that no one sees or
hears our private moments, and we’re right—until someone watches or listens.
This was true long before the National Security Agency began collecting our telephone and
Internet records from technology and communications companies, and long before the
House of Representatives on July 24 gave a fresh thumbs-up to further NSA collections by a
narrow 12-vote margin, 217-205. It was true long before a military judge found Private
Bradley Manning guilty of espionage for his role in the WikiLeaks case—but acquitted him
on the charge of aiding the enemy—on July 30. The illusive quality of privacy is a recurring
theme of literature going back to the Hebrew Bible. Consider beautiful Bathsheba, who
strips for a bath in the second Book of Samuel, an ancient text, only to come under the
lustful gaze of King David, pacing on his palace rooftop. Or Hamlet, whose private
conversation with his mother is overheard by Polonius, hiding behind the drapes. The great
filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock was fascinated by secrets that would not stay hidden and made
a masterpiece, Rear Window, from the premise that entire lives (and deaths) are on display
behind the uncovered windows of anonymous cities, just waiting for a watcher to decrypt
them.
But the revelation of the NSA’s vast data-collection programs by a crusading contract
worker, Edward Snowden, has made it clear that the rise of technology is shattering even
the illusion of privacy. Almost overnight, and with too little reflection, the U.S. and other
developed nations have stacked the deck in favor of the watchers. A surveillance society is
taking root. Video cameras peer constantly from lamp poles and storefronts. Satellites and
drones float hawkeyed through the skies. Smartphones relay a dizzying barrage of
information about their owners to sentinel towers dotting cities and punctuating pastureland. License-plate cameras and fast-pass lanes track the movements of cars, which are
themselves keeping a detailed record of their speed and location. Meanwhile, on the
information superhighway, every stop by every traveler is noted and stored by Internet
service providers like Google, Verizon and Comcast. Retailers scan, remember and analyze
each purchase by every consumer. Smart TVs know what we’re watching—soon they will
have eyes to watch us watching them—and smart meters know if we’ve turned out the
lights.
And the few remaining technical barriers to still more surveillance are falling before the
awesome force of 1s and 0s, the binary digital magic that is the fuel of revolutionary change.
Until recently, there were hard physical limits on the number of pictures that could be
developed, videotapes that could be stored, phone–company records that could be typed or
photocopied or packed into boxes—let alone analyzed. Now the very idea of limits is
melting away. In 1980 (not that long ago; Barack Obama was in college), IBM introduced its
Model 3380 disk drive, the first device capable of storing more than a gigabyte of data. It
was roughly the size and weight of a refrigerator and cost an inflation adjusted $100,000.
Today a flash drive costing one-thousandth as much can store 50 times the data and fit on a
key ring. The amount of data that can be stored is nearly infinite. In a prescient series of
blog posts several years ago, Princeton computer-science professor Edward Felten explained
that this tremendous growth in storage capacity would inevitably spur intelligence agencies
to collect all available data—everything—simply because it’s cheaper and easier than trying
to figure out what to take and what to ignore. “If storage is free but analysts’ time is costly,
then the cost-minimizing strategy is to record everything and sort it out later,” Felten noted.
That is precisely what has happened. And at the same time, ever more sophisticated
computer algorithms make it possible to sift through and analyze larger and larger slices of
that data, raising social and ethical dilemmas that cannot be ignored. The future is here.
Nearly everything that happens from now on has the potential not just to be seen by some
restless King David or overheard by an eavesdropping Polonius but also stored indefinitely.
Government agencies, and the private corporations working with them, collect and store
billions of records every day, and they’re hungry for more: not just phone records and Web
addresses but e-mails, texts, downloads, medical records, retail receipts, bank balances,
credit-card numbers and travel itineraries.
The world glimpsed a corner of this future in April, when two bombs went off at the finish
line of the Boston Marathon. The scene was chaos. The bombers had vanished. Yet within a
few hours, their faces were plainly visible on TV screens around the world. It turned out that
every nefarious move they made as they delivered their deadly packages to Boylston Street
had been scanned and stored by surveillance cameras. Their quick capture was a triumph
for law enforcement but left an unsettling realization in its wake: everyone else on those
teeming Boston sidewalks was also being watched and remembered.
Then, just weeks after Boston, the slight and pallid Snowden emerged from his NSA cubicle
to warn us that surveillance goes far beyond the tireless eyes of the cameras. Every phone
call placed, every Web page visited—billions and trillions of data points, like raindrops in a
monsoon—is captured daily and stored for possible analysis by the U.S. government.
Remember the time you pocket-dialed your sister? The time you Googled your college
flame? The day you did that thing you so deeply regret—that thing you thought was
private—involving a Web search or a phone call or a text or an e-mail? It’s all there. In fact,
the government, with the NSA as the lead agency, is this moment busy building the world’s
largest data storage facility in Utah. More than a million square feet, room enough to
preserve everything, for the time being.
The government calls the material it collects metadata, instead of plain old data. The
difference, it might seem, is the difference between a haystack and the needles hidden
inside. No one cares about the hay; they hardly touch it as they search intently for the
telltale glint. Perhaps a better analogy would be a catalog at the Library of Congress, which
stores some 35 million books and other print publications, most of which no one ever
opens. Why so many? Because it is easier to have publishers send one of everything than to
choose which publications to preserve. (And who knows what, in that vast reserve, might be
needed someday?) In any event, the government assures us that as long as we don’t consort
with menaces to national security, our phone calls and Web searches are of no more
interest to Uncle Sam than an outdated tome on Bolivian agronomy.
Across the political spectrum, from ACLU Democrats to Ron Paul libertarians, Americans are
skeptical of the metadata fig leaf. According to a poll on July 26 by the Pew Research Center,
only about 1 in 5 people surveyed believe the government actually keeps its nose out of
private phone calls and emails. The same small minority trusts government claims to use the
surveillance trove only for anti-terrorism purposes. Indeed, more Americans in the survey
think Uncle Sam is hacking their personal communications (roughly 1 in 4 respondents) than
have faith in the government’s explanations. The skeptics no doubt have noticed that
governments are made up of people and that people are prone to misuse information when
driven by greed or curiosity or a will to power. The current IRS scandal, in which the
agency’s rules may have been bent to political ends, could prove to be an apt example.
