Technology. Convenience. Privacy.

“The personal life of every individual is based on secrecy, and perhaps it is partly for that reason that civilized man is so nervously anxious that personal privacy should be respected.” – Anton Chekhov (Russian writer) wrote back in 1899. Today, these words are meaningful like never before. Technology penetrated all walks of our lives. We leave digital tracks everywhere we go. Nothing about our lives is secret anymore. As we go about our daily routine, we unintentionally share more data than we realize. And I am not talking about information we share on social sites. In the interview to CNN Doug Klunder, director of the ACLU of Washington’s Privacy Project, says “It starts the moment you get up, just moving around is tracked. If it’s on a bus, and you are paying with bus cards, that can be tracked. If you are driving your car, there are increasingly video cameras that recognize license plates. Anytime you have a cell phone on, it’s talking with cell towers and creating a record of where you are down to 100 feet.” Sounds scary. Then, we add credit card use, which exposes our interests, hobbies, spending habits. After that, we add our browsing history, which can indicate our political and religious views. We handle most of our sensitive information through the internet. NOTHING is out of limits. A stranger can know the most intimate details of my life and it feels very uncomfortable. But that is just how I feel. Steve Rambam, a private investigator, for instance says: “Privacy is Dead: Get Over It!” I think he means that it is an equal playing field for all or most of us. We are all exposed. BUT, he argues that people are in a sense compensated for the personal information they divulge. “The average American finds a very healthy acceptable balance between privacy and convenience; they give up some privacy and get a lot of convenience.” Yes, I agree. We do get spoiled in some ways. We can shop, make travel plans, manage bank accounts and get education all from the comfort of our homes. However, don’t we pay too steep of a price for a convenience? It is difficult to say. Probably, the victims of identity theft would say yes. Last year, more than 11 millions U.S. consumers were victims of identity theft, according to an annual survey released last month by Javelin Strategy and Research. For them the price for the convenience created by technology progress cost about $5400 on average. It is steep enough for me.
Yes, we trade privacy for convenience every day. But we have to learn how to protect ourselves, how to avoid scams and how to minimize the amount of the sensitive information we share. And even though it will not eliminate all privacy concerns, but at least it will give us a piece of mind and a chance to sleep at night.

Technology and Careers

This week I read an article about a freelance musician. He writes soundtracks for everything from political campaigns to History Channel documentaries. He earns more than $500,000 in a good year. He has no employees. He works at home. And this is all possible by use of $50,000 worth of technology. Of course, he is very talented, but technology made it possible for him to reproduce the sound of a symphony orchestra and pocket all the money that would have gone to the orchestra. An author of the article calls it “a miracle of productivity”. It is incredible how talented driven people who adopt and learn new technology can be ahead of the game, capitalizing on it and enjoying what they do at the same time. Can it even become more effective than that? Technology turns things that were impossible years ago into simple reality. It creates a lot of opportunities for home-based businesses as well as work-from-home jobs. A study of the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that there were 19.8 million Americans in the 2001 that could be classified as working from home. This number is growing steady from year to year. Some of other home-based jobs include: call center worker, mystery shopper and survey taker, online auction seller/buyer, other web business. Technology creates opportunities and I have another great example to prove it. Markus Frind is a Canadian entrepreneur who owns PlentyofFish.com, the world’s largest online dating website. According to reports in 2006, he earned around $10,000 a day through Adsense’s contextual advertising program. According to a recent article Plenty of Fish now receives 45 million visitors along with 1.1 billion page views every month. His annual income from PlentyofFish.com alone is currently $5 to $10 million a year. What is fascinating is that Markus Frind is a one-man show. He virtually ran Plenty of Fish by himself, along with help from his girlfriend and other voluntary moderators. Carr said that technology becomes a commodity item and does not bring a strategic advantage. I see it otherwise. A person/business has to be creative and unique, timely, persistent and hard-working. And when you add technology to the mix great things can happen!

