Sad by Design 

This podcast talks about how we, as humans, must overcome the corporate tech monopoly and their tactical methods which forces us to become dependent on their applications and technology. The podcast first introduces tactical media, and how it uses interactive media to promote the human agenda. This then leads into platform capitalism, where tech giants such as Facebook, uber, and etc. makes money by integrating these platforms into our everyday lives. I think it was interesting how they talked about distinguishing the real vs. the virtual, and how it is all intertwined. With the emerging technologies of VR, imagine how much harder it will be to distinguish the two worlds. I also found it relatable when the podcast stated that the world of distraction leads to a world of sadness, and how we get not only addicted to this sadness, but are drawn into it as well. They talk about the “rabbit hole of sadness”, and we hide in these targeted holes and sink deeper into them. That’s why a lot of the news sources focus on the negative things happening around the world.

Like the podcast states, how can we (if we can) overcome the smart phone?
Would you use a (lightphone)?

Programmed Visions This article begins with a parable of the six blind men and comparing it to the topic of New Media. Because New Media and technology is such a big topic, they state that it is difficult to know what it exactly is as a whole, and we can only know bits and pieces of it at best (individually). However, the article states that out of all things New Media, software is the universal thing that we may use in an effort to understand it. The article describes that the software becomes a metaphor for culture, while nature is the metaphor for hardware; however, it is difficult to understand software as well so there is a paradox that occurs. I also found it interesting when the article stated that software empowers users and helps us navigate through our increasingly complex world.

Should we learn how to read code? Would it be necessary in the near future?

The reading states that software helps us navigate through our increasingly complex world. Does that mean as technology advances, will it be more difficult for the elderly to adjust? How can we make technology more accessible globally?

How to be a Geek This article talks about how learning about the gap between those who understand software and are over enthused, over informed, and over excited about it, and those who aren’t. The article also talks about how it is difficult for people to get into software and how it discourages strangers (i.e. writing on software is also partially inside software, when it is presented as a paper book). The article also talks about how the geeks/ tech giants run the world in shadows, trying not to get too much attention. The article also talks about the myth of Icarus, and how we might fall trying to understand software (maybe referring to AI)?

What are some ways we can introduce coding/ software without people getting frightened/ intimidated by it?

New Ways of Hiding 

This article talks about the different ways metainterfaces hides and collects your data and how it is both omnipresent and invisible. The hidden information between objects and how data and software are now integrated into the global cloud, should force us to become more afraid and unfamiliar since interface has become more abstract. The article talks about the two different ways that it “hides”: Minimalist hiding and environmental hiding, and how we are agreeing to this surveillance by “voluntarily agreeing to its terms” and being manipulated. The article argues that we should increase our critical literacy so that we can design less manipulative metainterfaces.

Would you give up your information for more comfort/ accessibility?

Programmed Visions– Wendy Chun
I found it very interesting that she sees software as a metaphor for the mind, culture, ideology, biology, economy, etc… Software is such a complex idea that is almost impossible to 100% fully understand the ins and outs of everything. Maybe why it’s called a metaphor is because it’s up to one’s own understanding and interpretation of it. In all of new media, as broad as it is, the commonality between all of it is that it is essentially software. Being able to program a software and virtually create anything, is quite pro founding to the writer. But Chun sees software as a form of enlightenment in not just new media, but as what I mentioned earlier. Although software is universal, it is still not universal/comprehensive to a majority of people. I believe why there can be a sense of ignorance from those who studied software and know this language better than others… But I’m still confused what she means by software is a metaphor for metaphor itself.

What’s an example when the writer said software is a metaphor for metaphor itself?

How to be a Geek – Matthew Fuller
I find the concept of “geek” very interesting in this reading. His definition of geek is “to be over-enthused, over informed, over-excited, over-detailed… to be a geek is to be a bit too public with your enthusiasms, to be slightly unaware in turn that these thrills may, to others, rightly be dull as dust dehydrated with a special process of your own invention.” I think those who define themselves as “geeks” in in software development are those who will become successful in the tech world. One thing I found very profound is that he says geeks created the internet and fight over it’s meaning. Because not one person is governing or created the internet, it becomes a topic of conversation and debate because it is constantly being improved & developed.

