In summer of 2008, I took an Ethics of Information class. Our final project was a paper on the topic of our choice.
I wanted to look at what I saw as the New Third World – the way on-line information about us could and was possibly already being used to exploit us, make our lives worse, keep us from getting jobs, bank loans and or other essential and quality-of-life goods. The haves got the good stuff, the rest of us would unknowingly become citizens of a borderless Third World nation.
Sunday’s New York Times featured an editorial entitled “The Secret Agenda of a Facebook Quiz.”
I just finished reading it.
My response is to post my paper here for anyone to read, learn from and possibly follow up on and extend. It’s long, but it may be one of the most important things I’ve written. I haven’t updated it, but would be interested in feedback from anyone brave enough to get through it. (It’s not written in academ-ese; my prof said she wanted my own voice.)
Click on the link below. (Note to Elizabeth Warren fans: She makes a cameo appearance dating back to her days as a university professor.)
the sentence factory 