It’s Friday night and all I have to do, instead of getting a new hair-cut, wearing makeup, and going out with friends, is simply change my Face book profile picture. This is 'thanks' to the digital revolution that’s increased enormously through the 21st century’s generations. As Jaron Lanier suggests in his book, you are not a gadget, people have become automatons, much like mobile robots that are controlled by technology. I am not against the new “open culture;” however, my argument is that instead of people becoming controllers of what they have innovated, they have turned into its slaves.
According to Suzanne Choney’s article, The dark side of digital 'love', within the new technology people no longer act as individuals and the nature of privacy is not what it used to be. "Technology has removed what I call the 'moral speed bumps'," she says. Before, when you went out to stalk somebody, or engaging in some other horrific act, you had to decide to go out that front door and do it, she adds. "But what technology has enabled you to do, is to sit in the privacy of your house and wreak havoc." Choney continues.
Losing our privacy has entailed different aspects which all imply to lose our identity. In other words, we are becoming a transparent society of record, one in which documentation of our past history, current identity, location, communication and physiological and psychological states are available to everyone. All of this was anticipated by Gary T. Marx in his Privacy and Technology piece back in 1999.
Looking at issue of privacy in a different way, illustrates how with the new culture we have become software’s prisoners. I suggest our privacy is our freedom when it comes to getting locked into software such as files, UNIX, or MIDI. As Lanier recalls, lock in makes us forget the lost freedom we had in the digital past, and should be resisted. For instance, Bradley Kuhn of the Software Freedom Law Center expresses his concern about the future of freedom in lock in software mobiles. “We are in a very precarious time with regard to the freedom of mobile devices. We currently have no truly Free Software operating system that does the job,” he says.
In conclusion, as the power of computers grows exponentially, domination of online culture over the traditional culture should being controlled by individuals. After all, humans are the creators of computers, not the other way around . As Pink Floyd sang- “Welcome my son, welcome to the machine” hint that although we live in a digital age and have been besieged with technology, we should use it as a gift without losing our identities in the process.
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