Ethics of Emerging Technologies

Many people I know today are (in my opinion) unnecessarily afraid of their privacy being invaded when they answer surveys or marketing questionnaires. To me we are only going to want to be more and more open about these things, because it actually gives us more say in what is produced. Let's say you are very interested in green technology, when you share this information on surveys, and if enough people voice this opinion, companies might actually start to make decisions with higher regard toward our environment and protecting it from future devastation. It's just one of many ways that we can essentially cast our vote as consumers. I am glad that the companies are listening to us. I am the only person I know in my community who is not concerned about protecting my privacy. What do we have to hide? It's not like we have to share our bank account information with anyone who conducts these surveys, but I do understand that there are unethical forces out there that would take advantage of your information if given the opportunity. So a good degree of caution is good, I suppose I was, thusly, extremely happy to find another person to share my stance on this hyper-sensitivity to privacy we seem to exhibit in our culture. In Kevin Kelly's Ted speech (Kelly, 2007) he discusses the need we will have in the next 5,000 days for increased openness. This was vindicating for me, because I too believe in openness for greater exchange of information and evolution of our species, quite frankly. -Devonee References Kelly, K. (2007, December). Kevin Kelly on the next 5,000 days of the Web [Speech]. Speech delivered at the EG 2007 Conference, Los Angeles. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_kelly_on_the_next_5_000_days_of_the_web.html. Trivett, D. (2014, 4/13/2014) Walden Discussion Board for Emerging and Future Technologies, Module 3 Discussion. Spring, 2014.