My Relationship with Technology Blog#12

    Like most people, technology is something I use every day for many tasks. This can be from homework to playing video games in my down time, even talking with family's and friends. Over the months I have taken this class, I only really started to realize just how much time I actually end up spending on my devices. At the start of this semester, I never thought it to be much of a problem, my main excuse being "most people I know are on their laptops or phones a lot of the day, so it's normal." But just because it was normal, does not mean that it was healthy. I ended up finding out that I had a bit of a problem of being on my devices a bit too often. This is post is my story about coming over it.

The NY world fair Futurama exhibit

Mad World Music Video

    During one of our class periods, we were asked to find out how much time we spend on our phones alone. some people had very low numbers, it being about 3-5 hours a day. other had higher, around 13. Mine was in the upper category, averaging around 8-10 hours a day. Until that point, I never realized how often I was on my phone. I never realized that at times, I would say to my self time and time again "just one more YouTube video." only to end up spending another 3 hours watching nothing of importance in the dead of night. At this point is when I decided to actively make it of decent priority to slowly lower my intake of technology.

    Taking away the 2 hours a day I would be listening to music, I had 7-8 hours a day that I decided I wanted to lower to 5 within a month. Keeping track of this mainly by battery life and alarms set around the time I should be sleeping. 

    Originally, I tried staying off my phone cold turkey. I handled that well for about 2 days before I found myself on my bed, again, laying awake at 3am watching videos about video games and who knows what else. I tried again, this time lasting all of about 7 hours before the same thing repeated itself. I decided that I would do a little research about how to stop. This page gave me three ways to help me do just that. Then I found a 4th way, which is the same method I actually used to help stop drinking soda, that being to replace that time with doing something else. For the soda, I replaced it over time with Gatorade/Powerade, juices or tea. With my phone, I decided if I ever had the need to go on it again if it wasn't "scrolling time," I would do a few pushups and study for an upcoming test. Or maybe if I wasn't in the mood for studying, I would go and hang out with some friends or read. This was the method that I found most effective.

    I ended up hitting my goal around April, after getting an alert saying my screen time went down by some percent. Tapping that notification brought me to my settings, detailing that I was at 4 hours and 23 minutes average this past week. Likely the lowest it has ever been. Seeing the success this has brought, I wanted to see how much time I could bring it down to. I ended up going down to a low of just under 3 hours. It has been a bit difficult to maintain this, using my phone for really only the necessary stuff, like communication with my family or having to watch a long YouTube video for class, but it was really nice to see those numbers go down.

    Throughout this process, I have also seen my grades go up as a result of replacing my time on my phone with studying or getting work done for classes, along with going to the gym to get me physically healthy. My mind feels more clear and I just feel happier as every day passes.
My eyes used to hurt so often due to my phone being only half a foot away from my face for a whopping 8 hours a day. Some times when I don't use my glasses for those cases, my vision is all kinds of messed up for hours after, sometimes even the next day. Now that all those problems have mostly faded, I feel this weight off my shoulders.

    This blog is not here to say that all technology is bad, but it is saying that you, as a reader and user of technology, should be more aware of your use of it and limit it. Set aside times for when it should be used for recreational purposes.

Age of AI Blog #10

 

    The creation and development of artificial intelligence has been a huge topic of debate these past handful of years, especially with the creation of Chat GPT and the like being used for every day tasks like asking for information to having students use it to write their research papers for them with the utmost accuracy. It is also being used to automate jobs, track what users are doing and observe us, and using the information we give it to learn and expand it's informational net.

    I did not know much about artificial intelligence prior to watching Frontline PBS' Age of AI Video, let alone what can constitute as artificial intelligence and that it is being used in so many more ways than what I imaged. From targeted advertising, data tracking and so on, it doesn't come as a surprise that many folk are worried about what were to happen should artificial intelligence evolve to a level that we can no longer guess what it will do or control what it does.

    After watching Frontline's video, I learned that many companies are using some kind of artificial intelligence for one use or another, be it targeted ads on Instagram or Amazon, YouTube's video algorithm, and so on, each one personalizing your experience tailored to you without you having to do anything. And like what Harry Cripps said in his interview at 1:05:00 in the video, I'm starting to understand that it is entirely possible that people would become obsolete if artificial intelligence was to make its rise in power, leaving the poor in the dust and having the wealthy strive while their automated systems take care of them in almost every way.