Somewhere in the vast NSA collections are data trails belonging to political foes, unpleasant
neighbors, feuding ex-spouses, bankable celebrities—and it takes no great imagination to
see the temptation for corrupt bureaus or individuals to take a look around.
What’s to stop them? In a recent speech at the Brookings Institution, Robert Litt, general
counsel to the Director of National Intelligence, sought to answer that question. He argued
that strong measures are in place to protect the privacy of Americans as their data
accumulates on government silicon. Surveillance programs are administered by the
Executive Branch, overseen by Congress and supervised by the Judicial Branch, through the
super secret FISA court. The fact that most of these checks and balances take place behind
closed doors does not make them toothless, Litt maintained.
Take the specific case of a suspected foreign terrorist known to have communicated by
phone with U.S. citizens. Litt detailed a litany of privacy safeguards that government sleuths
must honor as they investigate the records. “We allow only a limited number of specially
trained analysts to search these databases,” he explained, and “even those trained analysts
are allowed to search the database only when they have a reasonable and articulable
suspicion that a particular telephone number is associated with particular foreign terrorist
organizations.” Moreover, the FISA court must certify that the terrorist connection is based
on a valid suspicion, supported by information “documented in writing and approved by a
supervisor.” Even after all this, the analysts are “allowed to use this information only in a
limited way, to map a network of telephone numbers calling other telephone numbers,” Litt
continued. And finally, the analysts don’t know the names that match the phone numbers.
Since the Snowden disclosures, further protections have been suggested. Perhaps the
government should employ a team of skilled attorneys, with appropriate security
clearances, to argue against the sleuths before the FISA court—to ensure that the judges
hear strong arguments against snooping. Another suggestion is to declassify FISA court
proceedings, to the extent possible, so the public can better understand what’s going on.
Even without those additional steps, however, a majority of Americans support the current
arrangement, even if they don’t entirely trust the government’s explanations. According to a
recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, after digesting Snowden’s news, a solid majority
feel that it’s more important to fully investigate terrorist threats than to protect personal
privacy.
While the scope of surveillance today is much broader than in the past, Americans long ago
grew accustomed to limits on privacy. The Supreme Court has held that information
voluntarily given to third parties is no longer secret, nor can we expect privacy to cloak our
actions in public places or our communications via the public airwaves. The government can
intercept radio signals and is allowed to read what’s written on the outside of our mail. It’s
just a step—granted, a large step—from those principles to the ones that underpin today’s
massive data collections. The header of an e-mail is not so different from the face of an
envelope, nor is the signal from a tablet to a wireless router entirely unlike the signal from
one radio to another.
We have also learned to trade elements of our privacy for all sorts of supposed benefits.
Google tracks our searches so that it will know which advertisements to show us.
Smartphones record our locations to be more helpful in steering us to the nearest multiplex,
restaurant, gas station or church. Drugstores analyze our purchases to reward us with
coupons redeemable on a future visit. And so on. We want our gadgets to know us
intimately—want our thermostats to know when we’re cold, want our toasters to know how
we like our bagel, want our search engines to know what we’re looking for even when we
misspell it. So far, we have been willing to pay for that intimacy in lost privacy.
Which brings us to a strange crossroads. The more technology endangers our privacy, the
less we seem to prize it. We post family photos on social-media sites and ship our creditcard numbers to total strangers. We ask websites we’ve never visited—designed by people
we’ve never met—to give us advice on treating embarrassing maladies and hunting for
potential mates. But the government is different, as Litt acknowledged in his recent speech,
because “the government has the power to audit our tax returns, to prosecute and imprison
us, to grant or deny licenses to do business and many other things. And,” he continued,
“there is an entirely understandable concern that the government may abuse this power.”
In recent years, privacy advocates have persuaded the Supreme Court to require search
warrants before police can sneak GPS trackers onto suspects’ cars or scan houses from the
outside using infrared devices that sense the telltale heat signature of marijuana grow
lights. Such steps seem small, however, compared with the rapid rise of surveillance powers
and the grim history of governments corrupted by the temptation to watch their peoples
too closely. The admirable goals of public safety and national security have been exploited
time and again by intrusive regimes around the world seeking to spy on their critics and
smother dissent. Americans need only read the Bill of Rights to see that suspicion of
government intrusion is a national birthright. As tools for prying grow in number and
strength, this is no time to stop being suspicious.
Perhaps there’s consolation in the magic of the microchip. Technology makes all secrets
more difficult to keep—not just our personal secrets but the government’s as well. Again
and again over the past dozen years, the methods, mistakes and misdeeds of the world’s
most powerful government have been unmasked by lowly employees convinced that what
they are witnessing is wrong. From the photos at Abu Ghraib prison to the avalanche of
WikiLeaks documents to the Snowden disclosures, large caches of data have been loaded
onto thumb drives or burned onto wafer-thin discs—then spread around the globe in the
blink of an eye. Though the clarions may be prosecuted, the facts they reveal cannot be
recalled or repressed.
This, ultimately, may prove to be our strongest protection against the rise of the
surveillance state. The same tools that strengthen it strengthen those who protest against
it. Privacy is not the only illusion in the new age of data; government secrecy is too. Big
Brother might be watching, but he is also being watched.
Original Article Available at: The Surveillance Society | TIME.com
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The Dangers of Autonomous Vehicles: What’s Stopping Self-Driving Cars From Worldwide
Adoption
Dmytro Spilka January 5, 2021
Autonomous vehicles are one of the most talked-about technological breakthroughs of the
past decade. But as we approach the end of another year of testing issues and minimal
developments within the industry, is it fair to say that the self-driving car’s rollout is
stalling?
In October 2020, Tesla grabbed the world’s attention with the arrival of its ‘Full Self Driving’
software for car owners to allow drivers to park, stay in a lane at cruising speed
automatically, and stop at red lights. The unveiling was supposed to represent a significant
step towards fully self-driving technology.
However, according to Fortune, there are fears that the name ‘Full Self Driving’ may be
misleading to some drivers, who could mistakenly assume that their car needs no
supervision. Regulators have warned users to monitor the technology closely and “take
action to protect the public against unreasonable safety risks”.
