Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Chapter 5 "Privacy: Looking for Solitude in the Global Village
There was a certain line in this chapter that grabbed my attention immediately when I saw it. I feel like it holds solid ground for discussion and potentially debate, so I thought I would give some input into my reaction. It lies at the top of page 113 when the authors were talking about the interconnection between privacy and community: "Responsibility for keeping things private is shared: individuals have to learn when to share or withhold information, while the community has to learn when to avert its eyes." I bolded the clause that grabbed my attention because I feel that in this day and age, communities don't truly ever avert their eyes. In an extremely fast-paced, interconnected technological society, "averting eyes" doesn't hold the same standard that it might have back in earlier times. My question (in accordance with the current time period) is: How can one person, let alone a community, avert their eyes when information is constantly surrounding them in so many different mediums? There's TV, cell phones, internet and social media, and perhaps most crucial: word of mouth. We live in a time where information holds a central role in our lives so we are constantly talking about things we've seen, heard, read, or watched to others - especially the things that we find shocking, funny, or heartwarming. Legal scholar Jeffrey Rosen talks about avoiding the "unwanted gaze" but unfortunately, I don't think we ever can truly avoid it. It's definitely a mind-boggling, if not alarming thought to see the concept of personal privacy waning. As Rosen discusses, it sometimes leads us to lead more restricted lives because we are afraid of the immediate transparency; this is a disheartening thought as well. I'm interested to see where we'll be in 20 years in regards to our level of privacy; will our privacy rights have a higher or lower priority in our future society and how will they be upheld in ethical dilemmas such as the ones discussed? These are my main questions in regards to my thought process about this chapter.
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Chapter 4: "Loyalty: Choosing Between Competing Allegiances"
February 10th, 2014
The concept of loyalty is often over-simplified, yet it's hard not to ask, "Well, why can't it be simple?" It seems straightforward and easy to identify, which in some instances it is, but when put into different contexts, it creates a whole world of questions - and a whole world of ethical dilemmas. Before reading this chapter, I thought of loyalty as a sort of "desired responsibility", in which we usually wanted to be responsible to someone or for something because we had emotional ties that connected us to them. Yet what I did not take into account was the fact that loyalty is not always happy-go-lucky, we don't always desire it when making ethical decisions because it comes with innate power, power that can serve as a double-edged sword. This power can take many forms: it can come as betrayal when one betrays (either purposefully or unintentionally) a cause by being loyal to another one; it can come as bias or prejudice by being loyal to something that does not stand for fair values; and it can cloud our vision by having to choose between competing loyalties. A couple of these issues were brought up in Chapter 4 and I was struck by how much I had glossed over these specificities before. I truly realized how sticky loyalty can get in the communications world (and in general, really) when I read the ethical dilemmas presented at the end of the chapter, especially Cases 4-A and 4-G. It's hard to separate and prioritize your loyalties when you're juggling a large amount of them and they can effect your life in various degrees. The chapter gave a concise line of advice that I really appreciated: "When making ethical choices, it is important to consider what your loyalties are and how you arrived at those loyalties." I think this is so important because not many people, including myself, know why they are loyal to something or someone; they just go along without fully understanding why certain loyalties are present in their lives. I think this aspect is a big issue when it comes to making ethical decisions; after all, loyalty plays an enormous role in our personal conclusions and can effect others to a larger degree than we ever could've imagined.
The concept of loyalty is often over-simplified, yet it's hard not to ask, "Well, why can't it be simple?" It seems straightforward and easy to identify, which in some instances it is, but when put into different contexts, it creates a whole world of questions - and a whole world of ethical dilemmas. Before reading this chapter, I thought of loyalty as a sort of "desired responsibility", in which we usually wanted to be responsible to someone or for something because we had emotional ties that connected us to them. Yet what I did not take into account was the fact that loyalty is not always happy-go-lucky, we don't always desire it when making ethical decisions because it comes with innate power, power that can serve as a double-edged sword. This power can take many forms: it can come as betrayal when one betrays (either purposefully or unintentionally) a cause by being loyal to another one; it can come as bias or prejudice by being loyal to something that does not stand for fair values; and it can cloud our vision by having to choose between competing loyalties. A couple of these issues were brought up in Chapter 4 and I was struck by how much I had glossed over these specificities before. I truly realized how sticky loyalty can get in the communications world (and in general, really) when I read the ethical dilemmas presented at the end of the chapter, especially Cases 4-A and 4-G. It's hard to separate and prioritize your loyalties when you're juggling a large amount of them and they can effect your life in various degrees. The chapter gave a concise line of advice that I really appreciated: "When making ethical choices, it is important to consider what your loyalties are and how you arrived at those loyalties." I think this is so important because not many people, including myself, know why they are loyal to something or someone; they just go along without fully understanding why certain loyalties are present in their lives. I think this aspect is a big issue when it comes to making ethical decisions; after all, loyalty plays an enormous role in our personal conclusions and can effect others to a larger degree than we ever could've imagined.
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