Sad by Design– Geert Lovink
Something in this talk that was very interesting was when they were discussing how they can overcome the smart phone/technology. He believes in the first stage you can still use it in an intense way but you try to deal/learn with the addictive side with it. For me, I constantly have this compulsive feeling to look at my phone, which is designed in software like fb/instagram to make us feel like we need to go back to it, get the latest updates, etc… Something I also found crazy is the guy who invented the snap chat streak feature. He took the las vegas slot machine algorithm and used it in many software features…

What does ‘humane technology’ mean?

New ways of hiding: towards metainterface realism– Soren Pold
Pold starts off this article by saying that “Interfaces have a history of pursuing realism through attempting to map, represent and interact with reality.” I think this is so true when you look at social media like facebook, instagram, and even spotify. It tries to make the user connect with their platforms but connecting their virtual life to reality. I think this is most evident in youtube. My home page is constantly being filled with videos that relate to my interests, things I have already seen, or things they recommend that I would enjoy. Back in the day I’m sure before youtube was created the way people shared music was by recommending things to their friends in person, showing them things, etc… But with the new age of software development, youtube even acts as the perfect ‘friend’ that has all the answers…

On page 80, why do you think Pold believes metainterface designers who hide within the interface/ hiding the interface “problematic” or “manipulative?”

Geert Lovink’s Sad by Design: There’s a techno-utopian self-help movement called Cosmism? I didn’t know what Douglas Rushkoff was talking about at the start of the podcast, so I found this article. I guess Stanford and Silicon Valley met Russian cosmists and came to the conclusion that machines can do things better than humans (a.k.a. humans are the problem and tech is the solution). According to Rushkoff, technologists and corporate capitalism enable each other with their own anti-human agendas (this harks back to Zuboff). Rushkoff is trying to fight back against these agendas; hence why this podcast is called ‘Team Human’.

The guest on this podcast, Geert Lovink, wrote a book titled Sad by Design which critiques ‘platform capitalism’. I think platform capitalism refers to large tech corporations (such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, Uber, etc.) creating platforms that profit off of young people being addicted to their online services. This becomes like an abusive relationship… Rushkoff brings up Snapchat’s streak feature (I vaguely know of it but I don’t actually have a Snapchat). Selfies are also brought up as being expressive yet voiceless… I don’t quite understand what Lovink is saying regarding today’s social movements, because I feel as though both Black Lives Matter and the Me Too movement have gained a lot of traction thanks to social media and both are organizing. Not to mention Greta Thunberg, a 17 year old, is the face for climate change activism. I guess the need for these social movements does make one sad though.

• Do you think the smartphone will eventually become looked down upon as outdated/uncool?
• Should men be designing for a female audience? What are the limitations?
• We know the youth are being surveilled more than ever before, but are their voices also being drowned out?

Wendy Chun’s Programmed Visions: Chun makes a lot of metaphors in this chapter… I’m going to try my best to decipher one. To start, new media is described as an elephant from a parable involving blind men. Basically these six men are describing the parts of an elephant without acknowledging the fact that it’s an elephant. Apparently those in the field of new media were doing this when talking about specific content/tech and have since tried to look at the big picture which is referred to as software. This seems incredibly hard to do since software is defined as “a visibly invisible or invisibly visible essence” by Chun. The quote, “Its separation of interface from algorithm, of software from hardware — makes it a powerful metaphor for everything we believe is invisible yet generates visible effects,” I can envision due to having written code. In other words, the code isn’t immediately present, but the webpage is.

Matthew Fuller’s How to be a Geek: I feel as though the quote, “To be a geek is, in one way or another, to be over-enthused, over-informed, over excited, over-detailed,” fits me to a tee. I also identify with the statement, “Geeks may often mute themselves, try and pass as underwhelming. This is probably an adequate survival strategy in many circumstances.” I think I always present myself as nothing special and assume other people know as much as/more than me. Ever since I’ve arrived at UIUC I’ve been a straight-A/Dean’s List student and I haven’t really cared to talk about it all that much. No really, I have a serious problem where I can’t internalize my own accomplishments. Though I guess my imposter syndrome juxtaposes the geeks Fuller is mentioning, because really these geeks can’t seem to internalize any negative consequences caused either directly or indirectly by their accomplishments (ahem, Wiley).

