Eye Opener

An 

Opinion

                                by Alex Hutchins

Blind Leading the Blind

In one of my college classes I teach entitled Organizational Behavior, we are analyzing a model that basically states that job performance and organizational commitment are predicated upon individual employee actions and that those actions are predicated upon the organizational culture and structure, team dynamics, and the skills and abilities the employees bring to the table.

Our first case study was about Facebook and whether or not the default setting for a profile page should be anonymous (private) or public; and, believe it or not, but 80% of the class for both sections I teach said the profile default should be public because that would help the company expand by generating increased revenues, knowing it would be at the expense of the user by losing their privacy.

It was also their belief that the general public was tech savvy enough to modify the default settings should they want their information to remain private and that it was their “on them” if they ignored or did not realize that the default setting needed to be changed.  

In other words, these students believed that it was up to the individual not the company to protect themselves.

When asked if they (the students) ever thought about organizing a movement where users would leave Facebook unless the company was willing to change the default setting, they (the students) said NO!  

Why?  

Because they (the students) said, that they had grown up with the idea that most items in life these days just have to be accepted whether they like it or not.  

Their actual statement to me was this:  “Why would we want to do that?”

Most of these students were born around 1992-1996 which is right around the time that the Internet or World Wide Web started to explode in the US and across the world and these young adults grew up taking the internet and all that came with it for granted as a expected way of life.  

I know that this author did not get his first computer until 1990 when DOS commands were still being used to navigate.

But, more importantly than that to me is the fact that only 30 earlier, I was attending college and nearly everything that I came into contact with was challenged as to its validity and if it fell short then we (the students) tried to change it into something better.

I wonder what these students will be thinking 30 years and then 50 years from now?