According to the chart published in Medium in 2018, 2020 was the year in which fully
autonomous vehicles began to enter the market. However, by industry standards, even
Tesla’s Full Self Driving software can only be considered an advanced driver assistance
system (ADAS).
So what’s holding autonomous vehicles back? Let’s take a deeper look at some of the more
significant issues that self-driving cars need to hurdle before entering the market.
The Fallacy of Machines Thinking Like Humans
One of the biggest issues to overcome is that, despite huge advancements in IoT technology,
computers are a long way from possessing humans’ levels of intelligence.
Of course, when it comes to individual tasks like identifying objects in pictures or following
simple commands in a static environment, machines can far outperform humans. Still, many
of these skills aren’t applicable in a more general situation.
While the act of driving a car and understanding when red lights appear may be achieved by
simple machines, the sheer volume of variables that occur during driving means that
machines will be required to obtain huge levels of intelligence and adaptability.
In a 2017 essay, leading robotics and artificial intelligence researcher, Rodney Brooks, stated
that autonomous vehicles were not viable in the short-term due to the number of ‘edge
cases’ that present themselves while driving. This refers to how often unusual events occur
– such as the poor driving of others, obstacles on the road, and misleading road markings.
While humans are naturally capable of reacting to unusual events and making swift
adjustments, machines can struggle to understand how to adapt their actions to respond in
the right way to the road in front of them, for instance.
Obstacles to Sensors
Autonomous vehicles use multiple sensors to interact with the environment around them.
This helps to detect objects like pedestrians, other vehicles android signs. Cameras can also
help the car view objects and understand the distance between the vehicle and anything in
its path. Radars can also chart the speed and direction of other vehicles and objects.
These sensors provide feedback to the car’s control system to advise where to steer or stop.
Fully autonomous cars require a wide range of sensors that can detect objects with accuracy
while quickly determining their distance and speed in every possible condition to ensure
safety at all times.
However, factors like bad weather, dense traffic, weathered road signs, or damaged
markings can significantly impact sensors’ capabilities.
For truly autonomous vehicles to work, the sensors used need to be highly adaptive and
strong enough to understand signals in the worst conditions in a range of environments.
Given that accidents have occurred with Tesla models where cars have hit parked vehicles, it
shows that there’s still some way to go in developing reliable autonomous sensors.
Cybersecurity Fears
There may be widespread concerns about the safety of autonomous vehicles in technical
understanding and reacting to obstacles. Still, there’s also a significant danger that the
interconnected vehicles could become the victim of cyberattacks.
Transportation reporter Christian Wolmar reported that widespread hackings have
happened “in other areas of computing, such as the big-data hacks and security lapses, and
it will happen in relation to autonomous cars.”
Given the dangers associated with a vehicle that’s been compromised by a hacker, any
security issues within the firmware of cars will see widespread disruption occur as a result––
making it extremely difficult to see the rollout of autonomous vehicles before rigorous tests
are conducted.
Complexity of Insurance
There’s a whole host of financial issues attached to the rollout of autonomous vehicles. The
matter of insurance and where the responsibility lies should accidents occur, a big hurdle to
overcome.
Traditionally, drivers pay insurance for their cars to cover any accidents taking place. Still,
when a vehicle is entirely autonomous, there’s no reason for an owner to pay out when it’s
likely to be the fault of the vehicle itself.
The arrival of self-driving cars will spark a reformation of how owners pay for their cars. If
insurance falls on the manufacturer, it could see the costs of vehicles rising further. In a
world that’s become more accustomed to purchasing vehicles on HP or PCP finance, the
complexity of ownership could be wholly off-putting for prospective buyers.
That said, there’s little doubting that autonomous vehicles will have a role to play in the
future of motoring. Whether the technology and its complicated connotations develop to
the point where we could see private vehicles hitting the roads by the end of the decade, or
more likely that way see some form of light delivery vehicles rolled out, it’s a testament to
interconnectivity and the potential for innovation in the industry.
Original Article Available at: The Dangers of Autonomous Vehicles: What’s Stopping SelfDriving Cars From Worldwide Adoption (iotforall.com)
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Understanding Technology and Its Influence on Human Behavior
by Anastasia Belyh
Last updated on September 25, 2019
The proliferation of technology has made it an extremely influential part of human lives.
Right from the time, we start our day all the way till we hit the sack. We utilize technology in
every possible way to make our lives convenient.
With the digital social revolution that exploded in the early 2000s, technology has changed
—
•
the way we socialize
•
the way we work
•
the way we communicate
•
the way we gather information
This drastic change has brought us to an important question — Are we too reliant on
technology to the point where technology has spoilt us, and are we able to exist without it?
Read on for a full depth answer and decide for yourself.
IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY ON THE HUMAN MIND
One of the biggest inventions of human history was understanding how electromagnetism
works. Nikola Tesla, the famous Serbian inventor, was an avid technological genius that
discovered a way to pass electricity without the use of wires in the year 1894.
This technology was way ahead of its time and unfortunately, the secret to wireless energy
died with the prominent inventor himself but that didn’t stop others from trying to recreate
his work.
Although there wasn’t any success in achieving wireless energy the way Tesla would have
wanted to.
Today, we have quite the technologies that have changed the way the world experiences
life. Here are a few of them.
•
Internet — Undoubtedly the biggest technology in this list. The internet has
improved the way people receive information and the way we communicate. The
internet is a daily part of our lives and it’s impossible to think that we existed
without this incredible piece of technology in the past.
•
Remote Controls — A device that you point to interact with other gadgets such as a
television, a music player, an automobile, etc. The technology brought great
convenience and allowed us to simply change a channel or lock/unlock our cars with
a tap of a button.
•
Digital Cameras — Digital cameras have played an important role in recording
personal memories and capturing profound moments in full HD color. With new age
smartphones and tablets, sharing images through a digital camera in seconds is now
a reality.
•
GPS — Imagine trying to find a location while looking at a paper map only to find out
that you’ve been reading the map wrong all this time. In comes the GPS technology,
making it easier to find our favorite shopping destinations and multiplexes in less
than a second and at a tap of a finger. The U.S military originally developed this
technology to be used in warfare.