Soren Pold’s New ways of hiding: towards metainterface realism: I’m facepalming so hard right now, I thought it was pronounced metain-terface instead of meta-interface… Lol! I’m kind of curious about Galloway’s “speculative realism,” Walter Benjamin’s concept of “tendency,” and Donna Haraway’s “feminist objectivity,” but too lazy to start deep diving into each. I’m definitely guilty of using an ad blocker (once again, Zuboff and Cambridge Analytica come to mind) and I think I’ve heard about Safebook at some point. Algorithms Allowed sounds really interesting; it is weird/hypocritical for the U.S. to have an embargo against certain countries while U.S. based companies (like Facebook and Google) interact with them. Though I guess this is really being used to secretly surveil them… I love that James Bridle captured video only to remove people in motion and leave the homeless visible, because society often treats homeless people as invisible. “Grammar(s) of action” gets brought up a lot in this article, and I couldn’t figure out what it meant with context clues, so I searched the name Agre. As for Quickening, I guess I can empathize as a young woman living in America who witnessed the wave of abortion bans take place here. Of course women are going to go where they can decide their own health/circumstance, but it is insidious for there to be heavy surveillance/video evidence of them at this seemingly open border. Imagine if the states in the U.S. with these abortion bans started tracking women and incriminating them for crossing state-lines for an abortion… I can’t imagine signing a terms of service contract for free coffee; then again, I do it all the time for “free” things on the internet.

I loved doing a rotoscope animation last year (it was stressful and tedious at times, but I felt like the final result was worth it). So, I want to do a rotoscope animation with some voice over about my car anxieties.

• I’m 23 years old and I’ve been in two car accidents now -one as a pedestrian, the other as a driver
• They both seemed to have happened at roughly the same time each year (before Valentine’s Day)
• The money involved when it comes to car accidents is overwhelming -I often wonder if I settled for less as a pedestrian
• The day immediately after an accident happens my senses are heightened (i.e. not jaywalking even if there are no cars around or being a backseat driver) and my body aches (frayed nerves)
• It’s official, my car is a total loss and it didn’t even deploy the airbag -on the hunt for a new one

Rotoscope animation of the past, vector drawings turned into an animation, and the car accident documentary.

Wendy Chun – Programmed Visions, (book, pp. 1-2, and optionally pp. 3-10)

The elephant metaphor I found really interesting. That although we may be given a part of the same thing, we can still have different ideas on what something is. One thing I didn’t like about the article was how they decided to word everything. They made it unnecessarily wordy and applied a lot of repetitive words to make it sound sophisticated but it really just made it more confusing to follow along with what they’re saying. Although, in doing so- I do know that it’s focused on software, invisible/visible, known/unknown, and metaphors.

Matthew Fuller – How to be a Geek (book, pp. 12-14, and optionally pp. 63-71)

I don’t usually reflect on the definition of geek. When I think of the word “geek”, I think smart, awkward, computers, etc. The way that Fuller describes a geek gives it a much more complex spin on it. It also talks about the complexities of software and how you can’t really place things into one category because there is too much that goes into it. My favorite quote in here was that “contemporary technology is not simply an extension of a man–a purely mechanical effect”. Suggesting that as humans, technology is just another way we operate.

Geert Lovink – Sad by Design (podcast w/ Douglas Rushkoff, 60m)

It’s funny. When my brain is not being stimulated, I feel bored so I start to scroll on social media- there’s nothing really too interesting but temporary entertainment and when I finish scrolling, I’m sad. I spent all that time doing something that wasted my time. Seeing how wonderful and more successful people are doing than me makes me sad. It’s ironic that seeing other people just as sad as me, makes me happy knowing that I’m not alone. Even online celebrities are seen breaking down despite them having so many fans and fame because people are always expecting more from them. Something as stupid as a snapstreak can make you upset if you forget to send a snap back one day- a way that it strategically gets users to come back and use their app. These apps make you unhappy so you can try to do better, become happy, only to be unhappy again. It’s this weird emotional manipulation that gets you trapped in this social media design.

Soren Pold – New ways of hiding: towards metainterface realism (article)

Similar to what we talked about last week, this also touches on the idea of surveillance and profiling through data. How to the average person, they don’t even understand what is going on or how they are being tracked. I feel that it is one thing to tell the public what is happening to them and another to completely shut and hide what is going on. People don’t read the terms and conditions- and if you don’t accept them, you can’t use the product. People are so willing to give things up for convenience- this is pure manipulation through capitalism. Your idea of Safebook and the autonomous trap I found humorous in the way that even without words or explanation, we know how this operates. We understand the language of Facebook and the language of the road as to not even need instructions to interact with it.

