When you think of tattoos, one's mind immediately goes to the ink embedded in someone's body, acting as a walking canvas. Now, what if I told you the same concept could be applied to electronics now? In his Ted Talk, Juan Enriquez refers to this as electronic tattoos.
The advancement of technology, AI, tracking, and access all of someones personal and sensitive information is becoming increasingly more prominent here in the United States of America. Just like tattoos that one would get on their body, electronic tattoos have the same concept.
With increasing technology, facial recognition is on the rise. Facebook bought the company Face.com back on June 18th, 2012. Within this, the platform's data profile had over 18 billion faces! That is even more than the current estimated number of people on planet Earth today, about 8 billion.
Having one's face recognized in a database makes your online tattoo unique to you. Anyone can look you up, find niche information on you, and potentially use it against you. Sounds good to you? I'm going to take a wild guess and say no on your behalf.
Enriquez's message isn't just about the metaphor of how our online life is like a tattoo; rather, it's the meaning behind how you choose to portray yourself online. It really comes down to the choices you make with your personal brand online. But what if you didn't have the choice?
In Catherine Crumps ' TED Talk, she mentions how what is put online can sometimes be out of our control. See Flock Cameras, unbeknownst to you, track your daily moves, actions, and more. These systems can gather data on you that you aren't even aware of!
Personally, I knew that cameras, under certain circumstances, were legal in public, like at a Walmart, for instance. After hearing Crumps talk about personal safety, the information about you that is being shared without your knowledge is extremely unsettling.
For example, Catherine talked about a man being seen leaving his home, his vehicle being caught on multiple different cameras, and being sent to the government all without him knowing. In my personal opinion, this is completely unacceptable, and these instances are becoming more and more prominent across the United States.
The Government now has access to our license plate information regarding our everyday commutes and whereabouts, daily travel for work, doctors, and more information that should be private to us.
To me, this is completely unacceptable and makes me think to myself, "What more about me and my personal life is online that I am unaware of?".
In Crumps' video, she also mentions how police can use cell phone towers to ping people's phones in uncanny ways.
Police do this to find and locate people in emergencies, but they can also be used and abused in the wrong ways. Using people's information without their knowledge in these circumstances is extremely unprofessional and an absolute invasion of privacy.
Now keep in mind and think twice about how you are being portrayed online, whether you know someone is recording you or not.
AI Disclosure: AI was not used in the making of this post; rather, the information came from the notes I took while watching these videos. I did, however, use Grammarly to auto-check for spelling, punctuation, and overall grammer errors.
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