Conscientious Connectivity

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Author of Disconnected: Youth, New Media, and the Ethics Gap, Carrie James, defines conscientious connectivity as a way of being mindful in the digital sphere, paying attention to the implications of our online behavior. Conscientious Connectivity can help young people raise their sensitivity to the fullness of their online experience and sharpen their ethical thinking skills. The point is to be mindful of the meaning behind our actions — and the way our online activity affects a widening community of people we know and, increasingly, people we don’t. As many people believe that ethical and moral rules in real life are not essential to be applied in digital world, conscientious connectivity helps people raise their sensitivity to the ethical aspects of their online actions and to cultivate ethical thinking skills. By developing our ethical thinking skills online, it helps us reflect on our various roles and responsibilities online. 

Considering ways to address the digital ethics gap, James offers a vision of conscientious connectivity, which involves ethical thinking skills but, perhaps more important, is marked by sensitivity to the dilemmas posed by online life, a motivation to wrestle with them, and a sense of moral agency that supports socially positive online actions.

A PACS 2 class about digital citizen and self can help students to be more careful because the various benefits and harms that online, video games, and social media can cause are mentioned. In our class, we mentioned about the types of online action we face and how it affects us. When we were reading books and watching movies, we were able to increase our conscientious connectivity on internet because we learned how to deal with online problems.

How can Data Sharing can cause a problem?

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In beginning of 2018, Facebook got into a major political scandal where they were accused of selling personal data of the users of Facebook to a third-party firm without the user’s consent. It caused a lot of problems to Mark Zuckerberg as he more than $100 billion dollars of share price in few days. Politicians from US and UK demanded answers from Mark and this led him to testify in front of the US Congress. In other words, Facebook can collect data submitted by users of a participating health app, match it to its own users, and then it can better label them and improve its ad targeting. This data is sometimes anonymised, but there are markers that allow Facebook to match it with its users. However, Facebook said it tells developers not to share “health, financial information or other categories of sensitive information” with it.
The scandal caused a lot of problems to the social media companies and helped the consumer to have a greater protection of their data over the internet.

So what happens if Facebook’s system does not protect user from hackers or third party firm to access personal data? The solution is what if the users became invisible. The Facebook website contains valuable information such as phone numbers, emails, passwords, addresses, and even credit/debit card information. But there is a simple way of avoiding all this problems. Maybe the people should be anonymous and should not give out information on the internet.  

Data sharing is so harmful, that even Chinese Hackers found US Government data on Google server. It also kills small and medium scale companies as the multi-national companies buy data of the consumer and make goods according to their preference.

How can Wade make the world a better place?

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The Ready Player One movie finished on a good remark where Wade gets the ownership of OASIS after winning the contest which was created by deceased owner. He shuts down OASIS for 2 days in a week because people should spend more time in real world as James Halliday said that “As terrifying and painful as reality can be, it’s also the only place where you can find true happiness”.

Wade really did a good job by shutting down the OASIS since the real world is collapsing and people should stop pretending to have a real life in a virtual game. They should start working together and help the world to be a better place for themselves & for the future.
Contemplating on how much time should people spend in the OASIS, five days would not cause any effect on the people because their main focus is on the game and it contains credits which people can use it as a currency in the real world. OASIS takes real world currency and transfers it to credits. The credits should not be valued outside because it can harm the economy. Wade stop allowing credits to be accepted outside OASIS because people would be more invested in the real currency and it can help them to get a job. This can make people more active and more skillful which can be a great contribution to the society.

Wade can make OASIS be a part of the education system where everyone can learn different things like having a virtual situation where in real world you get once to do that perfectly. It can be a great help to world and solve almost all problems of the real world.

Why is Ready Player One movie so different from the book?

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After reading the book and watching the movie, I found that some significant differences between them.

The novel version is more intense and complex as compare to movie. In the novel version, Wade was shown to very poor and have a small house as compare to the movie. In the novel, after Wade find the first key, he becomes bored and gives up to find the clue to get second key, but in the movie he never loses hope to find the second key.

The second difference I found out that where and how did Parzival (wade’s avatar) found the copper key. In the book, the first challenge (the one for the Copper Key) takes place on the planet Ludus, where all of the various in-OASIS schools are located, and requires players to journey to the middle of nowhere to play a large-scale version of the “Dungeons & Dragons” module “Tomb of Horrors.” Once that part of the challenge is beaten, the player must then defeat a D&D baddie at a game of “Joust.” But in the movie, Wade is the first person to complete that challenge by driving backwards in a race that was was not mentioned in the book, though he’s swiftly followed by Art3mis, and the pair rocket to the top of the Scoreboard to become the most famous people inside the OASIS.

