TOW Post #21- Article: "Your High School Transcript Could Haunt You Forever"

            Technology has become a huge part of the everyone's lives today in the 21st century. The benefits to the new technology advances are endless yet at the same time there are some iffy consequences that come with it. With such high tech devices data collecting has become very easy and useful over the past years. A lot of information is stored onto a computer personal, on a state level, and even on a government level. One of the most common data that is always being collected is a student's school record. It can trace back all the way from the first days of kindergarten. This can be a neat way to see on'e progress overtime but it can also be the loss of privacy.

            In his recent article "Your High School Transcript Could Haunt You Forever" Viktor Mayer-Schonberger brought up this controversial predicament. Viktor, a professor at Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University, discusses how the data collecting of students and the how much is being collected can be a bad idea and also ave the capacity of preventing someone from being successful later down the road. Viktor uses hypothetical situations and facts in order to achieve his purpose.

            One of Viktor's main point was the fact that the data collected acts as a barrier and baggage that seems to lash on to someone for the rest of their lives. With today's technology, everything can be easily stored forever and will be easily accessed by people later in the future. These types of people could be employers, when one applies for a job. Viktor poses a hypothetical situation by say that if someone made a silly mistake in their educational history it will be easily accessed by the person hat will be interviewing them, thus posing a possible prevention of them getting the job. By using this strategy, the author is able to show the reader how directly data collecting can badly affect someone later down the road.

            Besides hypothetical situations, Viktor also includes data that supports his argument that data collecting (educational wise) may not be beneficial. For example he states that "we will have a 90% likelihood of getting a B or above if we review the material between 8:00pm and 9:00pm, but it drops down to 50% if we do so earlier in the evening, and so on." Viktor then goes on to mention how transcripts could possibly reveal one's good or bad sleeping habits, thus being an invasion of one's privacy. Also this could lead to assumptions of the person by who ever is looking at the data. By using facts, Viktor establishes his credibility to her readers. With choosing good strategies, the author is not only able to achieve his purpose, but also able to leave the reader with the questions and thoughts about data collecting as a whole.