Technology in education

There was an article in Washington Post this week about new technologies used in universities for student’s educational purposes. It talks about clickers – devices similar to ones used on television game shows. They first appeared about a decade ago and nowadays we can find them almost in every college (however, I still to see one.) Basically, the professor asks a multiple choice question, students answer it by choosing an appropriate button on the clicker. The response is immediate which helps the professor to understand what percentage of students has grasped the subject. Not only it provides an instant feedback whether students understood the material, but also involves students deeper in learning process. Research also shows that students like using devices and attendance goes up. Sounds great, right? Then, article went on saying that clickers soon will be substituted with laptops with applications like iclicker and smart phones. In fact, some universities already use both technologies in its educational processes. How effective is it? To what degree can professors use it and control it? I think it is complicated. On one hand, it is true; technology can make learning process more effective (if we want it of course), we can engage more and receive and immediate feedback on how we are doing. But what should we do if our neighbor chooses to use his/hers laptop or phone for personal use? How irritating must it be for the teacher? A report in the Boulder Daily Camera describes how students are frustrated and distracted by their peers watching movies, typing and doing other stuff. I experienced it firsthand. In one of my classes I have a neighbor who sends messages on the phone non-stop, in another – who chats on facebook during the whole class period. There are instances when I simply cannot concentrate on the material because I am so distracted. Whose responsibility is it to draw the line what is acceptable and what is not? I am sure the role of technology in education will only increase. There will be more computers, more clickers and other gadgets. I can understand their value in our education. I just hope that with the development of new technologies, new rules, regulations and controls of how those devices should be used will emerge.

Internet usage

Leaving in contemporary world we are so accustomed to be around technology, computers that it might come as surprise that there are people that do not own a computer or have an access to the internet. However, according to figures reported by the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration, nearly a third of the US population doesn’t use the Internet at all, either at work or at home. This figures cover wireless, dial up connections and broadband. Based on a survey of 50,000 people, new Census Bureau data shows that the poor, the elderly and minorities continue to lag behind other groups. About 64 percent of households have an Internet connection, which is more than the 51 per cent that did in 2007. Those who didn’t have access either claimed it wasn’t needed or was too expensive. Others who don’t use internet include: people who have difficulties to adapt to rapid changes in technology and the ones who live in rural areas. At first, I thought that 30% is awfully high number. I did the research and found out that compared to the rest of the world the US is actually leading in number of internet users. It is followed by Oceania / Australia 60%, Europe 52%, Latin America/Caribbean 31%, Middle East 28%, Asia 19% and Africa 7%. This makes the world total 26%. So what do these numbers mean? From the business point of view, internet streamlines a lot of processes; it makes communication a lot easier and quicker, it makes services and products more accessible to the customers/other businesses. On the other hand, we get into security issues, protecting information of the company and its customers. From the personal standpoint, especially when we are talking about the US users, internet became a major part of our lives that we rely on every day. We use it for information, communication, we manage our finances, we shop, and we can even get an education online. We trust it with our most sensitive information. Aren’t we too dependent? What will happen to us if we do not have an access to the internet or it is not longer there? I bet we will have to learn to do many things in traditional ways. Another very important thing that I noticed when I went back to Belarus to visit my family is that we lack interpersonal communication. Only 32% of population in Belarus uses internet. Most of e-services we are accustomed to in the US simply are not offered there. Internet is mostly used for informational purposes. Because of that people are forced to actually visit banks, go to stores, post offices etc. Thus they always meet and talk to new people, the range of people they communicate with is much wider than ours. I am talking about real life encounters, real life conversations, not a number of “friends” that comment on our blogs, follow our twits or visit our facebook accounts. So, is internet great? Of course it is! However, I think we have to remember where we came from, who surrounds us, and learn how to combine the best out of two worlds.

IT impact on business

In his speech Vivek Kundra said: “Today, as we enter the information economy, if you look at any modern economy, it’s enabled…by the digital infrastructure that we so rely on today – whether that’s transportation, whether that’s health, whether that’s looking at what’s going on in terms of the flow of ideas.”

I would completely agree with this statement. It is amazing how informational technology became important in all aspects of our lives. In business we use information technology in some way or the other in order to keep in sync with the market and the world. All major departments of the company (hr, accounting, sales, administration, security) utilize IT to carry out their respective operations in a productive and efficient manner. Prospective employees can fill out applications online, most of the accounting transactions (invoices, po’s, bills, etc) are processed via internet, we have databases to keep track of the inventory, and we can reach thousands of our clients in the matter of seconds. Informational technology makes contemporary companies lean and more effective. Its role in business sector certainly is of a great importance, which enables businesses to successfully plan, manage, and execute strategies which lead to profit.

Spam

Do you know that only 5% of all emails are delivered to our mailboxes? The remaining 95% is being identified as spam and blocked by server providers. This study was conducted by ENISA (European Network and Information Security Agency). In the survey ENISA analyzed the traffic seen by 90 service providers in 30 countries. It said that efforts to take on spam varied country to country, as did the amount of money being invested in solving this problem. Anti-spam budget vary from over 15,000 dollars for small companies to millions of dollars for the larger corporations. Nowadays, all anti-spam prevention measures (blacklists, greylists, etc) are quite effective, which made this problem manageable, making it a standard part of operations. And what interesting is that instead of looking at spam as a problem, most server providers view spam prevention as a key selling point that can provide a competitive advantage.

Source: http://www.enisa.europa.eu/