Maegan Byer Final Exam

Negative Implications of Geolocating Technologies
Completed by Maegan Byer of GroupTooAlso




The example of the surveillance technologies that I am discussing are geolocation based services such as foursquare and other internet based phone applications that track an individual’s location and allow it to be publicly displayed. These technologies track the user’s specific location with an IP address and allow their whereabouts to be viewed by other people that are subscribed to the same service provider or have the same applications. This service is intended for people to be easily tracked by their friends and family without necessarily making contact with them.

The geolocation based services are invasive because they display an individual’s specific location. These services can be beneficial to parents that want to track their children and monitor their behavior. However, I feel these services can be more harmful than good because they decrease consumer privacy. The commercials that are created for these technologies try to encourage people to allow others to track them 24/7 for convenience. For example, in some of the Boost Mobile commercials, the actors appear as giant circle shaped people to represent the dots that you would see on your phone screen if you were tracking someone.

These geolocation technologies can be dangerous to the people using them because they make it easy for someone to watch their every move and even enable stalking. Other people are granted the ability to track your presence with this technology without your total consent.

Geolocation technology relates to the concept of panopticism because users are in a constant state of visibility. This increases the surveillance placed on people but disguises it as a fun application or feature of the phone or program. These locating services change our global gaze because it allows consumers to create a global presence and enhances our desire to do so. It allows us to continue to be aware of almost anything at almost any time. If we can track our loved ones and their specific location at any moment, there will be little left to what we don’t know about someone. Geolocating technologies challenge the unknown and are postmodern because the intense reality of being able to track someone has been turned into an expectation of society.

I feel that geolocating technologies may be beneficial to society as a whole in certain situations, but are dangerous to individual people that use them for unnecessary purposes. Instead of being portrayed as important technologies that hold incredible power they are portrayed as a fun gadget or neat feature to consumers.