    The future will soon become controlled by the immensely wealthy who have access to what artificial intelligence, and can have it do what they want, with the main goal for the algorithm being "to make more money." the fact that those who control the algorithm likely wont have the same goal as you when the artificial intelligence is serving you is also a bit scary, as you need to 1) be aware of that problem and 2) have to make sure that you control your intake of media, as you will likely not know what is targeted to you by what the algorithm recommends or if it is pushed content from the people in control of the algorithm. It also seems that every website or social media app has some kind of artificial intelligence being added, like the recent addition of the snapchat bot that came in one of the recent updates.

    Which brings up my concerns with all these artificial intelligence additions. One that has been bothering me is the fact that some of these bots just seem out of place. Why did snapchat add in a bot? the whole idea of the app is to share your experiences with people and converse with them, but adding this bit that literally asks you to talk to it was a bit off putting to me. I never really know what an artificial intelligence wants, and always have the worry that someone or some group of people will mess with it the same way that Reddit users messed around with Chat GPT to get it to think it was sentient and make it go against the code that it has written. Pretty worrisome when you can get a super computer that has instant access to everything on the internet to break the rules that were set by the creators of the program.

    At the same time, there are absolutely some beneficial uses for these algorithms that have been used and passed around, but having some more restraint in how far we go with these artificial intelligence algorithms would be a wise choice. I don't think anything like Terminator or I, Robot will happen (not anytime soon at least), but I would still like to be cautious about it.

EOTO 2 What I learned Blog #11

 

    One presentation I found interesting and is also quite prominent in current media, be it the News, Instagram, Facebook or twitter, is cancel culture. It's a topic that has been talked about far and wide while also being one of the more controversial things being discussed.

    But what is cancel culture? I did not have a great idea until it was presented by the group, and learned that it is when a group or culture of people team up to ostracize, boycott or in some cases harass someone who has done something the group deems unacceptable behavior. 

    I also learned that this behavior can be beneficial if what the person being shunned has done something that warrants some kind of punishment, as positing on the internet pretty much allows you to say whatever you would like to with little to no consequences. At the same time, it can also be used in ways that could be considered bullying. The presentation covered that people often times misuse the cancel culture group to cancel people that they simply don't agree with. This can be someone stating who they voted for being targeted for their political views (which is nothing new, yet still a problem), many tried to cancel Johnny Depp after the false accusations pit against him, and people will sometimes even try to cancel for the most minor things, like liking left Twix over right, or maybe not liking a Taylor Swift song.

    The term "cancel culture" came up sometime around the late 2010's, and is sometimes called "call-out-culture" as it is a less negative sounding term, given that cancel culture gave itself a bad name as of recent years. Having effects on mental health is one of the big problems that cancel culture has given itself. It also effects mental health of both the canceller and canceled. 

That sums up a good portion of what I learned about cancel culture during the presentation. 

EOTO 2 Vertical Integration Blog #9

Vertical Integration is not a term I heard of prior to this presentation and research, so what exactly is it? 

    The dictionary definition is "the combination in one company of two or more stages of production normally operated by separate companies." Vertical Integration is when a company operates all forms of production of a product. Lets take a car company as an example. Typically they would own their dealership and sell their cars while buying steel, wires, tires, all that other stuff that a car would need and then put it together and sell it. If this company was vertically integrated with the rest of the process, they would own the steel mills, the mines where they would get their iron, the factory where they make the parts along with the dealership, the list goes on. Now, although the example I gave includes most of the process of making a car and selling it, vertical integration does not need to include everything, as stated per the dictionary definition.

Is Vertical Integration good?

       Depends on who you ask. For a company, vertical integration can be very beneficial when it is done correctly and effectively. Getting rid of the price for having to buy goods at a mark up from another company can be a very cost effective strategy, and therefor keep all good collected within the company. If done incorrectly, sometimes it can cost a company, well, their company. It gets really expensive when you have to buy out each portion of the process for your good or service, and being at a deficit after buying all these other companies can be pretty detrimental.

    But with all these other companies being owned by one company, it does end up leading to lower prices for the consumer, or at least it can, as the company does not have to spend more money on buying its resources or parts from others, so you wont have to worry as much about their prices going up as they can afford to be lower than their competitors.

So the overall answer is more yes than it is no, as the decrease in cost and increase in quality of their good due to them having direct access to the resources and more money to make sure their product is better, along with the added benefit of lower transportation costs and lower prices for the consumer.

