Impacts of Geo-Tagging Technology - Coursework Example

The Running Head: Geo-Tagging & its impacts Your name:   Course name:             Professors’ name: Date: Introduction Most people in the world have not heard of Geo-Tagging technology, this technology is a popular one which is gaining momentum mostly in the social networking websites. Between 2009 to 2010, social communication website such as: Facebook, Twitter has experience a rapid rise with the number of new applicants, and YouTube doubling in size every few months (Nations, 2010). In the year 2010, is when location based services such social communication websites are being integrated into everything, ranging from mobile phones, to cameras, to tweets. As this new technology- Geo-Tagging- being integrated into various technology (Blanchard, 2010), people using these technologies may not realize its impact that accepting its use can have a rather chilling effects. Have you ever taken a picture with a digital camera and had it ask you “where was this taken,” many of websites nowadays do this, for example Google’s Picassa, it will attempt to pinpoint the place in which the picture was taken, Google will index the image, and you can click the location in the Google map to see the location were the picture was taken (Blanchard, 2010). Another example can be found in iPhone; geo-tagging application will use your current location, it will fill in your zip code when you are looking for the latest weather updated through your phone, in other times it will “geo-tag” a photo and display the location to your friends. Individuals who have understood this new technology see geo-tag from a negative side (Nations, 2010). There are many benefits which can be realized from geo-tag, for example this new technology can be used to attract tourists in places more easily when it is used in website (Blanchard, 2010). However, critics for geo-tag are just concentrating on the negative effects than the positive potential of this new technology. Geo-tag for money Many of IT companies nowadays instead spending more money on hiring excellent programmers to maintain existing programs, they are hiring for design for new products such as geo-tag. Most of these IT companies are encouraging their professionals to design and develop new technologies for companies. In this case geo-tag technology has been seen to have a brilliant future for many of programmers. Many individuals who are involved in IT field believe that geo-tag has a potential of bringing benefits to IT companies as well as to individuals in the future, also, this development of geo-tag can be regarded as a motivation of IT programmers who are involved in the development of geo-tag technology. Geo-tag for self-development Most of the times profit is what drives Information Technology (IT) programmers to develop new applications, but there are other motivation factors that will make a individual programmer or a company to be involved in the development of new technologies. To a programmer, to be the best in IT field, you must have experience in designing new applications, therefore, almost all the people who are involved in creating new applications, will want to be part and parcel of a new technology in their IT careers, and they are would be proud if they are the ones who have created something innovative, also, most of the individuals in IT field love challenges and are innovative; they enjoy the process of conquering tricks, and this is what motivate them into developing new innovative that are used in various technology because computer world is an open world where it’s much easier for person to create new innovation in this field than when we compare it in other fields. The environment in IT field is encouraging for people with creative ideas to put them into practice or see them in becoming a reality. Geo-tag for social development Indeed the most important factor for any new technology or an existing one is the community, if you were to push forward any new technology, actually is the community which will make it work or known. In the past, many impressive technologies have been created- Google search, Facebook, but if it weren’t for the community using the these technologies it would be worthless, no matter how impressive a new technology is, without community involvement, the new technology will not be able to succeed. It is for this reason that has made Australian Computer Society Code of Ethics members to be loyal and in their development of new technology; they should focus on the community and use special knowledge and skills for the advancement of human welfare that is found in various communities (Australian Computer Society, 2005). In many cases it has been found technologies having an impact to community development, for example, in remoteness of Australia where there is no access to banking services, an individual is able to transact his/her business thanks to eBanking (Lee, et. al, 2008 ). The future of geo-tag technology is brighter and it can seen to improve the quality of life at the community by making life to be easier because of various applications which have been developed (Australian Computer Society, 2005). Geo-tag making a difference Geo-tag technology is growing rapidly because of its adoption of the global positioning systems (GPS) features; which have been widely utilized