Privacy and openness

One of the things I like about the topics in The Internet Course is that they can be interpreted pretty broadly. This week we’re looking at privacy and openness. They can be seen as in opposition to each other, or they can both be seen as positive things. Maybe they can be seen as negatives as well. Anonymity, keeping one’s identity private, gives a kind of freedom of speech, but that freedom sometimes gets abused, like with flaming and cyberbullying. And as one of Lauren articles points out, there is value in accessible personal information. John’s articles looked at the open nature of the web, and privacy in terms of net neutrality. Openness can be a strength, in terms of open source software, or a weakness, in terms of cybersecurity. With all these different meanings, there are a lot of way the class discussion could go. I’m looking forward to this week.