•
Smartphones — Life would be incredibly boring if all our phones were only used for
a single purpose — to receive and make calls. If it wasn’t obvious already, the
“smart” phone allows us to access our work data, act as a digital GPS device to find
locations, surf the web, watch movies, listen to music, and much more in a tiny
device that we carry in our pockets.
In fact, the world is so reliant on technology that people don’t just adopt technology into
their business but shape their business around the current technology. Let’s take an
example —
Jake wants to open a physical store and set up several artworks that he has created over the
years to sell for a profit. If Jake were to calculate his expenses in opening a physical store, it
would go something like this
Rent
1,200 $
Electricity
200 $
Wages for 2-3 Employees
2,000 $
Other Monthly Expenses (Food, Repair,
etc.)
1,000 $
Total
4,400 $
Jake needs about $4400 dollars to run a physical store to sell his art. Now if Jake were to
adopt the current technology and open a digitalized store while putting up his paintings
online without having to open a physical store.
Here’s how much it would cost Jake.
Website Hosting Platform 1 year
150 $
Domain Name 1 year
15 $
Other Expenses (Food, Digital Advertising, Internet Plan)
400 $
Total
565 $
An obvious choice, Jake would obviously opt for the digital store over a physical one as far
as expenses are concerned.
It also allows him to gain an advantage in selling his artwork to a global audience compared
to restricting his customers to a small vicinity in an area. Jake would also get more views for
his artwork in a digital store without worrying about a crowd taking over his shop.
In this way, technology has recreated the way businesses and startups are launched. With
every passing year, new technology forces businesses to either adopt it or miss out on
valuable profits in the long run.
The next section will center around the negative aspect of technology and how it has
affected creativity.
Is Technology Evil?
While technology has undoubtedly changed our lives to that of a convenient one. There are
things that we’ve lost along the way while we search for newer technologies. Some of the
negative points of technology are as follows —
Lack of Physical Human Bonding
Before the turn of the digital social revolution, people would hang out in parks and gardens
and socialize in the good old-fashioned way by approaching each other and building
relationships along the way. Technology has forced us back into a digital cave and enables
us to forge these friendships in a virtual environment where there are no actual emotions
felt and no physical touch and the complete lack of a bonding process.
Children who grow up in a technological world are also forced into a digital world at an early
age. This restricts the cognitive abilities that a child develops and thus, as the child begins to
grow into an adult, their emotions and feelings are purely synthetic as compared to a kid
that was born before the 1990’s.
A study done by The Guardian in 2013 demonstrates how kids are addicted to smartphone
apps and the most downloaded app was “Angry Birds” by kids whose age group was
between 6 and 15 years.
In yet another research study conducted by the European Commission, kids were
introduced to smart devices at an extremely young age where they couldn’t tell if it was
harmful to them or not. Instances such as cyber-bullying, digital predators, and hijacking
privacy were some of the worst affecting scenarios that the kids of the digital age face
today.
Without a doubt, technology has a critical role to play in the negative side of how kids are
being raised in a digital environment and how making a friend or two in a virtual
environment has no emotional bonding behind it.
Plagiarism & False News
Prior to the digital age, copying another artist’s work was considered impossible or relatively
hard to accomplish due to the strong private nature of a non-digitalized world.
Today, if an article is on the web, it can easily be converted into 20-different pseudo-articles
in less than a minute thanks to various nefarious software.
Leaked movies are spread around the web before the actual premier that costs producers
and directors millions of dollars due to piracy. Even music isn’t spared, it’s not uncommon to
find a famous tune being turned into another song without the knowledge of the original
artist, thanks to the digital age.
While the internet is a breeding medium for all the latest news and updates around the
globe, there’s another emerging trend that has created havoc and chaos on the world wide
web — Fake News. If you’ve recently read of an untimely demise of a popular actor and
later, found out that he is alive and kicking, you’ve been a victim of fake news.
Fake news also spreads misinformation on various drugs helping with weight loss and cancer
and causes people to blindly buy into these medications without verifying. This
demonstrates how technology can be a wild card and how false news threatens the lives of
people by misleading them.
Internet Scams & Hackers
With the internet age, a new wave of imposters has been unleashed on the world. If you
aren’t careful you lose your life savings to a scam artist located in a remote corner of the
globe and all this with a simple click of a button.
How do they do it?
Surely, you visit your bank’s official site to log in to your net banking section to access
important financial information and updates. Imagine if a remarkably similar site such as
your bank’s website existed, and you were sent an official email asking for verification of
your account.
You’ll end up providing sensitive information and private data to these imposters and in less
than 10 seconds, your funds are transferred to the imposter’s account. These funds are
untraceable.
Websites that are fake but look like an original website are known as phishing sites. These
types of sites exist to collect user information and then steal from them.
While technology has brought you and your bank closer, it has also left you vulnerable to
internet threats such as phishing sites and hacking. That’s why we’ve created a to-do list to
ensure you don’t fall prey to the dark side of technology.
Checklist to Secure Yourself on The Internet
•
Always ensure your firewall is activated. Reject any program’s permission that seeks
to disable your firewall. This is your first line of defense.
•
Verify email addresses before opening your email, if you don’t know the sender,
chances are it’s a hacker trying to get to your information. Use the “Spam” option to
block future emails from this sender.
•
A prefix at the start of your URL should always have “HTTPS” and not “HTTP”.
The S stands for secure and it’s usually lit in a bright green color to notify the page is
safe.
•
Always upgrade your anti-virus to ensure your system is updated with the latest
security files. An anti-virus is like a bodyguard to your private data.
•
When using a wireless network, always provide an administrative password to deny
hackers and invasive neighbors from using your home network.
•
Never provide sensitive details such as login information and bank details to
anonymous phone calls or emails. No company worth its salt ever needs this
information through compromised sources.
•
Keep a strong password of at least 9-15 letters long. Ensure the password isn’t just
made up of numbers and alphabets and includes special characters and other
random sequences that aren’t easily guessed by password generators.
•
Finally, always update yourself with the latest information regarding internet
technologies. The internet is a great place to be when safe-browsing is practiced. It’s
also a nightmare when you let yourself be ignorant.
How Technology Governs Human Behavior
Today, a valid number of people would take out their smartphones to record a crime-inprogress rather than calling emergency services. Many of the actions we do are centered
around technology.
