Reflective Post for Week of 3/12

For today’s class we read a chapter from the book on online ethics, and our activity in class was about dealing with different ethical situations that may come up in a world so involved with CMC. It’s kind of strange at first to think that ethics must come into play in a situation where people aren’t even communicating face-to-face, but when you think about it, ethics are especially crucial in such a situation. So many news cases these days involve people being bullied or harassed over the internet because people abuse the privileges that the internet has to offer, such as privacy, safety, and security. The way I see it, the internet itself is a privilege that we are lucky just to have access to, and we as users of CMC need to make responsible decisions when using the internet.

The book listed some facts about technology around the world that were quite shocking to me. As citizens of a country that has such widespread internet access, we are part of a very slim minority in comparison to most of the world, which cannot even imagine a society with such technological advancements. Every day, I use the internet without even thinking about the fact that it is truly a privilege that so few people worldwide actually can enjoy. As our society advances further along in technological developments, many third-world countries are being left in the dust, with slim hopes of ever getting to the point where CMC is widely accessible. In more ways than one, this course is really helping me to appreciate all that I have as far as CMC is concerned.

One of the questions that popped into my mind as I was reading all of these shocking statistics was “Do people without such forms of CMC as we have know what they are missing?” To us, the idea of living without something like the internet seems appalling, but because they have never had it, and because nobody around them does, I have a feeling they don’t miss it the way we would if it were suddenly taken away. Surprisingly, though, I’ve found that giving up facebook and IM for Lent is not as hard as I originally thought it would be. This may seem contradictory, since prior to Lent, I was using these things daily, and all of my friends still do, but I think that acknowledging what a privilege they truly are is helping me to realize that I CAN actually live without them…and because of their addictive nature, the fact that I know I can’t use them helps me to get other, more productive things done, and I find that I don’t even really miss them!