Friday, May 20^th 2016.

Are you afraid of posting personal information on the net? (use 150 words)

Use the information and arguments below to answer the question.

To be handed back on Monday, May 23^rd 2016.

This document is an interview of Steven Metcalf by a journalist / reporter on the following question: “More and more Americans take / use private information on the internet”… Indeed, Steven Metcalf, an Online Privacy expert and the journalist have made an experiment: The expert had to get information about the journalist, and he found 15 pages of private information (his DVDs, his phone number, his former job, his favorite movies, his social security number, his credit card number). But if he paid 100 dollars, he could have more information…

People publish / post private information on the net, on Facebook (Facebook profile), Myspace, Twitter, etc.… but the problem is you can do nothing to erase it: Once it is stored on the net, it stays forever! So your information becomes public…

As a consequence / consequently / as a result, people can know what you think, who your family is, people know who you are… because everything can be tracked…

The online privacy expert comes to the conclusion that “Privacy is dead”. Yet, Google said they make tools to protect private information… but they are probably lying because selling private information can make a lot of earning for them…

 This document is a cartoon (made) by Randy Glasbergen, published in 1997 (nineteen ninety-seven).

We can see two men, and a dog. The men are looking at the computer. Under the cartoon, there is a quote from one of the two men: “This computer is very fast! It became outdated faster than any computer I’ve ever owned”… the cartoonist denounces the planned obsolescence of electronic devices. Indeed, brands like Microsoft, Google or Apple make their computers and smartphones use a lot of energy so that people are forced to buy a new device a very quickly, so the brands make a lot of earnings… and we, consumers, can’t really do anything but buy, buy, buy and buy again…

This document is a cartoon by Randy Bish, entitled “rake the leaves, son”, which was published in the Pittsburgh Tribune Gazette, on October 13^th 2008.

Under the cartoon, we can read a quote from one of the characters. We can indeed see two people: a teenager and his father. The quote is from the father. It says: “Nope… It can’t be done online… You actually have to take the rake outside”. The scene takes place in the teenager’s bedroom: we can see his computer on his desk and on the wall there is a poster and a calendar.

The scene place nowadays because of the high tech we can see (a computer).

The teenager has to rake the leaves outside but he seems to think this can be done online, with a computer. This is why this cartoon is somehow funny: raking the leaves is supposed to be something easy but teenagers don’t know how to do it because they spend their time on computers. So they think everything can be done with a computer… well in that case, you clearly need to go outside…

The cartoonist denounces the fact that nowadays teenagers spend most of their time in front of screens instead of going outside… the cartoonist portrays him as very lazy, maybe as a caricature of teenagers…