Wendy Chun – Programmed Visions, (book, pp. 1-2, and optionally pp. 3-10)

I felt like this reading started out defining what new media exactly is, and it essentially explained that new media studies all center around software, which is what all new media have in common. I thought it was particularly interesting how he mentioned that we can’t truly know what is going on behind software, how someone really feels or acts vs. how they portray themselves online. This is something I’m super interested in because I know there is a lot of disconnect in this particular area.

Matthew Fuller – How to be a Geek (book, pp. 12-14, and optionally pp. 63-71)

The article describes being a “geek” as someone who is super informed and excited about a topic, and not be afraid to share about said topic with little regard to the fact that others may not take interest in the topic that the “geek” is sharing about/being enthusiastic about. I thought this was a perfect definition of geek, and I feel like we all have a bit of this geekiness inside of us. I find it quirky and interesting when someone geeks out about something, but it can be a bit much if it is a recurring thing. I am not surprised that geeks run a lot of the corporations because I feel like it’s logical that people who are super enthusiastic about something become leaders in that particular subject. I found it super interesting and relatable how they talked about how geeks often mute themselves and pass themselves as underwhelming, because I feel as though I tend to not talk about or express things that I have lots of interest in because I feel as though it isn’t socially acceptable in general.

Geert Lovink – Sad by Design (podcast w/ Douglas Rushkoff, 60m)

The podcast is talking about the changing political environment; the fact that there aren’t many traditional social movements – there are protests, but these protests do not gain as much support or participation. It seems like they are crediting this to social media platforms which allows users needing to give little effort to “support” causes, but not actually join them. Personally I think that this is true, because the ability of the internet to give us instant and quick results have bred a society that looks for instant gratification and results, and putting in little effort to get big results, and people like to turn a blind eye in order to not feel sad or negative.

Soren Pold – New ways of hiding: towards metainterface realism (article)

The article talks about how people have stopped trusting “commercial meta interfaces” by installing blockers, ads, and clearing their cookies, bringing us back to the topic that we covered last week about surveillance/privacy. As people start becoming more aware of how a bunch of our information is being recorded and sold off to companies, more and more people try to take measures to prevent this from happening. The work that Ben did on Facebook (Safebook) that is mentioned in the article aligns well with the topic because it is a method of data obfuscation through hiding Facebook content.

Wendy Chun – Programmed Visions, (book, pp. 1-2, and optionally pp. 3-10)

Introduction: Software, a Supersensible Sensible Thing questions the global picture of new media. Chun asserts the grandiosity of the internet and the intangibility of new media that brings difficulty in constricting it into one idea/concept. As a solution, Chun asserts that the public gravitate to software in order to bring clarity to new media through the creator of. Chun compares culture to software and nature to hardware. Software is used as a cultural metaphor that brings clarity to ideas/concepts otherwise difficult to understand. By agreeing that the concept has a system of truths, any concept (like new media) is less intimidating. But Chun also implies that this may disregard the actual complexity of New Media by categorizing it as a linear system. Through this disagreement, Chun attempts to ground the idea of uncertainty that New Media actually holds.

Matthew Fuller – How to be a Geek (book, pp. 12-14, and optionally pp. 63-71)

“Equally, much of the work here operates with
the concepts of computer science as fundamentally cultural and
political, as something core to contemporary forms of life and thus as
open to theoretical cultural exploration as much as architecture,
sexuality or economics might be.”(pg 12, para 3).

People are so tied to their entitlement/ownership of technology that they forget to question the effects that coincidentally occur and shape it. Viewing technology as unfamiliar and open-ended brings new ideas of its inner mechanics to the surface. Treating it as a social science, as opposed to a strict technical science, allows us to think critically.

If technology is political and cultural, how/where can we begin to unpack it? Do we all have the same perspective to critique contemporary technology? Can there be a over arching understanding of tech?

Geert Lovink – Sad by Design (podcast w/ Douglas Rushkoff, 60m)

This podcast was really interesting to me because Lovink questions who the audience is and how this plays into contemporary technology. Despite the grandiosity of new tech, it’s drastically underused because of a lack of complete knowledge accessible for the users. He brings up how smart phones have so much potential, but the general public might not fully understand all the inner workings of the device. This idea bounces back to the last article, both relating knowledge to power.

