Influence of modern technologies on our privacy: whether it is a good thing or not?

Today we all live in the 21st century and whatever the kind of news it is we anyway have to adapt to modern technologies in order to be competitive towards each other. It makes us clash with the question «In which way do these technologies affect our today’s lives?» and in particular «In which way do these technologies affect our privacy?». I have been considering this issue for a while and here is my understanding of it.

The answer which I came to is «Yes, modern technologies definitely limit our privacy but it would be naive to think that these limitations are unambiguously bad thing especially in terms of liberty». Hence my proposition arose, in few words it is «The problem is outside of technologies themselves, it primarily in those who handle them». At this very point I want to clarify that I’m not going to argue against evident existence of influence of modern technologies on our privacy but I’m going to show that this influence can be both a good and bad thing.

One good example where it is ambiguous whether the influence of modern technologies on our privacy is a bad thing in terms of our life in whole or not is mass media. Actually the issue of mass media is an extremely large topic but I consider it to be enough just to provide here several examples. At first, it is evident that journalists invade in privacy of many celebrities but at the same time it has become impossible just to suppress outcries among the population in the way as it was, say, in 19th century and Euromaidan is one of many confirmations to this position.

Another example is payments made with credit card which are very popular today within developed countries. The problem there is that banks have entire information about my payments and may give it to somebody else who I possibly don’t want to have such an information. But at the same time it prevents tax evasions and eliminates underworld market with drug industry, arms traffic and prostitution.

The last example is microchips embedded into shop stuff which practically eliminate shoplifting and provoke apprehensions of customers being tracked.

In fact there are lots of other examples such as tapping your phone talks, a great deal of cameras everywhere, safety of correspondence and other stuff like that but all of them are about the same problem which is «How to prevent abuse of modern technologies by people who may be interested in that?». I’m sure that there are many possible solutions but one of them is certainly legislative restrictions which you may successfully apply to every of provided examples.

The final conclusion which I have come to is «Don’t be afraid of changes in the century of changes». So I hope you will come to the same conclusion.