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.