On another note, Lovink also elaborates on how technology and the internet have shifted into a quantitative communication. People enjoy numbers that reflect their social identity because of how straightforward/assertive they’re presented. I think that it’s easier to understand how we fit into a society if we’re given these quantitative measures rather than if we consider a nonlinear relationship. To what extent is there truth to numbers?

Soren Pold – New ways of hiding: towards metainterface realism (article)

This article talks about technology and how the interfaces have steered toward minimalism in order to convince the user of it’s realistic appeal. By hiding 1)complicated interface mechanics and 2)physical motor control, contemporary tech likes to make things as realistic as possible for the viewer. It is interesting to point out that the “reality” they try to replicate is a reality that hides information from the user. But does creating a system that will go unnoticed by the viewer, makes the system less “real”? To make something so “realistic” by taking out the users control of it (in a way) kind of promotes a artificial reality. I started thinking about The Truman Show because it also manipulates tech in order for the user (Truman) to live their life unaware of the system that surrounds him.

I think all the artist and their projects were very inspiring to see. From stripping a software to its machinery or bringing global political communication into one space, they all are very exciting to hear about. The way they take a stance in new media and the variety of spaces, tactics, and methods they do opens the range of art that I can imagine doing.

Programmed Vision

What New Media is I’m positive will remain an ever present question in our lives as we move from school to those with degrees. I know many people will ask what New Media means, and over time we will all have to have our own answers for what it means to us which I think is the only real way to define it much like anything else. I was about to say I don’t agree with software being the thing that unites us, however the more I think about it the more I realize it probably is. Whether we are programming, video artists, illustrators, or something else entirely I don’t think I’ve seen many New Media students make work without software of some kind, which is the biggest summary of the article. And as a whole, software as a means of definition or analogy aligns with what new media is, which to me like Chun said, is kind of an unknowable paradox. My question is with this information, knowing that about New Media, how does that inform or change our perspective on our art practice?

How to be a Geek

I like the line “beyond the private conversations of technical experts…ways of asking questions and making problems” It both really resonates with me in general as an artist who often gets frustrated by the private knowledge of experts (texts written by academics for academics and never anyone but). But it also resonates with me because it just seems like a chaotic statement, like we’re going to make trouble with software, and we do! That’s what so many extensions that obfuscate data are doing by some technically, they are making problems for others but in doing so solving the security breaches for the many. And to me that is exciting and so interesting and because of that, it makes me a geek by the definition of the book which I love as a concept. Is being a Geek a badge of honor in this capacity for everyone else? Does it feel like a proper title that connects to New Media as a whole?

Sad by Design

The biggest thing I got from this was the idea of infinite expansion, shoving both humanity, and the natural world, away in favor of technological advancements. It also speaks to how it is not technically the technology that caused this problem but the billionaires who are so keen on the expansion. Causing a lack of connection across the world, therefore in order to fix this issue of interface and software stopping our human growth; We need to connect via art and experience instead of being stuck in the technological bubble we are currently in because of the programming of social media and the online world.

New Ways of Hiding

This article discusses how the metainterface is the act of every interface trying to be so realistic or hidden that we don’t even notice they’re there while we go about our day on the internet. The metainterface is a large scale method of mapping us, and the article discusses it as less hidden but become a part of the reality. The author stresses that we need to see the metainterface rather than allow it to hide so that companies and interfaces will become less manipulative so we are able to trust them again. I will be the first to admit that this article confused me a great deal, so I guess my main question would be how do we define the metainterface? What exactly is it in our lives online and in person?

