Society Under a Microscope
// September 1st, 2010 // Uncategorized
There was a time when a person could get by in life without anyone ever knowing a thing about them. People who had criminal infractions in one place could move to another and live happy and normal lives, without anyone ever being wise to what they had done. This is not true anymore. Today, no matter what you have done, whether it was receiving a traffic ticket, or being foreclosed on because you couldn’t pay your mortgage, someone is bound to find out. This is because we are living in the age of information, where all sorts of information is right at our fingertips. There are even cameras installed on traffic lights that take a picture of your license plate when you disobey a traffic law. In addition, the internet offers end users just like you and me the ability to do a criminal and public records lookup and find out anything we want to about our neighbor, employer, boyfriend, or co-worker. In some cases this is a blessing, especially when it comes to things like protecting our children from predators. However, there are some people that say it is a direct violation of our civil rights. Some people feel that we should be entitled to our secrets, as we once were. Other people are selective in their beliefs. On one hand they love the information they are able to obtain, on the other hand they don’t want anything being revealed about them.
If a person has had financial difficulties or even a past history of drug abuse, is it our right as a society to know about these things even if they would never directly affect us? There are several schools of thought on this and most people base their opinions on a self serving agenda. The people who have been victimized by others tend to agree with the many different methods of looking into one’s past, while the people who have made mistakes they wish would go away are haunted by this. It seems the only thing we can do as a society is strive to understand that a person’s past does not necessarily define who they are today. However, these new informational systems may just be the determining factor in the way people shape their future behaviors.
