Rights to life and Privacy

We’re inching forward through the latter half of the 20th century and crossing over into the 21st century now. In some ways it seems like we’re crawling through a traffic jam. That is a paradoxical impression though because scientific, technological advances are now being made at hyperbolic rates when compared to their predecessors of past centuries. Information of all sorts constantly surround us, threatening to bog us down in both critical and useless details. Further, information that is critical to one person may be useless to another. As a result, people often ignore information that does not at first appear to be relevant to their lives because there is simply too much information available for ordinary humans to absorb. I won’t bother you if you won’t bother me. Live and let live.

This is the scenery around our slow drive around two rights that are often viewed as polar opposites: the right to life and the right of privacy. This week, let’s try to dissect them: are they really opposing rights? are they really both fundamental rights? Indeed, what does fundamental mean in this context? Analyze them in the context of both legality and morality. Explain how the law can infringe on personal liberty, and whether the personal liberties of one can infringe upon the personal liberties of others. NOTE: Our goal is to seriously analyze these rights, not simply proclaim personal political opinions.

Take a tour of this Voicethread presentation:https://voicethread.com/share. Click on the link and follow the directions. You will find that you can verbally comment, write notes, and upload new material as attachments to the foundational PowerPoint slides by clicking on “Comment.” In addition to the substantive work that you’ll do there, please also let me know in the forum what you think of the Voicethread tool. How easy or difficult was it to use? Do you recommend that Voicethread remain in our roadtrip toolbox?

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