Digital Footprints and Reflection

After listening to the web conference this week, what resonated with me was the digital footprint that I’m leaving for my son. He is in second grade and digitally active in class and at home, yet I’m not proactive in teaching him the skills that I’m learning about in class. I also started creating his digital footprint before he was even born, without his consent or knowledge. This is something that I don’t think many people realize. My husband and I need to be more engaged and aware of the information that he has access to and that he shares. While my husband and I were grown before we had to worry about our digital footprints, our son does not have the same luxury. Another issue that stuck with me are my passwords. My personal and professional passwords are very similar (if not the same in a lot of cases) and would be extremely problematic if they were hacked, since both of my digital footprints would be compromised.

This week we got to read about Net Neutrality and the ruling by the FCC. I've been aware of Net Neutrality for a while now, thanks John Oliver and Last Week Tonight for keeping me informed. For those of you that don't know much about Net Neutrality, it basically is "The basic principle driving net neutrality is that the internet should be a free and open platform, almost like any other utility we use in our home (like electricity)." (Adam, 2014). For a while, there was a big push in Congress against net neutrality, from big companies like Comcast and AT&T, each of which would benefit from being "able to distribute bandwidth differently depending on the service." These companies could slow down information that they disagree with and speed up certain content. This would make digital information complete on an unlevel playing field. Thankfully, in 2018, the FCC restored the Internet Freedom Order and "The Federal Trade Commission will police and take action against Internet service providers for anticompetitive acts or unfair and deceptive practices.".

Hopefully, the internet will always be open, fair, and free. Otherwise, when a small group of powerful people control information, and restricts who gets that filtered information (more than it already is)... we might as well be living in 1984... "we've always been at war with Eastasia". Orwell, here we come

Resources:

Adam. (2014). An Introduction to Net Neutrality: What It Is, What It Means for You, and What You Can Do About It. Marshall Data Systems. Retrieved from https://www.marshalldata.com/2014/05/an-introduction-to-net-neutrality-what-it-is-what-it-means-for-you-and-what-you-can-do-about-it

Restoring Internet Freedom. (2019, October 03). Retrieved from https://www.fcc.gov/restoring-internet-freedom