Once I decided to open an email for my younger sister considering that she is a child, I thought of having parental censorship over her technology use. That has triggered me to research on safe ways to monitor children use of technology. Google offers Family Link as an application that enables parents and care-givers to ensure safe technology use by their children. I established an account; the last step was to insert credit-card information to withdraw 0.00$! To insert credit card information to withdraw 0.00$ has clicked on my head. That action meant to me spying on the care giver at the first place! Therefore, I didn’t complete the registration.

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Dr. Fouzi, a guest speaker, has introduced this concept as Internet of Things (IOT). Burgess (2018) illustrated that "It's about networks, it's about devices, and it's about data," Caroline Gorski, the head of IoT at Digital Catapult explains. IoT allows devices on closed private internet connections to communicate with others and "the Internet of Things brings those networks together. It gives the opportunity for devices to communicate not only within close silos but across different networking types and creates a much more connected world."

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In simple words, it is the linkage of data. The fact that makes me well known to a device is threating. Especially as it rapidly competing the intelligence of human beings. For example, a sudden update happened to my mobile phone. While browsing the gallery the pictures are not merely visuals, they possess location data and figure out people who look alike in other files of the mobile.

 

This IOT seems to be very helpful in collecting data for urgencies but it is an alarming sign that users need to be aware about the most appropriate use of exposing their personal information on different platforms. Young users, old users even youth need to be fully aware about the pros and cons of this double-edged technology.

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I reckon that it is the role of experts to raise awareness among educators and care-givers, then it is the role of them to spread the knowledge among the rest of the community. Accordingly, we avoid cyber-bulling cases and decrease technology-related crimes with a preventive raising awareness renewable campaigns.

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Burgess, M. (2018). What is the Internet of Things? WIRED explains. Retrived from https://www.wired.co.uk/article/internet-of-things-what-is-explained-iot