Expos

Technology was created to fulfill its potential as a tool that makes human being better off in various aspects. Peter Singer with his essay “Visible Man: Ethics in a World without Secrets” claims that technology has achieved a success of revealing the abuses of power by authorities to the world. Moreover, he believes the technology’s practice of citizen surveillance ultimately benefits the security of the United States citizens by anticipating terroristic threats earlier and preventing immediately. Likewise, Brian Christian emphasizes the benefits of technology in his essay, called “Authenticating”, that modern technology like chatbot program teaches users a new way to manage the aggressive or heated conversation with others. Ultimately, technology is considered to enhance the societal security and provide numerous beneficial supports for citizens’ better lives.

Singer points out in his article the implicit advantages of the virtual world toward citizens’ lives that definitely outweigh the detriments, but not everyone notices. He claims, “We don’t really know how many terrorist plots have been foiled because of all this data-gathering. We have even less idea how many innocent Americans were initially suspected of terrorism but not arrested because the enhanced data-gathering permitted under the Patriot Act convinced law-enforcement agents of their innocence” (464). According to Singer, he believes that even though the enhanced data-gathering is risky because different people, from corporations to the government, will probably misuse the information collected from the virtual world to befit their different purposes, the technology’s ability of foiling terrorist plots is more significant and worth gathering all data for. The protection of privacy for Internet users might be undoubtedly important, but lives of other citizens who might be the victims in random terrorist attacks are the priorities among all of citizens’ privileges. As the result, compared to all disadvantages that users complain about, the practice of gathering data and spreading information has more important benefits, which is securing the safety in American society. Moreover, Christian brings to users a new aspect about how technological users are better of with the artificial intelligence. He writes, “All of a sudden the absurdity and ridiculousness of this kind of escalation become...science” (108). Christian suggests that chatbot has helped users understand heated conversations clearly by pointing out that all aggressive conversations are the reflex of the last sentence in the conversation and are not completely related to talkers’ anger issue. Thus, instead of being angry and replying with harshly stateless sentence, listeners can handle the emergence of heated conversations with calm and stateful response. By doing so, users will be more responsible with what they say and not blindly follow bad manners whenever they interact with rude people. Eventually, Christian provides a great example of technological benefits because the main purpose of the existence of technology is to facilitate users to have a better life. According to the example, users not only obtain improved manners towards each other, but also are aware to avoid using stateless sentences like a bot. As the result, technology is believed to strengthen the safety in society as well as implicitly teach users to attain better manners.