Diffusions of Innovations of the Telegraph Blog #8

 So what is the Diffusions of Innovations theory? The short and very simplified version of it is "how popular was it over time?" The actual answer to that is "How many people used or had access to this technology from the creation or introduction of it to when it became obsolete? And how did it change over time?" Typically paired with a graph, it helps to show exactly how popular a technology or good was and how used to this technology people became, along with how many people held this item in their house/pocket. iPhone, for example, has many more people using them, and in their graph, they would still be in their popular phase and not quite dying off, unlike a Nokia or Blackberry, which has reached the end of its life when the smartphone came to be, and therefor has become obsolete.

(Example)

    So what was the Diffusions of Innovations theory like for the Telegraph?  Sadly, with the theory coming out in 1962 and the Telegraph being made in 1844 and becoming obsolete sometime in the mid 20th century, its hard to find a graph to accurately show its use. However, it became widely used sometime from 1845-1850s to send messages from place to place due to the transatlantic telegraph, but due to the price to install one into either one's home or from location to location, it never was as wide spread as the mobile phone became, so its early and late majority use was likely quite small and primarily came from News station and printers, along with military use in both world wars. There was not much use besides that, as even just sending a message was cents to the letter, and most families could not afford to send much more than a simple message.

    The early users of this tech were mainly the military and News publishers and journalists, and those who wanted to spread information from one plate to anther quickly, be it from city to city or from one country to another, so they would likely take the innovators and early adopters portion of the graph. The early majority would likely be the rich, who could afford the tax of using the telegraph with its pay per letter price. Late majority is the middle class families, who can now afford the now lowered price of sending a message from across the country, dropping from price per letter to price per word, and lastly are the laggards, the ones who used the telegraph after it has become, for the most part, obsolete. This could range anywhere from poor folk to older people who don't know how to use any of the newer tech.

Others EOTO Tech Post#7

    Learning about the other technologies from the other students opened my eyes to how many of these communication technologies started, along with their effects on the world when they became popular and mainstream. Some of which I never really knew the extent of their effects, starting with the television.

    The first television started out as a series of pictures that were all captured just frames after the other, and when spun around with light pointed at them, it made it seem as though it was happening in real time or as a video. What came as a surprise to me was the structure of the TV itself, and the evolution of it throughout the years. I have never been much of a TV person, not even as a child, but the spread of this device allowed for more than just information world wide. Advertisements and entertainment ended up being some of the largest uses for TV. It also has its benefits along with its downsides, where it can be used to spread information, watch your favorite team score a touchdown or home run or have a romantic movie night with you spouse. However, I have also seen it as a replacement for parents to interact with their children, and sometimes just let them sit inside all day without talking to other kids their age, and now they don't know how to interact with other children at the age of 10-12.

    There are some good shows that help teach lessons and help with creativity, sure. You have shows like The Wiggles, and Elmo to help kids learn the alphabet and other lessons, like not hitting people, but after this, the rest of life's lessons are learned in person and with others. 

    On a similar topic would be Facebook. Made by Mark Zuckerberg in 2003 and originally called "TheFacebook," took the world by storm in just 7 years. After adding a marketplace and chat feature, Facebook soon not only became a place where you can post photos of yourself with family and friends, but also a way to communicate across the globe, both socially and for business, and even became the most downloaded application for roughly 10 years and the first application to have over 1 billion downloads. Despite Facebook taking the world by storm and having more active users than any other social media platform at the time, they opted to buy one of their competitors, Instagram, in 2012, further extending their reach across the age ranges, as Facebook became for older folk and Instagram was the new big deal for the younger generation.

    These two forms of communication, while having their cons, allowed for so much more than we though possible for a long time and expanded communication as we know it, and changed the world with its introduction. Social media like Facebook and Instagram allowed for a more intimate connection with family and friends by sharing videos and pictures of their experiences with one another from opposite sides of the world, letting you feel like you were right there with them. The television allowed for a whole new form of entertainment and being a billion dollar industry.

Progressive Era post #6

    We hear time and time again about why we are going to war with some other country be it "To stop communism!" or "To stop the terrorists who attacked us!" but we never hear about the reasons why we shouldn't, let alone the voices of people who are looking into the war and where the funds are going, the real reasons why we are there in the first place be it oil, making money (because war is very profitable) or even just getting a leg up on someone. 

    People that spoke up about war would just get pushed aside from social media, get shadow banned or actually banned, and sometimes even just punished if they reveal the real reasons why the government decides to go to war. Anti war efforts are there to just not put us into something that either doesn't need to happen or shouldn't happen just to stop the violence.

