A hot topic in bioethics circles is how social media and emerging technologies affect society. Some ethicists are concerned that health information from digital apps that monitor your vitals, to companies that know your health based on your online purchases, to doctors seeing Facebook or Twitter updates about their patients’ unhealthy activities compromises personal privacy, including whether insurance companies can obtain this information.
For an excellent resource on all things digital, fellow science writer, Denyse O’Leary, is the editor of a new blog at MercadorNet.com called Connecting. It is a blog about social media and the virtual self. A sampling of the most recent topics includes “Why Steve Jobs was a low tech parent”, “The TV audience is gray fast. What does that mean?”, “If you think you only know your pin number, let us hope you are right”, and several others on social media, video games, and privacy.