We take out our phones when delicious food shows up on our table, we are more interested
in taking a video of our favorite band at a concert and finally, our creativity is judged based
on the technology we have in our homes.
There is a term for this type of dependence — it’s called Techno Addiction.
There is a fine line where we use technology to supplement our lives and where we are
glued to technology for an unhealthy 16 hours a day. In fact, every one of us is familiar or
know someone that is a techno addict.
That high school friend who’s always texting during lunchtime rather than spending time
with you.
Maybe it’s the neighbor across the street who you haven’t seen for over a month and
almost tried calling the emergency services only to discover they’ve buried themselves in
front of their gaming screens.
So how do you truly find out if you’ve been a victim of technology? Let’s find out with an
evaluation.
1. Do you feel anxious when you leave home without your phone even when there are
no important calls to be expected?
2. Is it important for you to sleep with your phone beside you?
3. Do you feel unhappy when a recently uploaded photo of yours on a social media site
doesn’t get the intended likes and attention?
4. Are you distracted from your work to constantly check your phones for notifications
and other alerts?
5. Do you prefer using video conferencing to stay in touch with your family instead of
visiting them for the holidays?
6. Have your family and friends ever complained about how disconnected you are with
them because you’ve been spending time with your electronic devices?
7. Have you ever been sleep deprived waiting for a message from your friend or loved
one while using instant messengers?
8. During the weekend, do you spend most of the time glued to a digital device? —
Video games, online surfing, mobile phones, etc.
9. Do you spend more time recording at a live concert over enjoying the spectacle?
10. Do you share your pain with an online community rather than real life family and
friends?
If you’ve answered Yes to —
None of the questions. Fabulous! You are a role model to today’s generation and a real
adventurous person who can make do without technology for as long as he wants.
1-3 questions. You’ve got some level of addiction but with regular intervention, you should
be able to beat it.
4-6 questions. There’s a serious addiction here. You’ll need to immediately sort your life
out by seeking help from family and friends. Spend time outdoors without any digital
devices. Including your phone.
6-10 questions. Extremely dangerous. The only way out of this type of addiction is if you
seek professional help. No amount of motivation can get you to switch off. Immediately dial
the helpline number at Addiction.com and start your journey back to the real world today.
5 WAYS TECHNOLOGY HIJACKS PEOPLE’S BEHAVIOR
1. Introducing FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)
Your favorite shopping site just announced a shopping bonanza. Plenty of gifts, prizes, and
discounts are to be won. All for just visiting their site multiple times a day to check the
different flash sales that are on. If you don’t find enough time to log on, you’ll miss out on a
lot of exciting deals and prizes.
This is how a typical advertising campaign usually sets itself out and gets a ton of customers
to visit their page during different times of the day. In fact, your product wishlist is empty
since your last purchase but you still decide to make the best use of the shopping festival.
All because of one important factor — Fear of Missing Out.
The modern shoppers feel that they need to be connected to every brand and newsletter to
ensure they don’t miss out on a sweet deal. It’s great to save $25 from a juicer brand that
costs $100 and it’s on sale for a limited time at $75. Great investment, right?
Not exactly.
People don’t understand this, but technology manipulates us to buy products that we don’t
need or desire. You don’t really want to buy a pair of boots, but the online discount coupon
is super tempting. You end up buying it rather than missing out an irresistible offer. We
psychologically react to any tempting sale. That’s what FOMO does to us.
We end up spending more money on products and this can bring down our monthly budget
which means less savings for the year. Had we not seen the offer, we wouldn’t even know
the item exists and we wouldn’t be buying it and would rather invest our money in wealth
creation.
It’s always better to live in the moment than to live thinking of the future. Don’t buy
products for tomorrow buy it for the immediate present. If a winter coat helps keep you
warm, then go ahead and shop for a winter coat during the winter months. Buying a winter
coat during spring just because you save a whopping 30% on the total price is the not smart
shopping but a complete waste of money.
2. Pretends to Give People Control on Their Buying Options
When presented with the menu in a fine-dining restaurant, you have the freedom of choice
to choose the food that you want to eat. And that’s exactly what technology makes us feel,
that we are in control. We forget to realize that the choice is already made for us.
How?
By controlling the type of menu, the restaurant indirectly controls the type of food you can
order.
While it’s your choice to walk into any cuisine you may seem fit, but the ultimate decision is
with the hotel serving you. They decide what goes through their menu.
Let’s say you search for lawyer services on Google. The search engine will pop up links to
lawyers that have a high SEO rating with Google or are being advertised. So, are you getting
the best lawyers in the world based on expertise? Quite frankly, No! You’re only being
served the popular options from Google’s own search indexing menu.
Similarly, when visiting a shopping site, you’ll be shown a variety of choices and garments on
display. When we shop we think we have the freedom to choose the color of the dress, the
type of dress, the fitting of the dress.
Ultimately, the dress itself has been displayed on the shopping site because the website
wants to show you exactly what they want you to see.
In this way, we surrender our ability to make choices while we fool ourselves thinking we
have the freedom of choice with technology on our side.
3. Endless Entertainment Feed
Surely there can’t be anything wrong with video streaming sites such as Netflix and Hulu.
They’ve only made it easier for us to watch the movies that we want at a cost-effective
pricing. So why would we present something that’s completely positive in a negative light?
We did say the topic was about “hijacking people’s behavior” and how it causes you to
spend more time and money without a full stop to it.
Let’s say you buy a year worth of Netflix entertainment, you’ll be greeted to create a
selection of your favorite genres and to choose the movies and tv shows that you’ve already
watched and would like similar recommendations.
Well, every time you finish an episode or a movie, you’ll be greeted with a recommendation
screen to move on to the next movie or episode. The average user will sign out and proceed
with his daily life. But what if you’re a binge-watcher.
A binge-watcher is someone who spends several hours of continuously watching
entertainment in a single stretch of time. We might be closer to our favorite tv shows and
movies with a tap of a button thanks to technology but unfortunately, unlike our remote
controls, there isn’t a stop button to stop us from enjoying endless entertainment.
Binge-watching has the following cases of negative health effects related to it —
•
56% of users develop an antisocial behavior
•
Watchers usually tend to forget their real-life responsibilities and end up wasting
valuable time
•
Real life relationships are affected due to less time spent in family bonding
•
An addictive behavior begins to manifest which can take months or even years to
treat
•
Watching videos without resting can cause you to experience — fatigue, gain weight,
increase health issues such as stroke and heart attack, etc.