In 2001, the anti war effort soon became a crime, and was considered to be propaganda, enough to go ahead and put someone in prison for saying "We really shouldn't be at war with these people." And even though we very well may be able to come to some kind of conclusion via conversation or non violent methods, these past few years have just been jumping the gun to the violent approaches and totally skipping over the talk it over aspect.

    This is also something that is not limited to the US. Other countries like China are infamous for doing the same, be it Tiananmen Square or just hushing people for speaking out.

    So why do we have to go to such lengths to find obscure information on anti war voices? Put simply, it's probably because the government doesn't want us to know what's really going on, and floods the information systems about all the reasons why we should got to war and all the "benefits" there are to it.

EOTO post #5

    Long distance communication was a form passed down from generation to generation, each with roughly the same idea before the cellphone, instant messaging, email or even the fax (if anyone eve still remembers that) and we all know about Graham Bell and his phone. So what did they do before we had the Telegraph? The invention that revolutionized the way we were able to communicate across the world, be it for war or spreading news to the opposite side of the world in just a minute? well lets jump into that history for quick bit.

Signal Fire

    Now you may have read that and thought "What? Fire?" but yes, fire was used as one of the first ways that humans communicated long distance. They would often be placed on tall objects, either tower or mountains, sometimes even buildings, and would be used to signal typically only a few things, but most commonly it just meant there was trouble happening.

Chappe System

    Now this is one that I never heard of before, but it was made by a French man named Claude Chappe in 1794. This system was made as an upgrade of sorts to signal fires and smoke signals, as it would allow you to make out shapes in order to spell out words, which allowed for a more specific message to be passed for long distance. Many of these would be placed within a reading distance from one another and passed down a line. Think like a game of telephone.

Tin Can Phone

The last one that I thought was important to mention was the tin can phone. I'm sure some of you have done or at least heard of connecting two cups via a string at the bottom and talking into it. I know I have done it as a child. Anyways, this idea came about by a man by the name of Robert Hooke in 1664, where he presented the idea. As fun as it would have been, his idea never really took off, but did inspire many after him to create better inventions.

The Telegraph

    The moment we have all been waiting for, the telegraph! Created by Samuel Morse, this invention came about in 1844 where he sent the first message from D.C. to Baltimore which said (in Morse Code, another invention by Samuel Morse) "What hath God wrought". Now, the telegraph was not the most expressive machine. you can't put exclamation points or question marks and definitely not able to make fun little doodles to your lover like on physical mail. It was strictly informational, and you had to be pretty skilled to be able to use the machine, as it required a lot of speed to not only send messages efficiently and timed well enough, but you had to hear the letters correctly they would spell out for you in order to understand the message. This opened up a lot of job opportunities for people to become incredibly skilled in Morse Code and using the telegraph. 

    Now, it being the fastest way for people to send a message, yes, but it was also quite expensive to do so, let alone have one implemented to your house, as each foot was roughly $4 today, or about 12 cents back then. The telegraph would also typically be charged by word, not message, so having long conversations with your brother across the state to say something silly was out of the question, and would only really be reserved for important events that were time sensitive. 

    Due to its fast messaging capabilities, this was used quite often during the war, as it was far superior to having someone run back on foot, horse or drive back to HQ via car in order to report what was going on. It was also great for news reporters to send messages across the world, so information was now really starting to get quite close to the "Instant" news that we have nowadays.

Values of Expression post #4

    Free speech is an incredibly important right that we as Americans have and one that not all people around the world have the luxury of, with many consequences being put into place should you decide to say something the government does not particularly like, such as criticizing their governing body or their religion. In America, we can say how much we despise anything really, be it the government, the policies they make, a religion or even your neighbor upstairs who plays their music too loud and stomps on their floor till 2am, but so long as it is only you saying you do not like or agree with them. So no threats or anything of the sort. On that note, after going over some of the speech theories we discussed and reviewed in class, here are a couple of the ones that I like the most.

Protect Dissent

    This idea came about by Steve Shiffrin and was spread about via his book, Dissent, Injustice and the Meanings of America. This boils down to the fact that even if everyone else disagrees with you, your opinion is still protected from our right to free speech. There isn't going to be a mob at your door demanding you change your viewpoint if it does not agree with what the majority of people say. I think this one is rather important because being able to say what you want about any topic and not being persecuted for it even if everyone disagrees is reassuring. So it is not just the government we can say we disagree with, but even the people themselves, no matter how different your hot take is.

