Blog 7: Required Blog for iSpy

After googling myself, it was sad to see that nothing came up about me. There were many links with “Mike Burch”, but none of them were actually I. I have done this experiment before and noticed I had to add “lacrosse” to find something. If I added lacrosse, I had some player profiles come up from high school and college. I found it interesting to find many Mike Burch’s with facebook and myspace pages that came up (still none that were actually me).

I would not like to be one of many “John Smiths” because I would not feel as unique. Although Michael is a common name, I have never met anyone with the same last name. More than half of my friends from high school were named Mike but we all had nicknames to help separate us. If someone called out “John Smith”, more than half the room would answer. I think diversity is important in finding out who you really are. Our culture magnifies our diversity and allows us to show people who we really are inside. Clothing and music are just two examples of how we can define ourselves to strangers. We can usually make pretty good judgments on people and their beliefs just by the way they dress.

Surveillance operates in everyone’s life. Every store we go into now days have cameras throughout watching your every move. I do not use it because I think it would be creepy and would be arrested. You hear many stories of people getting into trouble for spying on people who do not know they are being filmed. Every time I go into a fast food restaurant, I look up to see myself on the camera above the register. Sometimes I make a face or act oddly because I know I am on camera. Surveillance in stores helps catch criminals and usually makes them think twice before committing the crime. If I were going to rob a store under surveillance, I would have to wear a mask to hide my face.