Binge-watching has been a recent phenomenon due to the ease of accessibility of home
entertainment. You can watch a movie while on a subway thanks to smartphones. You’ll
never leave home without entertainment and that’s caused a negative phenomenon called
binge-watching to spread.
4. Inconvenient Choices
Ever been provided a free 14-day trial to try a service or product. From your perspective, it’s
completely free. After all, what possible ulterior motive can be brewing behind providing
people with a trial.
While signing up for your trial, you’ll be asked for your information — personal and
business. After which you’ll be asked to hook your credit card information on the basis that
it won’t be charged until after the trial period has passed.
With this, you’ve just provided the following information for a 14-day free trial
•
Credit card accessibility
•
Personal Information
•
Product purchase history matched with other sites against your personal information
They’ve now got everything they need to know about you and the brand will begin to send
personalized ads your way. The telemarketers that call and waste 20 minutes of your daily
life? Blame it on the information that you’ve just given to an unknown company that’s been
giving you a free trial period.
Technology has cleverly manipulated you into providing all your information without you
realizing it. It’s only when you are spammed with ads when opening an app do you realize
that something’s truly wrong.
You realize every ad that you get from that point on is based around the products that you
just bought from another website. How did they get so much access to your information?
Well because you just happened to give it to them.
Your emails won’t be spared either as you’ll be spammed until your inbox is full of
advertising emails that you manually must block every individual sender. A very timeconsuming process.
5. Shortened Attention Span
Did you know technology has in adversely affected your attention span without you knowing
about it?
The number of book readers in America alone has declined to 43% in 2016 from 57% in
1982. With every technological revolution that we enter, our attention span is declining to
dangerous levels. In the future, we might not even hold a conversation with our family
members for more than a minute before getting up to leave.
The cause of this is the dangerous trend of technology and its offerings. According to
Microsoft Corp., the average attention span of a human has been reduced from 12 seconds
to 8 seconds. Which means a goldfish which has an attention span of 9 seconds has beaten a
full-grown human being.
The age of technology has let us access countless articles on the cyberspace that we prefer
scanning them instead of reading and understanding the articles. Microsoft Corp.
demonstrates that weaker attention span is linked to the evolving internet age along with
the availability of devices such as tablets and mobile phones.
To normalize your attention, it’s recommended to quit using electronic devices before
bedtime. Follow the below 3 habits and you’ll be on your way to paying attention to
everything in detail in no time.
Music
Areas of the brain that were exposed to music were shown to share the same space with
the attentive areas of the brain.
This makes sense when you listen to a soundtrack and you attentively try to track the
number of instruments that are being used in a song.
You try to break down the bass, rhythm, drums, vocals, and other sounds.
Take Notes
Write your notes down on pen and paper, don’t have the habit of typing your notes using
Google Keep or other software on your devices.
Writing down notes also allows you to fully explore the idea rather than typing it down on a
computer screen where your attention span is lowered thanks to our minds using the scanand-go approach.
Ask questions
We don’t mean Google all your questions but develop a conversation with someone and pay
attention to them by listening to their answers. This way, your brain begins to analyze
what’s being heard by the other person and you’ll have a better attention span when
listening to words that are being heard rather than scanning through articles for your
answers.
CLOSING WORDS
Beware! While technology is a great access point, it also allows others to access you. It’s a
two-way tunnel connecting you to the world and connecting the world to you.
Just as you can watch a movie that is available online, companies are able to view your
information without entering your homes. Privacy is a concern due to technology’s grasp of
everything that happens around the world. It’s always a good idea to think twice before you
provide information to unknown sources or face the danger of becoming a victim.
Original Article Available at: Understanding Technology and Its Influence on Human
Behavior | Cleverism
Text 4
Study finds growing government use of sensitive data to ‘nudge’ behaviour
Alex Hern UK technology editor
Wed 8 Sep 2021 06.00 BST
A new form of “influence government”, which uses sensitive personal data to craft
campaigns aimed at altering behaviour has been “supercharged” by the rise of big tech
firms, researchers have warned.
National and local governments have turned to targeted advertisements on search engines
and social media platforms to try to “nudge” the behaviour of the country at large, the
academics found.
The shift to this new brand of governance stems from a marriage between the introduction
of nudge theory in policymaking and an online advertising infrastructure that provides
unforeseen opportunities to run behavioural adjustment campaigns.
Some of the examples found by the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research (SCCJR)
range from a Prevent-style scheme to deter young people from becoming online fraudsters
to tips on how to light a candle properly. While targeted advertising is common across
business, one researcher argues that the government using it to drive behavioural change
could create a perfect feedback loop.
“With the government, you’ve got access to all this data where you can see pretty much in
real time who you need to talk to demographically, and then on the other end you can
actually see, well, ‘did this make a difference?’,” said Ben Collier, of the University of
Edinburgh. “The government doing this supercharges the ability of it to actually work.”
The British government’s fondness for minor behavioural modification tactics began in the
David Cameron era. Since the foundation of the Behavioural Insight Team – or “nudge unit”
– at No 10, ministers eagerly looked for tweaks to help people pay car tax or encourage
people to buy loft insulation.
The examples of influence government uncovered by the SCCJR range from deeply serious
to almost endearingly silly. At one end of the spectrum is the National Crime Agency’s
“Cyber-Prevent” programme, which involves identifying young people at risk of becoming
involved in cybercrime.
Some arms of the programme, which is modelled on the anti-radicalisation Prevent scheme,
involve traditional “knock and talk” visits, where NCA officers make a home visit to try to
work with the young person’s parents to steer them to a different life path.
But that part of the programme also involves the NCA collecting a substantial amount of
data about the young people it visits, which can be used to craft profiles of the typical “atrisk” teen. Those profiles can then be used to run an “influence policing” campaign, using
targeted advertising aimed at UK teens with an interest in gaming who search for particular
cybercrime services on Google.
“Beginning as simple text-based adverts, the NCA developed them across a six-month
campaign in consultation with behavioural psychologists and using the data they were
collecting from their operational work,” the researchers write. The adverts were also linked
to major gaming conventions, and advertorials were bought on gaming websites.
