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Psychological Aspects of Allowing our Cybersurveillance and Data-Collection |
| | We are all being cyber-surveilled – this is a well-known fact to many people, especially to the students of this course. |
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< | An overwhelmingly amount of data about us is continuously and constantly extracted from our laptops, cellphones and other devices, and is shared and traded between numerous entities (both public as well as private), even without our knowledge. |
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> | An overwhelmingly large amount of data about us is continuously and constantly extracted from our laptops, cellphones and other digital devices, and is used by, and traded between, numerous entities (both public as well as private), even without our knowledge. |
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< | Although we are all aware, to some extent, of this phenomenon – we nonetheless continue to addictively use our devices, and allow this constant surveillance and information collection. |
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> | Although we are all aware, to some extent, of this phenomenon – we nonetheless continue to addictively and habitually use our devices, and permit this constant surveillance and information collection to occur. |
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< | This situation positions us in a cognitive dissonance, which is common in many other contexts of addictions, such as addiction to abusive substances or cigarettes – people know it can be destructive to them, but they nonetheless continue to consume these products. |
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> | This situation positions us in cognitive dissonance, which is common in many other contexts of addictions, such as addiction to abusive substances or cigarettes – people know it can be destructive to them, but they nonetheless continue to consume these products. |
| | One fundamental question in this regard is: why do we do this? Don't we know better? |
| | Optimism Bias |
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< | One example of what is largely defined as "positive illusions", is the "optimism bias" (or unrealistic optimism), i.e. a judgment bias that tends to affect people's subjective estimates of the likelihood of future events in their lives, causes people to overestimate the likelihood of positive events in their lives, and to underestimate the likelihood of negative events, especially with comparison to other people. |
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> | One example of what is largely defined as "positive illusions", is the "optimism bias" (or unrealistic optimism), i.e. a judgment bias that tends to affect people's subjective estimates of the likelihood of future events in their lives, causes people to overestimate the likelihood of positive events in their lives, and to underestimate the likelihood of negative events, especially in comparison to other people. |
| | Studies have found that approximately 80% of the population display optimism bias in some instances, and it was documented across various characteristics, including gender, age, nationality, and profession. |
| | However, due to the fact that our formal education, as well as the majority of information we consume, are mostly produced and controlled by the exact same entities which cyber-surveil us and collect our data (both governmental and commercial entities) – it is much harder to raise awareness of these problems, and accordingly, to reduce our biases. |
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< | Yet, we can still hope that awareness regarding the hazards of cybersurveillance will be raised through other communication channels, such as off-stream and interest-free media bodies, before it would be too late to do something about it (although, this aspiration might be optimistically biased). |
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> | Yet, we can still hope that awareness regarding the hazards of cybersurveillance will be raised through other communication channels, such as off-stream and interest-free media bodies, before it will be too late to do something about it (although, this aspiration might be optimistically biased). |
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