in Smartphone which also has camera functionality in them (Turner and Forrest, 2008). Nowadays, thanks to wifi- technology, mobile phones are able to get information of geographic position of a particular location, this has made people to geo-tag pictures anywhere and anytime with the use of a Smartphone at same time they can upload the picture and share it with others through social networks such as Facebook and Twitter (Koucheryavy et al. 2010). Geo-tagging has changed many people’s life; someone is able to share his/her photo with friends. Nowadays, digital cameras which have SD memory card (Turner and Forrest, 2008), and if it has been integrated with Wi-Fi functionality; digital cameras will be able to geo-tag any saved digital photo taken with it, and this is easy and convenient. Geo- tag is producing a change toward a better society, in other words, a new society is being created where nobody can have imagined, take for example Google maps is giving us a hints on how geo-tag technology is changing the society (Li and Chen, 2009). Now geo-tag images have been integrated into Google street view, and a user can see a photo not only taken by Google but also by another person through social networks. Beside Geo-tag being integrated into Google maps, many industries-tourism, education, and mobile service area- are use this new technology in diverse ways, it has made these industries to be effectives and profitable (Turner and Forrest, 2008). Drawbacks for geo-tag Geo- tag has many disadvantages, website like “pleaserobme.com” have been created to warn users of the danger of geo-tag technology, the website would scan users in social network; looking for users who have geo-tag their features and it would build a profile of each one of them into a database (Attewell, 2005). Is a simple concept, but it can be easily be modified to track users online if they are away from home. This sinister motive could be used produce a list of users who are away from home be a target to get robbed, or it easy nowadays to track people movement by the use of geo-tag images (Keller, 2010). Nowadays technology companies are integrating more geo-tag features into their products like digital cameras and Smartphone’s, customers will trust and embrace the new technology as being inherently safe (Keller, 2010), but it worrying for those individual who accidentally release private information into the new innovations, that, at one time these information will come back to hurt them (Attewell, 2005). Geo-tag and it applications is there to stay and it has a lot of powerful uses, therefore, it is important for individuals to understand the technology first before using it, also, companies that pioneer these new technologies such as geo-tag should provide educational materials that will sensitize their customers on the hidden dangers that could be exposed by their products, this is because many people have fallen victims of technology as a result of ignorance (Rainbow, 2002). Conclusion This paper has explored the influence of geo-tag technology, to the community or society; it has focus on the social impact and the dangers that be realized with this new technology. The is an agreement between key issues, between promising potential of this new technology and many concerns people have on their privacy, but this issues can be differently evaluated on how many people use the same new technology. Many developers of these new technologies are motivated because they believe their outcome will contribute positively towards social development of a community; they Endeavour to work with social responsibility targeting the society in general. Reference List Attewell, J. (2005). ‘A technology update and m-learning summary’, Mobile Technologies and Learning, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 1-19. Australian Computer Society. (2005). ‘ACS Code of Ethics’, Australian Computer Society, viewed 16 October 2010, http://www.acs.org.au/index.cfm?action= show&conID=coe . Blanchard, E. (2010). Handbook of Research on Culturally-Aware Information Technology: Perspectives and Models. New York, IGI Global snippet Publisher. Lee, S.S., Won, D.W. & McLeod, D. 2008, ‘Tag-Geo-tag Correlation in Social Networks’, Proceeding of the 2008 ACM workshop on Search in social media, Napa Valley, California, USA, pp. 59-66 Li, N. and Chen, G. (2009), ‘Analysis of a Location-based Social Network’, 2009 International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering, Vancouver, Canada, August 2009 Keller, J. 2010, ‘Geo-tag your life: websites that broadcast your location are raising privacy concerns’, Daily Gleaner, Mar 18, pg. D.2 Koucheryavy, Y., Balandin S., Krinkin K. 2010, ‘MAEMO-based Scalable Platform for Construction of User-driven Social Location Based Services’, Consumer Communications and Networking Conference (CCNC) 7th IEEE, Jan 2010, Las Vegas, NV. Nations, D. 2010, ‘What is Geo-tagging?’, viewed 7 October 2010, http://webtrends.about.com/od/glossary/a/what-geo-tagging.htm. Rainbow, C. 2002, ‘Descriptions of Ethical Theories and Principles’, An Investigation of Current Ethical Issues in Scientific Research, viewed 26 Oct 2010, http://www.bio.davidson.edu/people/kabernd/indep/carainbow /Theories.htm Turner, A. & Forrest, B. 2008, ‘Where 2.0: The State of the Geospatial Web’, An O’Reilly Radar Report, Sep 2008, Read More