In the past two decades, there have been a huge technological transformation in the digital media. Surveillance industry have benefited from this transformation a lot. If we rewind our lives and think about the time when we were in school. Things were different. If I think of my time in my preschool there were no surveillance cameras installed in my school. As the years passed by there was transformation in security and surveillance system. The cameras and microphones were installed in my school. The scenario was same in my surroundings with camera getting installed on the street, on the traffic lights, offices and so on. The digitization bought boom in the surveillance industry and practices.
Present day situation is that we are under surveillance one way or the other most of the time of the day. I study in Deakin university Melbourne Campus. I noticed the number of cameras installed in the campus while walking through it. There are so many cameras even in places I didn’t even expect!
Mobile phones have become ubiquitous and basic communications tools—now used not only for phone calls, but also for accessing the Internet, sending text messages, and documenting the world(Surveillance Self-Defense)
Application culture is also based on surveillance. Apps like Uber, Google Maps, Tinder, Bank apps, they all use surveillance as their basic feature to function on everyday basis. I lost my new phone recently and I was really worried about it. I started researching it online as to how can track my phone. I tried finding it through ‘find my phone’ but the phone was off, so no luck!
I keep researching about it and finally found a way I can track it. “Google Maps” was the answer to all my prayers. There is a feature called ‘Timeline’ in this app which allows us to track our every 24-hour movement. In this case our digital device be it phone and laptop acts as a GPS tracking devices. It reads and store all our movement throughout the day. I was never aware of this feature. Such features can be benefitted in times like this.
I also ran a poll on twitter asking people about surveillance with apps beneficial to us or not.
63% of them voted for it be useful, another 24% agreed on a maybe and rest 13% said that it wasn’t useful. Surveillance and app culture are going well together. A majority of apps are using surveillance as their prime function to work.
Another very famous application based on surveillance is Pokémon Go. People are going mad playing it. The game functions on surveillance. It shows real life location and the layout of the game is based on it. When we play it we are connected to the pokemon server which detect our location via our digital device and create a layout of the game for us to play. This game is being a huge success.
With such great accessibility comes some drawbacks, some of the people misuse this surveillance practices like people making fake profiles of you. There was a tweet made by famous rapper B.o.B in recent past about ‘snapchat’ using filters to build a face recognition database. This issue was in news for a while. When asked by snapchat they denied the fact.
But the question arises in our mind sometimes “Is someone watching us right now?”.
Surveillance is a boon to the society but also a curse sometimes!
REFERENCES
- About – Google Maps, Google.com.au. (2016), Accessed 5 Aug. 2016 , http://www.google.com.au/maps/about/
- The Daily Dot. (2016). Rapper B.o.B. has chilling theory about Snapchat—but can we trust him?. Accessed 5 Aug. 2016 , http://www.dailydot.com/unclick/bob-snapchat-facial-recognition/
- The Problem with Mobile Phone| Surveillance Self-Defense, Updated 10-2-2015, Accessed 5 August 2016 , https://ssd.eff.org/en/module/problem-mobile-phones
shivangisharmasite 
Really cool post! I like that you had viewed surveillance from both a positive and negative perspective. I have had several friends find their lost iPhones with ‘Find my phone’ which is beneficial, but then does raise questions about security and privacy of geo tracking. Your images were relevant, and I enjoyed the inclusion of a Twitter poll, it’s always great to see other people’s opinions. My only piece of advice would just be to double check the referencing, as the items in the reference list and the images need in-text citations. Overall, really great blog post.. it’s definitely a topic that gets me thinking.
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Thank you for the feedback.surveillance can have both positive and negative impact on us. It all depends how it is practiced.yes i know there was a problem with the referencing but I fixed it later on.. sorry for that!
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Hi Shivangi, awesome post! In particular I found the GPS tracking discussion really insightful. I also was never aware of the feature that helped you to locate your phone. Something else I really enjoyed was your polling tweet. I think this is a clever way to get other students involved and to formulate good arguments for your own blog posts. It also made me consider which option I would choose, so it is a great tool for engaging the reader.
I think your post could be enhanced with some further discussion about the drawbacks, as you introduced the flip side to surveillance really nicely. I understand it’s sometimes difficult to fit within the small word limit, though! Lastly, it might be good to check that the references are in line with the Harvard style. Overall a fantastic blog and great use of media!
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thank you for your feedback!
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Hi Shivangi,
Interesting topic! I really like you use different angle in this post, like “find my phone” is help people sometime. It’s very good to combine vote and explain, which is clearer for to me to understand. The example like “Google map” are have big connection to the topic. However, maybe you could talk more about the drawbacks. Moreover, The reference that you used are complete follow the Harvard style and also is good support for the topic.
well done, and I look forward to reading more of your work!!
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Thank you so much..i will take your feedback into consideration!
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Hey Shivangi
I had a great time reading your post. I really like your argument with
both the advantage and disadvantage of surveillance. I, personally am
not a fan of huge paragraphs, so really liked that you have used short
paragraphs for your blog post. The use of the twitter poll and also
the embedded tweets were interesting and were relevant to the text.
Very good examples of different surveillance devices from the most
noticeable surveillance cameras to commonly used apps and popular
games like Pokemon Go.
I was not aware of the ‘Timeline’ feature in
the Google Maps app. Now I know where to go the next time I misplace
something.
There were a few minor grammatical errors, for example, the blog title
should have been ‘You are being watched’ instead of ‘You are been
watched’. I have found that proof reading the article a few times
always helps.
Also, the use of hyperlinks your examples and scholarly resources would be highly beneficial.
The question in the end, “Is someone watching us right now?” really
made me question my privacy online.
Great work!
-Tshering
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Thanks for the feedback…. i will look into my errors😊
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Hi Shivangi,
This is an interesting blog you have written however, a few grammatical errors are present. The use of commas would be great as you can avoid having many sentences by joining two of them into one.
For example with the statement you wrote “If we rewind our lives and think about the time when we were in school. Things were different.”, a comma in between the two sentences would have been better instead of separating them as it would make more sense. I also believe that your sentences could be structured better to make it clearer. Other than that, great job on the blog.
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