Thursday, May 24, 2012

Siri-ously Troubling

Siri is a voice activated guide to your iPhone's capabilities. The addition of Siri is part of the latest version of the iPhone in the iPhone 4s model. You can ask the gender ambiguous Siri to make a list for you, get directions, and send text messages among many other things. It is even programmed to help you hide a body, tell jokes and tell stories. Many people today can be found with their iPhone at their fingertips at any given time of the day. It has become something that our society has become familiar with and it has been incorporated into many of our lives. Every new version of the iPhone comes with updated feature that make the iPhone a hot commodity.

However, Wired has written an article about where all this information goes. We never really think about what happens to the information that we input to any device we mostly care about the result. There was discussion over user privacy concerning the personal data that Siri uses such as location, addresses, and names. IBM in particular was on alert because of the issues that Siri presents to their company. If the e-mails contain private messages the company is worried about where that information will end up. Another globally known company, Google has had to face problems like this as well. Their solution is to make their user data anonymous after nine months.

This issue is not a new issue for the public to be worrying about. IBM should not have to be worried about banning Siri but instead should come up with a different solution. There are many different ways to protect your company's valuable information such as privatized e-mail. If IBM really has an issue with information going through Siri, its employees should just not use the voice control and type it out like we used to before Siri and the difference isn't that much, you just push more buttons. There is really no need to use Siri in the office other than maybe scheduling meetings and finding directions to your next client and things of this nature. IBM and other companies concerned with controlling leaks of information sounds more like an internal problem than an iPhone app problem.

1 comment:

  1. This posting does a nice job highlighting the Wired reporter's coverage of the Siri story, but you will want to keep thinking about how you can bring more of your own reporting or commentary to your new writing identity as a blogger. You might also want to make a clearer case about its connection to digital journalism. How is Siri a good tool for digital journalists? How is Siri a bad tool for digital journalists? How would access to Siri records change the news.

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