My last blog for this course, but possibly not my last

Here we are, my last blog for this course, but perhaps not my last ever. This course has taught me a lot of interesting and significant information regarding our digital environment. One issue that has had the biggest impact on me is our planets technological consumption, which has an even larger impact on the world. After watching the video of a man in Ghana walking through fields of trash explaining how it was once a beautiful river his friends and himself would play in, but now is a stream of hot sharp metal, I felt shameful. I will now be more conscious when disposing my old devices because I know the effect it has on innocent people’s lives, which I do not want to be a part of destroying, but rather saving. Also, the Pinterest assignment was very interesting because I found many DIY people could do to re use their e-waste or properly dispose of it, which is very beneficial to the environment.

Another issue that I found very interesting is planned obsolescence, which is one of the reasons for our world’s large consumption of electronical waste. After reading this issue I have told many people about it and I believe it is important to do, so they understand that companies purposely make products to break down in a certain amount of time even when they have the knowledge to make them last longer. The idea of planned obsolescence makes sense when you see new generations of IPhones coming out every six months with very little changes made. I never really ran out to buy the latest gadgets once they came out because my old ones were working just fine, but after reading about this issue I am now going to be more aware of companies intentions when shopping.

The last issue that I will take from this course is the idea of limitations of privacy online. Before this course I was well aware that whatever I posted on the Internet would always be able to be tracked down whether or not I deleted the content. We learned that on social media platforms such as Facebook, there are normally steps you have to go through before deleting your account and once it is deleted the content you have posted tend to still be on the Internet. This is because friends and family can either add pictures of you on their accounts or previous post you have made before still stay on Facebook. However, after this week’s lecture and previous lectures regarding privacy policies I have become more aware of how important online privacy actually is. I am now very conscious and careful with what I post on the Internet because content can easily be seen by the wrong people such as, future employers or family members.