Question

Now that you have seen that digital technology has affected sociology, it is time to try your sociological skills and knowledge on the concept of privacy.

Explore how privacy has changed in response to digital technology and dataveillance;

Describe what the future of privacy looks like Discuss whether or not there a need to rethink the concept of privacy in the digital age? Why or why not?

Answer 1

In the recent age, we have seen the reliance of man over the aspect of technology. We are using technology in every aspect of our daily life, and therefore, the need for privacy has never been so relevant as it is in today’s time. There are challenges that are faced by everybody where the distinction between personal, personally identifiable and private information needs to be made. With the advent of BIG DATA analytics as the dominant factor in most business practices, we have seen that the lines between right and wrong are ever so blurry. We need to be able to make the distinction between the information which is relevant, which is necessary and which should not be utilized, such as the dilemma of technology, data processing, and dataveillance.

For the future implications, we can say that data and data processing processes are going to face a dire predicament, there would need to be a time where strict laws and policies would be implemented in order to deal with the problem of right data. Companies would be made to understand the difference between data they can use and the data they can’t. In simple terms, private data which is personally identifiable to any individual, even when collected, should be safely discarded by the collection company and not be shared amongst their third-party tie-ups. Businesses should also implement the policy of not utilizing any such data and therefore, the government should come up with the laws especially with the collaboration of the different government or representative body which is what would be needed, especially if the current practices are implemented in a stricter capacity.