Balancing Big Data Collection and Invasion of Privacy

The sociotechnical research paper focuses on recent insurgence of information tracking and collecting technology and how and why it should be regulated to protect the privacy of millions of internet browsers. The paper analyzes this predicament through the Social Construction of Technology framework. A framework that is designed to look at the problem through the lenses of all participating stakeholders and come up with a solution that is amiable to all. The paper looks at the history of data collection and privacy laws and then recommends that future policy and regulations should address the security of collected data and place limits the level of personal identifying information that companies and agencies can collect, while at the same time ensuring that companies that rely on ad/tracking revenue do not take major loses to their businesses.
The technical research paper focuses on a computer program that helps learn foreign languages faster than traditional methods. The main motivation behind this paper was the need to learn a highly involved, time-consuming, habitual task without requiring major changes to lifestyle. The program works by seamlessly integrating into a user’s normal web browsing patterns and efficiently re-structures how a user spends their free time browsing the internet. This program is fairly simple to implement and was built using basic JavaScript and a third-party translation network. This program is still in development so further updates to the program include utilizing collected user data to make better predictions and provide alternative translations.

School of Engineering and Applied Science
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science
Technical Advisor: Daniel Graham
STS Advisor: S. Travis Elliott