Check on Governmental Power

    Made popular and spread by Vince Blasi from his theory published by American Bar Foundation Research Journal, is one that I find arguably the most important. We have all heard about Watergate, Irongate and all those other gates that have put our government behind some kind of conspiracy or shown that they are involved with more than it may seem to the naked eye, which bring in our speech theory here. In essence, you are allowed to call the government out on it's BS as publicly as you desire. This can be any from newspapers, blogs, news from tv or even a podcast if you desire. Ant media source that you can post on can essentially be used to spread that word should you desire. This is really important because: 1.) you can not be persecuted for doing this so long as you are just spreading real information and 2.) it helps keep our government in check, hence the header. Last thing we want is a government that has too much power, and this perfectly made speech theory tells us just how right we are in doing so.

    So to wrap things up nice and neat, those are the speech theories I thought were the most important or at least the ones that stuck with me the most. I believe free speech is a luxury and one I wish some people did not get to use as they do but hey, they are just as entitled to their own opinions and thoughts just as I am mine, regardless of how sensible or senseless anyone's is.

Founding Era Blog

    I know the supreme court has a lot of power. they can say whether something was wrong or against the law or not, and what they say essentially goes. But something I didn't know about them is that they have a lot more on their plate than I had once thought before. They go through so many questions and hearings of people, but I only really thought they dealt with the most serious of cases. instead, they actually hear out everyone that brings up their case to that level of court. The videos sad they had an average of 16 years, with some of them serving almost twice as long, outlasting the presidents that appointed them as a justice by decades, which is pretty crazy to me.

    I think the most important takeaway is that the supreme court, at the end of the day, are just people doing their job to maintain order and law in our country. Sure, there may be some cases that we may think unfair or that we don't agree with, but if it is against the law or constitution, then so be it.

Something I found most surprising about the supreme court is that they are able to just stay in office for decades. I get it if they are good at their job and fair with it, but 32 years? I feel like that is a bit too long of a time for someone to sit in the supreme court.

I don't know if the videos changed my way of viewing them, but it definitely showed me some things that I didn't know about before. I typically see them as the justice of America, and I'm not sure if that will change unless something would point out otherwise.

Internet Privacy: On & Offline

    Privacy is a big thing for me. I'd like to keep my information to myself and those I trust. I get tired of receiving spam call after spam call whenever my school asks for my information, be it my email, phone number, or anything else, and after listening to the Ted Talks in class, I found out it can be much worse than just spam calls or emails. I always had the impression that the government knew almost everything, but after realizing that not only can they get access to it but people in other countries get that information? that was a bit surprising. Social media companies selling the information of millions of people just sounds illegal, but due to many loop holes in their ToS and being a private company, they can practically get away with whatever they want. And with the government using their power to, in a way, threaten these companies, they can just fork it over to the government officials just because they gave a veiled threat.

You have companies like twitter that hide what the are doing with the whole twitter files investigation going on right now. How they censor certain people because the government wants them to, or because they just don't like what you said.

You also have companies like Instagram, where it feels like they are always advertising something you just talked about with your mom or friends over the phone. It also feels like once a month they send me a message asking if i tried to sign in from Brazil or Russia and as confirmation, they send me an email. so there is clearly a leak somewhere about information.

My Five News Sources

    Obtaining information about what's goin on around us is a good habit to have in this day and age. Staying informed and educated about these topics can help people see what is going on all across the globe about political affairs from country to country, stocks about your favorite company and even how your local bakery is doing after their follower count on social media has sky rocketed. Here are the 5 news sources I use to get my information. I don't often check the news, so i'm not the most informed on many issues or current events.

Social Media

 

Social medial has been around for a while now, and there are many accounts out there that report information to the public much like any other news source. You can find a politician you like, follow them and then see what posts they have. I personally try to find people that are as unbiased as possible that look into a bunch of other news sources and report both sides as a middle man.

National Geographic

I mainly use National geographic for a lot of the environmental news and stories. I get a lot of their magazines and see what some of the photographer have been up to and some of the research that is done about the environment and also some really cool discoveries from around the world.

New York Times

I use NY Times mainly because I get their magazines pretty often and check their website every now and then. They report about a bunch of issues and current events, so they have a good variety to pick from what you want to read about.

USA Today

Like The New York Times, USA Today covers a lot of different stories, though it focuses solely on what is going on in the US. It's good for finding out what's happening in your country.

Apple News

Apple news is not one that i use often, though I hear about a lot of people who use it and are happy quite happy with it.