At the other end of the spectrum, a fire safety campaign decided to go for the most obvious
possible targeting route, said Collier. “The Home Office were essentially boasting about their
use of people’s purchasing data via Amazon targeting categories. They’d basically scooped it
up so that if you bought candles or matches, that would be used to target you with audio
adverts over your Amazon Alexa with fire safety tips. So you buy the candles when you’re
out, you come home and your Amazon Alexa starts giving you fire safety advice.”
While it’s usually good for the government to achieve goals like reducing house fires or
preventing cybercrime, Collier and his colleagues warn that the rise of “influence
government” could cause harm. Not only does it encourage departments to play fast and
loose with personal data – using notes from an interview under caution to build a profile of
a typical cybercriminal, for instance – it can also focus negative attention on vulnerable and
disadvantaged groups in ways that could be counterproductive.
One set of anti-knife crime adverts, for instance, was targeted at fans of drill music on
YouTube. The researchers warn that being followed around the internet by mentions of
knife crime could make young people more likely to think that knife-carrying was common,
ultimately helping convince them to carry a weapon.
Frequently, such campaigns are outsourced to third-party marketing agencies, a practice the
researchers argue must stop. “They are frontline policy interventions and need to be seen as
such, and subjected to the same public debate, scrutiny and accountability as other such
policies,” they argue, because they ultimately have the “dual effect of opening up the
intimate spaces of citizen lives to state control on one hand and expanding the sources of
data used by the government to target policy on the other”.
The Cabinet Office has been contacted for comment.
This article was amended on 8 September 2021 to correct the name of the Scottish Centre
for Crime and Justice Research (SCCJR).
Original Article Available at: Study finds growing government use of sensitive data to ‘nudge’
behaviour | Data protection | The Guardian
Text 5
How Local Governments Are Using Technology to Serve Citizens Better
by
•
Steve Ressler
January 12, 2016
In our connected, customer-centric world, customers have come to expect that their needs
will be met quickly and frictionlessly — especially in cities, where Instacart delivers groceries
to your apartment, Amazon provides same-day delivery, and Uber and Lyft compete to have
a car to your door in minutes.
Local governments, however, have too often offered a different experience: forms that have
to be printed and mailed; payments taken only in cash or check; appointments that have to
be conducted in person and in offices open only from 9 AM to 5 PM (or 9 AM to noon on
Fridays). This experience increasingly clashes with what city residents have been trained to
expect from the likes of Zillow, Kayak, and Yelp. Thus we have a world in which citizens find
it easier to compare pubs than public schools, to compare hotels than hospitals. It’s a
missed opportunity for governments not only to improve the lives of the people they serve,
but also to demonstrate their value and increase civic engagement.
Some innovative local governments have realized this and are using technology and a
customer-focused mind-set to innovate and better serve citizens, whether for setting up a
business or renewing a driver’s license. In our experience, the governments who really get it
understand five key things, borrowed from the consumer digital/technology sector:
Scale matters. It sounds obvious, but it’s so important that it has to be said. In the consumer
internet sector, we understand that a large audience is everything: social networks become
more valuable when more people sign up for them, and websites have more influence
when more people read them. To have a substantial impact, government services need a
substantial audience. When new apps allow residents to buy fishing licenses, check transit
schedules, or pay their local taxes on time, the impact adds up. Too many governments
measure impact in terms of thousands of downloads or impressions, rather than tens of
thousands or even millions. The ones who are really innovating aim bigger.
Online and offline efforts have to mesh. Successful government organizations use both
offline and online touchpoints to build a digital audience. They offer subscription
opportunities at call centers, customer service touchpoints, and community events, or on
their social media accounts. They optimize their websites to offer visitors opportunities to
sign up for updates on specific content of interest. For example, to get more people signed
up for snow emergency alerts, the city of Minneapolis advertises its GovDelivery alert
subscription options on billboards, in mailings, and on its social media accounts. One
cohesive message is used to get residents to sign up for snow alerts so they’ll know the
latest parking restrictions.
The citizen’s government accounts should connect seamlessly. All too often, city
governments require citizens to create different accounts for tasks like paying parking
tickets, taxes, or trash pickup fees — even if all those services are on the same government
website. Or in larger metro areas, each individual city may force you to install its own
parking app; in some dense urban areas, you’d need three or four different apps to park
within a five-mile radius.
This is an area in which governments actually have an advantage over private companies.
Government agencies can partner with each other, sharing information and back-end
databases to give citizens a more convenient, seamless experience. For example, we’ve
created a network in our platform where after signing up for one government organization’s
information, the next screen offers users the option of signing up for other notifications
from similar services or close physical locations. We’ve found that, on average, citizens sign
up for one additional agency per registration.
Engagement depends on smart segmenting. To attain private-sector standards of
engagement and conversion, government organizations must also segment and target their
audiences — while also respecting citizen privacy. Communications specifically tailored to
audience interests are more relevant, which makes those communications more likely to
capture attention and engage citizens in programs and initiatives of value.
For example, to better coordinate sanitation services, the city of Louisville offers junk pickup reminders to residents through GovDelivery, segmented by location. More than 12,000
households have signed up to receive text message alerts one week before and one day
before junk is scheduled for curbside pickup. By proactively communicating on junk pick-up
dates for residents, Louisville has been able to increase efficiency in its call center, cutting
the number of calls to its 311 center regarding pick-up dates by 45% since 2013. In another
example, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission sends a quarterly
reengagement campaign to promote new programs, services, or topics of interest to
existing subscribers. Further, the state of Michigan uses targeted campaigns and audience
data to grow the number of foster parent applications.
Influencers improve engagement. Getting the right message into the hands of the right
people creates a viral effect, and governments can and should tap into this phenomenon. A
2014 Pew Research study showed that fewer than 30% of adults completed common
government services digitally. The key component here is that many citizens may not know
about the digital offerings available to them. That’s where advocacy marketing, finding key
influencers to help drive your message across, can help.
But uncovering and leveraging these advocates can be a challenge. By identifying and
speaking differently to highly engaged audiences, those who are more likely to share
content with friends and family, organizations can capitalize on members of the public to
help further disseminate their information. For example, King County, Washington,
leverages insights into top sharers of digital content to determine cross-promotional
campaigns they may respond well to. A citizen highly engaged with emails from a school
district is likely to respond well to a targeted request to volunteer or support a school levy.
