Prepaid Cellphones

Although sometimes used for criminal use, prepaid cell phones are a valuable item to many. I know of many younger kids who have them for rare times that they need a cell phone. It makes much more sense to buy a prepaid phone if you are only going to use it once in a while rather then buy an expensive cell phone plan on one of the national carriers. Although I don’t think it’s necessary for these prepaid cell phones to be tracked, it would make sense if people had to put down their name or credit card for people to see who is using the cell phone. This does not seem like a large requirement to make and also can help identify criminals if they are suspected of using one. Otherwise, I think it would be too large of an expense on the government’s part to have to track these phones. 

GPS Trackers

Allowing parents to have a GPS tracker on their children I believe is okay up to a certain age. When a kid is young, it is probably one of the most terrifying things for a parent to lose their children. This is why I believe that when they are young, it would be useful to have as it would prevent a lot of incidents and make families feel much safe. When a child reaches a certain age though, I believe it becomes unfair to the child and is too cautious or obsessive of the parent. A large part of adolescence and growing up is taking responsibility for yourself and slowly breaking away from the comfort of your parents.  I believe that this will result in more issues for the child such as feeling too safeguarded and cause them to rebel even more. For this reason, a child should not have a GPS tracker on them past the age of 13. It would not be an issue for me to see children be required to have chips placed in their body by law; however the health effects of such action must be examined fully and made sure that it is free of side effects. A lot of crises with missing children would be able to be solved very quickly. Lastly, I think that shoes with GPS chips implanted into them are the best idea. For people such as those with Alzheimer’s, this makes a lot of sense and would save their caregivers lots of hassle and wasted time trying to find them. Overall, I think GPS trackers are a valid idea for lots of different circumstances; however, should not be required to wear by anyone over the age of thirteen. 

First Blog Post 9/18

Hi, my name is Nick Cornell. I created this blog for class called Living in a Networked World, which explores the different risks, privileges, powers and horrors of how far technology has come. I have enjoyed this course so far as I appreciate all the ways that technology has impacted my life; however, do not think about many of the different privacy and risk topics discussed in class. So far, I thought the most interesting thing we’ve seen was the discussion on “Re-Captchas” which put two words together to help the computer distinguish words it cannot read. It does this by having two words, one that the computer already knows and one it does not. If you get the one word correct that it knows, it will store the information of the other one until around six people get it correct. From there, the computer will be able to read this word all thanks to people who are just trying to log onto something such as email, Facebook, etc.