First I read “The WIRED Guide to Your Personal Data (and Who is Using It), and it talked all about how user data is just puppy food for advertisers. Our Google searches, location histories, and the photos/ videos we upload generate lots of information about us for the investors to use and wield to their advantage to sell you things. I learned that data collection falls into different categories when it comes to privacy. Health records, social security numbers, and banking details make up the most sensitive information stored online. Social media posts, location data, and search-engine queries are also revealing, but aren’t typically monetized in a way that your credit card number would be. Other kinds of data collection fall into separate categories, but all of this information is collected into one wide spectrum of consent. While sometimes it is clear that data is being collected, sometimes users might not even understand that they are giving up anything at all. While this is not new or surprising to me, what I did find interesting were the actions of data brokers. I knew they compiled information from publicly available sources, but I didn’t realize that went beyond social media posts, browsing histories, and things that went past the computer screen. I was shocked to see that these firms source information about you from property records, marriage licenses, court cases, and etc. Not that I have done anything wrong, but I just feel like these people are private investigators just waiting to pounce on me with all of this information.
Next I listened to the “You 2.0: Deep Work” podcast. This episode of “The Hidden Brain” talk all about how the buzzes and beeps coming from our smart devices has become so triggering and distracting that it led to being unhealthy. The host speaks to a computer scientist about the notifications, and ultimately says that we are downplaying these beeps and need to cut our selves off from tech in order to think deeper. Today people work on single tasks, but do brief checks to their email or smartphone. People feel like they are predominantly working on that one task, but these quick checks that switch our context have massive negative impact on our cognitive performance. From a study focusing on attention residue, scientists have found that when we get distracted our performance to that first task drops for a good period of time before you are completely focused again. When we take quick glances towards our smart device (as I have honestly just done), we become distracted and stop performing as well as we have been. What I found surprising, was the fact that the computer scientist believes that these distractions are more urgent and alarming to our well being than we realize. Our brain is very important part of our bodies, and these buzzes are disrupting our cognitive fitness and preventing us from thinking deeper and staying focused longer.
Lastly, I read “The Rise of The “Getting Real” Post On Instagram” article. This article shines a light on how celebrities people have started to “get real” on Instagram but in doing so they have made it an aesthetic. With the times today, Instagram as definitely become more casual and openly-personal from what used to be just a montage of perfectly staged photographs. The photos of influencers and celebrities have gotten more “behind-the-scenes”, their captions have become longer, and they have opened up about their feelings. In doing all of this, people have gone out of their way to make things look not so perfect and are not so much worried on a neat crop/ great lighting. What was a moment of catharsis for finally telling the truth, has become just another thing to leverage for profit by influencers and celebrities. What I found new, was that there is even research that now confirms this trend and users want to see more posts that “seem” to be candid. This article is over a year old, and with the pandemic and all of the other craziness going on in the world today, I think that people have actually become more personal and candid on Instagram and the aesthetic for it is passing. Uncertainty has consumed us all this year, so I think aesthetics have fallen to the wayside and people are just trying to get by so they are posting whatever – not trying to make anything messy it just is messy.
