EOTO #2 - Reaction

     There was plenty that I learned from each presentation, a lot of them focused on similar ideas while also expanding on many different things. The topic that intrigued me the most was Total Information Awareness program.

    This was originally created following the events of September 11 and was meant to help detect terrorist attacks before they had the chance of occurring. The program quickly came under fire by people as they believed that it was just meant to spy on the American people. 

    Overall, the program was meant to be a good thing but was turned to just be a surveillance system for every American citizen, which violated people's privacy. Today the program still exists even though the government claims it does not, this was proven by Edward Snowden.

    The next presentation that was able to really grasp my attention was, Social Credit Score, which is a credit ranking system based in China. This is something that has been recently adopted in China and has been available for almost a decade.

    A Social Credit Score is supposed to give businesses or individuals a score based on how responsible they are when it comes to financial decisions. If these individuals are found to have a bad credit score they can be blacklisted and it will be harder for them to live a successful life. 

    This is something that has been talked about potentially being introduced in other countries around the world, the problem with it is that many people believe it to be a violation of their privacy.

    Lastly, the final presentation that caught my eye was Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality allows internet services to provide equal access to people no matter what that service is.

    If there were to be no such thing as Net Neutrality it would mean that services such as instagram, twitter, and many other websites can charge you money just to use the site. Whereas, with net neutrality one can use all of these sites for free and can choose if they want to spend extra money.

    There have been many times where Net Neutrality was almost overturned by the government and there are still companies pushing for this to happen sometime in the future. It would be extremely damaging to those that do not have much money to overturn Net Neutrality as they would be missing out on a lot of important parts of technology.