City governments around the world are on the path to offering a truly connected citizen
experience. With the right technology and a well thought-out communications strategy, it
won’t be long before citizens receive a streamlined, consistent experience from the public
sector.
Original Article Available at: How Local Governments Are Using Technology to Serve Citizens
Better (hbr.org)
Text 6
Smart Cities Start with Smart Buildings
SPONSOR CONTENT FROM DELL AND INTEL®
January 26, 2016
As more people move to urban areas, cities face ever more economic and
environmental challenges, including resource constraints, economic restructuring,
aging populations, and pressures on public finances. In their efforts to accommodate
growing urban populations and the accompanying challenges, governments can use
modern information and communication technologies to create “Smart Cities” and
smart buildings that improve the quality and interactivity of urban services while
reducing costs and ensuring sustainability.
Smart City applications have the ability to improve everything from traffic flow to
emergency response to the operations of the buildings in which we live and work.
The United States alone is home to more than 5 million large commercial buildings,
including warehouses, offices, and schools. Buildings are responsible for about twothirds of U.S. electrical energy consumption, and the U.S. Department of Energy
estimates that the country wastes 30 percent of our overall energy, representing
huge financial and environmental losses.
Today, cutting-edge Internet of Things (IoT) solutions enable the businesses,
schools, and other institutions on Dell’s “Top 25 Future-Ready Economies” list to
make better data-driven decisions for smarter buildings. By overlaying an IT network,
connecting all traditionally unconnected equipment, and applying automated
analytics and controls, building owners and managers can significantly reduce their
buildings’ energy waste and cut costs.
For instance, lighting control systems, thermostats, sensors, and alarms – all
connected to the IoT – can automatically adjust building settings according to realtime usage patterns, leading to energy savings, improved air quality, and an increase
in overall efficiency.
In addition to saving energy – and, as a result, costs – smart buildings improve the
indoor experience for occupants. On a sunny day, windows automatically darken
themselves, and when sensors detect an empty room, the heat automatically turns
off. Buildings that employ these types of energy-saving technology improve
occupants’ quality of life, workers’ productivity, and students’ chances for academic
success.
Smarter Buildings: The Foundation for Smart Cities
The rapid introduction of new IoT solutions allows building operators to make their
properties smarter without having to undergo costly retrofits or hire expensive
consultants. Lucid is one company leading the transition to smarter buildings and
smarter cities. It works with the Clinton Global Initiative and runs Connected Cities, a
program to help 100 U.S. cities integrate smart technologies into municipal buildings.
“Connected Cities exists to break down cost and complexity barriers, so cities know
how to invest in efficiency and sustainability,” says Vladi Shunturov, president and
co-founder of Lucid. “Cities can leverage other participants’ experience, so they don’t
have to architect their smart building initiatives and efficiency efforts from scratch.”
Shunturov suggests that cities focus on three key areas to improve efficiency:
1. Operations: Centralize performance data and use analytical insights to
reduce consumption by 17 percent, on average.
2. Behavior: Educate tenants in good habits and best practices, and create a
feedback mechanism.
3. Physical capital: Where necessary, replace inefficient systems, using data
intelligence to effectively target capital across large portfolios.
Current practices tend to focus on capital expenditure first – replacing old equipment
with new – but this approach is often premature. Many times the better solution is to
evaluate what already exists, improve its efficiency, and use the savings to invest in
capital improvements. According to Lucid, building managers can realize significant
energy savings purely from operational measures.
As a first step, cities interested in implementing smart building programs can
increase the frequency of utility data collection, which will reveal important usage
patterns. For instance, instead of tallying utility bills monthly, cities can use smart
meters to take readings every 15 minutes. This will help them identify usage patterns
and plan effective energy usage based on equipment requirements and building
occupancy. In schools, this kind of improved efficiency means that cost savings can
be allocated to where they’ll be put to the best use: education and curriculum. In
cities, improved efficiency translates into energy savings, simplified processes, and
the ability to identify capital expenditures that do the most good without breaking the
budget.
One U.S. organization uses Lucid’s technology to verify its building-level submetering information, thereby avoiding the higher billing rates linked to peak demand
charges, which can account for as much as 40 percent of energy bills in many utility
territories.
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) uses Lucid’s technology to
centralize data across 26 buildings and five different building systems. In the first two
months of using Lucid’s technology, LBNL’s facilities team reduced the buildings’
natural gas usage by 50 percent, thanks to insights from 15-minute interval data that
empowered the team to configure the building’s automation system to run more
efficiently. Before using Lucid’s software, LBNL was not aware that its automation
system was misconfigured, so buildings were being heated and cooled at night, even
though they were vacant.
Of course, it is important not to manage energy efficiency in isolation, because this
can lead to uncomfortable, unproductive, or unhealthy environments. The beauty of
smart buildings is that they enable multiple systems to collaborate across multiple
contexts: resource efficiency, productivity, comfort, health, and education.
A Solid Foundation for Financing
For many communities, the greatest barrier to becoming a Smart City is cost. One
interesting enabler for many cities is new financing mechanisms, which previously
were the catalyst for the rapid deployment of solar and other renewable energy
generation products. Increasing numbers of deployments and greater efficiency
gains are bankable assets that offer cities opportunities for bonds and other financial
mechanisms, but identifying opportunities and providing fiscal accountability require
data.
For example, the city of Orlando, Florida, is investing about $20 million in Smart City
deployments. It is using data collected on energy cost savings to provide
accountability and demonstrate these investments’ performance over the long run.
Because building conditions are dynamic – occupancy, weather, and usage patterns
change continuously – savings validation mathematics tend to be difficult and time
consuming unless they are fully automated and data is centralized and readily
available.
As cities continue to grow and change, taking control of the spaces in which we live
and work – and making them more intelligent – is critical to conserving resources,
improving living and working conditions, and saving money. Fortunately, cities don’t
need to make huge investments to get started: They can become smart and efficient
one building at a time.
Original Article Available at: Smart Cities Start with Smart Buildings - SPONSOR CONTENT
FROM DELL AND INTEL® (hbr.org)