Never Alone

In class many people thought it was cool that you can see where your friends are with GPS programs, constantly being accessible, and constant status updates. I found a lot of the new apps and technology to be invasive of a person’s life and like there is a constant audience watching what you are doing, which is creepy to me. Besides being creepy, having an app that always allow you to see where your friends are could cause a lot of strain on relationships. Every time you want to hang out with a friend, all your other friends will see you two are together and either join you or be upset for not being invited. Social graces like calling before stopping over could be abandoned because they just know you are home. There is also a lack of privacy with these types of applications. You then have to justify why you went certain places to people who noticed you there, and it may not be something you want everyone to know. It could also be used as a controlling mechanism for parents. Since most parents provide the cell phone for their children they would be able to enable the GPS feature and then can keep tabs on their kids. This may not be a bad thing, but my relationship with my parents was based on trust and if I knew they could just check to see if I was telling the truth I probably would have thought they didn’t trust me.

Another facet of putting this location information out there is that people who aren’t your friends could get access to it. Some people have facebook friends or twitter followers who they don’t know, but they are getting updates about their life and now you can put the location it is coming from. There was even a GPS hook up site mentioned that told your location and information about wanting a hook up close by. This is not only unsafe, but it also changing how people meet each other, or don’t meet each other. While I think the cell phone data should be collected and used in emergency situations or for matters involving the police, I do not think that the information should be available to anyone and it should not be in a format of an app that removes all privacy for the individual.