• Subject:  I am interested in the different ways that people experience disability, specifically in this case Fibromyalgia (with my backup being depression/anxiety), and how those experiences can be interpreted to images by a single person (in this case me as the artist). I want this piece to show the multitudes of ways that people can experience disability and how those differences can vary on an even greater scale when looked at or interpreted by an outside source. I think this will shed some more light on how diverse the same disability can be for people and bring awareness to a disability I don’t see many people talking about.
• Form and Method: I want this piece to take the form of of quotes from my interviews then have images mapped with string to each quote that inspired them to form a collage of works. For instance an interpretation of what someones coping skills might look like in a visual context. I think this form will show the scale of difference by making the display somewhat chaotic (although not hard to follow), rather than a very uniform display of answers and images. I will likely be producing the imagery through screenprint and risograph prints to have a new media element of interview and time plus the influence of older media in printmaking.
• Context and Audience: I was influenced on the method of this piece by my Anthropology of Death class for the nature of interpretation and different methods of display (for instance memory museums for large scale tragedies), as well as a work in the Faculty Exhibition last semester that was a collage looking work with a large amount of medical imagery.
  I think long term, I would like this style of my work to be displayed in a more public sphere rather than only a gallery space. I think this would be a really interesting area for it to fit in to as I think more people would see it and interact with it if it was somewhere like a mural wall type of display. I would like my work to bring more attention to lesser known disabilities in the cultural sphere, as well as bring disability advocacy to the main public so that the struggles that come from disability are no longer private and hidden within the community.

Shoshana Zuboff – The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (video documentary, 50m)

The documentary talks about Zuboff’s fascination with security, and its exploitation by corporations. It is interesting how the information that we provide apps/companies that seem to cater to our needs by making things more convenient to us/being a service to us, take our data and sell it to other companies so that they can tailor ads and other things to us. Through this process the data that we give these companies through using their services becomes commodified, becoming the “raw material” that is sought after by other companies in order to improve themselves.

Helen Nissenbaum – Mapping Interventions – Digital Democracies Conference (talk, 30m)

The conference included a discussion of the obfuscation of the data that companies/applications collect from us. It seems like data obfuscation is something that you (Ben) are very interested in, because of ScareMail/Randomizers/etc. A lot of my friends who are in Computer science/tech-related fields commonly use data obfuscating extensions like TrackMeNot, and it really makes me feel like I should be installing these data obfuscating extensions on my own browser. I wonder what would happen if everyone in the world used these data obfuscation methods.

Carole Cadwalladr – ’I made Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare tool’ (Guardian)

This article was kind of creepy to me. Christopher Wylie basically went into Facebook to create detailed and highly personalized profiles for millions of people on the platform, and sent them political propaganda based on their profile to influence them to vote for a particular candidate. It really shows you how people can be easily swayed by the things that they read on the internet. It makes me wonder how political ads are actually distributed, and what kind of algorithm do they use to do this? If someone isn’t really into politics or hasn’t looked up any candidates to do research on them, what information is there to influence them?

Stuart A Thompson and Charlie Warzel – One Nation, Tracked (NY Times)

When I was reading this article about how so many things can be tracked based on our mobile phones, I immediately started thinking about how we could obfuscate this data. There were a lot of graphics that showed us the things that our phones can predict/say about us based on where we are and our location data. What if we left our phones at home? What is the purpose of collecting this kind of data? Who cares? Can we change whether we are tracked or not? I have so many questions about this. It brought up a question in my mind that wasn’t super related, but I wondered if we could really just go off the grid and live without our phones. We would then be free of all this tracking stuff going on, but we’d lose so much convenience and other services.

Drew Harwell – Colleges are turning phones into surveillance machines (Washington Post)

The article was about college students being tracked via their phones to see data such as when they skip class, where they are when they skip class, etc. to judge what kind of student they are and to find out what kind of habits they have. Of course, this kind of surveillance had become a hot topic of debate as students and teachers both argue for why this is an invasion of privacy, the breach of trust that this creates, and the question of why students even need to be surveilled in the first place is brought up.This article, to me, was super reminiscent of a class that I took last semester, INFO 202. We had an entire section of class in which we studied this kind of material, and in particular there was this one section of this article in which students argued that they had “Nothing to Hide”. This philosophy that it’s okay to be surveilled if we don’t have anything shady to hide is problematic because just because someone CAN surveil you doesn’t mean they SHOULD. It creates a culture with less trust, and in both short and long term this is definitely a bad thing.

Jenny Davis – A clear case for resisting student tracking (Cyborgology)

This article talks about SpotterEDU, an app that allows professors to track the behaviors of their students, and allows the gatherers of information to make assumptions of what the lives of these students must be like based on their behaviors tracked by the application. This just felt like one big privacy breach to me. I get that it is important for people to care about mental health and similar issues, but I think that this level of tracking is unnecessary. It makes the entire system seem like they are holding your hand a bit TOO much instead of letting you just make decisions based on your own merit, which I think is a really important thing for students to develop. With the implication of this application, it isn’t very possible for this growing up to happen.