FIT1052 Digital Futures – IT Shaping Society
Semester 1, 2019
Reflective piece
The aim of this essay is to represent the impact of IT in the society and the issue that has been raised in different aspects such as social media. It is based on the article, “Facebook’s war on free will”, written by Franklin Foer published on 2017. Foer confers how the large corporations such as Facebook is leading its users to risky paths and their main intentions are to use the individuals for their own benefits. He also mentions that algorithm that is a series of steps or rules to be followed for problem solving is the “precise source of Facebook’s power” (Foer, 2017). Taken from engineering mindset whom are trying to more likely guide the people on the way they think is good not what the people wants without people realising where they are heading to.
According to Foer, “The big tech companies present themselves as platforms for personal liberation” (Foer, 2017), specifically mentioning Facebook which is a large platform and organisation across the world and how it is empowering itself through every individual in the globe to be able to express themselves to others. Foer also takes into the consideration of Matt Haig’s statement that “social media is a risk to our health” (Booth, 2014). He asserts that these organisations such as Facebook are trapping the individuals but are aiming to work conferring to their own benefit for their business and has resulted the people to get addicted to Facebook which is known through the history of Facebook. I agree with his point that people would get addicted to the social media including Facebook and many other, however, I believe that it could have had good impacts on most others. As an evidence, social media such as Facebook has allowed me to get connected with my friends and families who are far from me. Moreover, it also helps us stay connected to friends, families and colleagues and more likely expand our network for our future reference in our career path. Therefore, I believe it depends on the individuals on how to use the technology around them as they are just a tool to be able to help us grow ourselves. Ultimately, they are a business as well and it would be obvious that they would be thinking to develop themselves in different ways to get more users on board as they as well need to benefit from running their organisation similar to all other large organisations in different industries.
As stated by Foer, corporations such as Netflix “use algorithms to make recommendations about films. likewise, suggesting the genres of movies” (Foer, 2017) where they can make more purchase. Facebook similarly uses algorithms for accumulating more data, resulting in what the Facebook wants its users to view or read first in their News Feeds. Moreover, Foer also mentions, the power of algorithm and how the large companies are making it even more powerful for their own earnings. Facebook also have a team who is working on “experime...
