It's the end of an very educational course

The semester is coming to an end, and it is time to evaluate on some of the courses.

This semester I have in perticular an interesting course i want to share with you; Communication and Participation of the civil society in the internet. The course is so different from all the other courses I take back at my home university. Even though the name is hard to understand at first, the course was pretty understandable, it was about understanding that the internet do have borders, and see how this affected people who lived in the bordered areas, who help to get the borders opened, and why they were bordered. The last point included looking at mass-surveillance and censorship.

I have previously followed a few of the cases we touched upon very briefly: NSA, the control of USA and the new ‘big brother society’ were everybody is under surveillance. However it was not until the facts was shredded in class about the cases, that I really understood how massive an impact this have on our society.

It is hard to choose my favorite topic, as I have learned so much about what is actually going on in the world, regarding this ‘little’ thing that I easily take for granted called ‘the internet’. However if I am to chose one, my favorite topic was the ‘We live in Public’ documentary and the following discussion. It was one of the most fascinating thing I have ever seen! It got me to think about if I really wanted to let people do surveillance over me, or should I help fight?

Another subject that needs mentioning is how I have learned that social media and open-sourced/closed-sourced medias, to a much higher extent than I though uses my personal data to make money, and that if it is free I and other users are the product, they are selling us. This is disturbing, and made me go to my Facebook profile and delete as much personal informations as I could, and disabled features. For a minute I even though about deleting the whole account, but because I am 2500 kilometers away from all my family and friends, and Facebook is my main communication tool, I am waiting until I get home. Facebook is more dangerous than I though, and I don’t feel good about letting them get away with something I see as a violation of privacy.

Overall the course was super interesting, and I have enjoyed spending my Tuesday afternoon with numerous interesting subject, and a very inspirational teacher, that really knows what this is about. I would on the other hand have liked to be without covering my ears every time classes start. Young Spanish people are noisy as you wouln’t believe!