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School of Thought: Existentialism | Hri-Write

Existentialism is a philosophical school of thought that deals with human existence, trying to explain the purpose of a human life. Existentialism, like many other schools of thought, is of course only a speculation and something we made up, take what you read here with a pinch of salt ( after all, I don't know any more about life than you do! ) If I were to try to explain existentialism easily, I'm afraid I'll lose out on its intricacies, but I'll give it a shot anyway. Existentialism, at its most fundamental level, says that every person is responsible for defining their own purpose in this world and that we are governed by our free will. Existentialism says that we are not here to 'find purpose', but rather to 'create our reality and purpose'. It sounds simple, but that's because I've tried to break down roughly a few centuries worth of study and philosophical evolution into four sentences. Existentialism originated as a school o...
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Why your digital footprint matters

Every second you spend on the Internet, you're actively involved in painting a digital picture of yourself.
This portrait helps companies target content at specific markets and consumers, helps employers look into your background, and helps advertisers track your movements across multiple websites. Whatever you do online, you might be leaving digital footprints behind. (http://www.internetsociety.org/your-digital-footprint-matters)


In short, your digital footprint is everything you do online. Social media activity, app usage, email records. Watching videos, visiting adult sites, using certain plugins, everything goes into this piece of art. Whether you like it or not, everything you do on the web can be tracked. A lot of people seem to think that using incognito features on browsers or routers does any good. It might hide data locally (on your system) but it does nothing to completely hide your presence on the web.

A diagram of how your internet works

The above is a very simple yet accurate depiction of how you access the internet. The ISP, your (Internet Service Provider) provides this service to your home modem/router, which is then accessed by your devices. Think of it this way. Every site you want to visit is sent as a request to your ISP, and then is relayed back to you to access. The ISP can simply make a database of these requests of information from you, and then plot it to see what you've been upto lately. You aren't as hidden as you think you are.


There's several ways you leave Digital Footprints. (From internetsociety.org):
Websites And Online Shopping:  Retailers and product review sites often leave cookies on your system which can track your movement from site-to-site, allowing targeted advertisements that can show you products you've been recently reading about or looking at online. 
Social Media: All those +1s, Retweets, and Facebook comments (even private ones) leave a record. Make sure you know what the default privacy settings are for your social media accounts, and keep an eye on them. Sites often introduce new policies and settings that increase the visibility of your data. They may rely on you just clicking “OK” to whatever terms they are introducing, without reading them. 
Mobile Phones, Tablets, or Laptops: Some websites will build a list of different devices you have used to visit those sites. While this can often be used as a way to help secure your account, it is important to understand the information being collected about your habits.

-END OF SOURCE- 

The web has ears, and it's listening every time you use it. One of my first introductions to this concept was by a game I was closely following, Watch Dogs. They made a pretty accurate trailer, and while it is quite scary, the danger of your 'digital shadow', which is another connotation for digital footprint, could get in the hands of someone you don't want it to.

I STRONGLY RECOMMEND YOU WATCH THIS.





While you can call it extremely overplayed, this is the same thing as someone having a book of every single thing you've done. Every WhatsApp message you've sent. Every Instagram post you've liked. Every Facebook post you've commented on, and even that snap you sent on Snapchat five minutes ago.



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  1. Unknown2 August 2016 at 08:30

    This is so interesting! So proud of you

    ReplyDelete
  2. sherrily10 May 2018 at 19:56

    This can be changed, where an application can specify different permissions for ITS OWN data; basically, an app can allow others to read its data. So far, I've retired the ghost imaging software (32GB card, manufactured by Samsung), because I've read that this may be the cause of the reboots.

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  3. sherrily10 May 2018 at 22:57

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete

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