Class Journal Week 4
Contents
- 1 David Ramirez's Responses
- 2 John Nimmers-Minor's Responses
- 3 Naomi Tesfaiohannes's Responses
- 4 Iliana Crespin's Responses
- 5 Aby Mesfin's Response
- 5.1 What are the advantages of using a database, like Microsoft Access, instead of a spreadsheet program, like Microsoft Excel, when managing your data?
- 5.2 The blog post mentions a "fraught relationship about data, privacy, and how private companies operate in public spaces."
- 5.3 Based on what you have seen of the FDA database, do you feel that you have a better understanding of how the data mentioned in section 5.1 of What is Code?—Spotify music, Fitbit exercise tracking, Twitter tweets, IRS tax returns, etc.—might look when stored on a computer?
- 6 Christina Dominguez's Response
- 6.1 1. What are the advantages of using a database, like Microsoft Access, instead of a spreadsheet program, like Microsoft Excel, when managing your data?
- 6.2 2. The blog post mentions a "fraught relationship about data, privacy, and how private companies operate in public spaces."
- 6.3 3. Based on what you have seen of the FDA database, do you feel that you have a better understanding of how the data mentioned in section 5.1 of What is Code?—Spotify music, Fitbit exercise tracking, Twitter tweets, IRS tax returns, etc.—might look when stored on a computer?
David Ramirez's Responses
User:Dramir36 template:Dramir36 Skinny Genes
- Week 1
- Week 2
- Week 3
- Week 4
- Week 5
- Week 6
- Week 7
- Week 8
- Week 9
- Week 10
- Week 11
- Week 12/13
- Week 14
- Week 15
1. What are the advantages of using a database, like Microsoft Access, instead of a spreadsheet program, like Microsoft Excel, when managing your data?
2. The blog post mentions a "fraught relationship about data, privacy, and how private companies operate in public spaces."
- What is this fraught relationship?
- How do you feel about it? I.e., where do you stand on the trade-off between the "ease of use" you receive as a user and giving up your private data to companies who will use it to turn a profit?
- What are the social justice issues involved?
3. Based on what you have seen of the FDA database, do you feel that you have a better understanding of how the data mentioned in section 5.1 of What is Code?—Spotify music, Fitbit exercise tracking, Twitter tweets, IRS tax returns, etc.—might look when stored on a computer?
John Nimmers-Minor's Responses
Biological Databases
Jnimmers
Assignment Table
1. What are the advantages of using a database, like Microsoft Access, instead of a spreadsheet program, like Microsoft Excel, when managing your data?
A. Databases are adventagous because they can allow you to find data based on IDs of the data that you're looking for. Besides this, they are much more powerful and can hold substaintially more data in a structured format than a spreadsheet can, making them more appropriate for the massive amounts of data needed for companies like Spotify or Amazon.
2. The blog post mentions a "fraught relationship about data, privacy, and how private companies operate in public spaces."
- What is this fraught relationship?
A. The fraught, or strained/undesirable, relationship presented in the blog post was between libraries, specifically university libraries, (and in this case, LMU) and the professional network company, LinkedIn.
- How do you feel about it? I.e., where do you stand on the trade-off between the "ease of use" you receive as a user and giving up your private data to companies who will use it to turn a profit?
A. I feel that being forced to give up personal/learning data in order to access a database is in a very grey area of social jusitce and ethics because it is unknown what the user data is used for. This opens up possibilities of misuse of said data, even if that wasn't the original intention of the company. Having your data "hostage" as the author wrote is worrying, specifically because libraries are confidential entities, and so I stand with the author, however, it is a very tricky and complex problem to handle.
- What are the social justice issues involved?
A. Privacy of data and equity are two issues involved in this particular case.
3. Based on what you have seen of the FDA database, do you feel that you have a better understanding of how the data mentioned in section 5.1 of What is Code?—Spotify music, Fitbit exercise tracking, Twitter tweets, IRS tax returns, etc.—might look when stored on a computer?
Naomi Tesfaiohannes's Responses
1. What are the advantages of using a database, like Microsoft Access, instead of a spreadsheet program, like Microsoft Excel, when managing your data?
2. The blog post mentions a "fraught relationship about data, privacy, and how private companies operate in public spaces."
- What is this fraught relationship?
- How do you feel about it? I.e., where do you stand on the trade-off between the "ease of use" you receive as a user and giving up your private data to companies who will use it to turn a profit?
- What are the social justice issues involved?
3. Based on what you have seen of the FDA database, do you feel that you have a better understanding of how the data mentioned in section 5.1 of What is Code?—Spotify music, Fitbit exercise tracking, Twitter tweets, IRS tax returns, etc.—might look when stored on a computer?
Iliana Crespin's Responses
- What are the advantages of using a database, like Microsoft Access, instead of a spreadsheet program, like Microsoft Excel, when managing your data?
- The blog post mentions a "fraught relationship about data, privacy, and how private companies operate in public spaces."
- What is this fraught relationship?
- How do you feel about it? I.e., where do you stand on the trade-off between the "ease of use" you receive as a user and giving up your private data to companies who will use it to turn a profit?
- What are the social justice issues involved?
- Based on what you have seen of the FDA database, do you feel that you have a better understanding of how the data mentioned in section 5.1 of What is Code?—Spotify music, Fitbit exercise tracking, Twitter tweets, IRS tax returns, etc.—might look when stored on a computer?
Aby Mesfin's Response
What are the advantages of using a database, like Microsoft Access, instead of a spreadsheet program, like Microsoft Excel, when managing your data?
Databases are better at managing large amounts of data that is subject to changes and meant to be stored for a long period of time. The variety of tools used in Microsoft Access offers users more flexibility and control over how they can manipulate the data as well.
The blog post mentions a "fraught relationship about data, privacy, and how private companies operate in public spaces."
What is this fraught relationship?
The fraught relationship that the author refers to is the exchange that occurs between users and private companies of the user’s private information for accessibility of certain networks. Legally, the author argues that these companies should not have access to identifiable user data.
How do you feel about it? I.e., where do you stand on the trade-off between the "ease of use" you receive as a user and giving up your private data to companies who will use it to turn a profit
Personally, I am slightly unclear as to how much of the user's personal data these private companies have access to. As a user, I don’t really know what other pieces of major information that I offer these companies when I use their networks other than my name and email address, and so I don’t really view this as a major concern for me in my day to day life. This view, however, is predominantly because I have not seen nor heard of the major repercussions of this trade off between users and private companies.
What are the social justice issues involved?
Given that major private companies can have access to personal and confidential information about users, the trade off that the author mentions can devolve into a major violation of individuals' right to privacy if these companies use the power bestowed upon them irresponsibly. This issue is particularly prevalent given that most users don't bother to read the Terms and Conditions of the networks that they use, and so can be completely oblivious to what they have given up.