Another main difference I found about Halliday and Morrow’s Background. Sorrento’s background might get a boost in the film, but Halliday and Morrow’s is vastly diminished. Introduced in the book as best friends since middle school, the novel delves into how their childhood friendship blossomed into a fruitful professional partnership in their older years. The eventual break between the pair serves as a both an alluring mystery and compelling piece of emotional information, but the film removes most of that backstory, instead focusing on their bond as adults. Those kid years? Never mentioned.

Is Alternative Reality Game is a key solution for humanity?

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I really feel that alternate reality game (ARG) is beneficial and engaging to us because it gives you a virtual world where you have a similar real situation to do the problem with unlimited times with different varies and it gives you the ease of learning complex things. Also, if you don’t know what is ARG then it is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants’ ideas or actions.

Humans are lacking in solving major problems in the real world. Scientists and Game Developers think that ARG is the next thing to solve all the problems. ARG will afford us the opportunity to do and learn complex things at a moment’s notice. Imagine if it exists for military and education layout.

For Instance, you can just learn how to fly a commercial airplane just as simple as playing a normal video game or redesigning a tall building structure by just using hands. Or, how about the capability to study radioactivity and its problems by flying to a contaminated place in a virtual world and feeling the senses of the environment?

Alternative Virtual Games like Chores Wars, The Charlotte Mystery and Hello Neighbour are the perfect examples where the gamer has to think a different way to solve the problem in every attempt they make. In Chores Wars, it’s a system to let you measure how much housework people are doing. In Hello Neighbour, the main objective of the game is for the player to successfully sneak into the basement of their neighbor’s house to uncover a secret of the neighbor.




Should Japanese citizens have their privacy?

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“Once you’ve lost your privacy, you realize you’ve lost an extremely valuable thing. ” In Today’s world, the Internet is a very essential part of everyone’s life. Almost everyone has an IOT (Internet of Things) devices. But as we process further people are getting careless about their privacy and consider their privacy not important and causing their information to be leak everywhere. But it is also due to badly written computer code where the hackers can easily breach into anyone’s computer.

Japanese Government found this very problematic so they decided to take matters into their own hands by hacking their own citizens through an unprecedented survey of more than 200 million IOT devices. Japan’s fear is confirmed. Around last year, the Japanese Government passed a law where they enable mass hack, as part of security preparations ahead of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications(MIAC) confirmed that two-thirds of cyber attacks in Japan in 2016 were targeted at IOT devices. Government officers fear some kind of threat of cyber attack which could be used in the Olympics.

The US Government should see this opportunity to learn from their mistakes as the problem which Japan is tackling is a global one. As
its citizens were not certainly pleased as US is still recovering from the shock of Snowden’s NSA revelations and the recent data privacy allegations against companies like Facebook. Hence the U.S. government should definitely refrain from following in the footsteps of Japan unless it wants its citizens to completely lose their faith in the government. 

I think this action is against the basic human rights of its citizens because the government can see anything that their citizens are doing and going through their personal information. But for the Japanese Government is helpful because they should increase their cybersecurity not breach into anyone’s computer. Apart from that, it also increases the potential hackers to take advantage of this survey by deploying fake ‘phishing’ emails that can trick users into installing malware in their own IOT devices.

What can people do to better protect their privacy on the Internet?

In the 21st century, the Internet has been booming ever since. But we have seemed to lose control over our personal information on the internet. Many people go to different websites and do not want other people to know about their browsing history.

People can use a lot of stuff to protect their privacy on the internet. To avoid being seen on the internet, people need to use VPN (virtual private network). VPN helps you to be anonymous and you can surf anything that you want on the internet without being caught. It helps a lot of professional hackers, journalists and high-profile officers to avoid their location on the internet.

People should use two-factor authentication to avoid being hacked or scammed. A lot of people go to many different sites and use the same password for everything, this can make your account more vulnerable to be hacked.

People should always place a sticker on their webcam as there can be a possibility of hackers and government officials going through your history. Use search engines like DuckDuckGo because they do not search or store your website history or personal data. People should always turn their location off on their mobile phones because of apps like Snapchat and Google Maps makes it easier for the hacker to see your location easier and makes you an easy target.

People also need to configure out of deleting their cookies because cookies cause a lot of problems like advertisements, increases in the price of things you go through different websites and storage of useless data.