Final Post: Blog 12

Technology continues to advance and it's gone from advancing decade to decade to year to year and now, it feels like it's advancing day by day. For me personally, it has become something that is so ingrained in my everyday life from looking at sports notifications to simply just looking at the daily news. It connects me and billions around the world to each other and everything that goes on around us respectively. This is the most evident fact that the digital wave has transformed the world. The times have changed so deeply that we as a society look at people who aren't on social media as weird and find them to be totally disconnected from us and in this case “us” is the ones on social media and in our tech with no second thought.

The “Futurama” video that came from the 1964 World's Fair showed the advancement capabilities of technology from the time but it also showed how stark the difference is between how tech was presumed to be advancing to how it actually advanced. The video tried to exhibit how innovation within technology will lead to the “promise land” or a “utopia” where we had everything we would ever need. In theory, this did happen but not in the way the video predicted. Society got everything they needed but at what cost? People gained knowledge from tech but again, at what cost? The outlook of positive optimism isn't entirely lost on the advancements we have had. 

Roughly 14 hours a day is spent using some sort of technology. Out of the 24 hours in a day over half is consumed by technology and media. My personal time isn't near that, but I find myself falling victim to the pull of tech and getting wrapped into it on a daily basis when I should be doing other things. Over 35% of the entire population has a technology addiction with 31% of adults saying they overuse it. This percentage rockets by another 30% when it comes to teenagers who say that they are addicted to their phones, ipads, laptops etc. It is the younger generation that has been the most affected by the advancement of tech in a good and bad way. Cyber bullying, revenge porn and ghosting have taken the age by storm as we see more and more cases of such actions popping up. For cyberbullying alone, from 2019 to 2022 there was an increase of 15.8% saying that they were the victim of some sort of online bullying. 

Of course, these direct drawbacks coming from technology was not the ultimate goal. At its conception, tech wasn't meant to do this to us. It was to better the lives with its earliest purpose being to help with survival and hunting. Technology does still inform us as it was intended to but the truth behind whether it makes you smarter is based on the amount you use it. There's an argument that the times when technology wasn't as big as now is the time when society was smarter. This is something that is a very reasonable debate but people today are smarter. Can this be entirely attributed to tech? Absolutely not and the reason for that is because it becomes clearer that we can't trust technology anymore. 

Even that word “trust” is something that forms a disconnect between us and technology because it isn’t trust but instead a reliance. Trust is found between people while reliance is between people and things. Most things that come along with technology are not reliable to gain information. It is at a point now where a lot of things we see are starting to become AI generated and the news we gather is not the true facts behind it. This plays into something else we talked about in class which was bais. Tech caused a deep level of bais to spread and when that happens, things become unreliable. 

Technology, as mentioned, has spread across the world and connected people together. For me personally, I lived in New Jersey then made the move to Delaware and then moved to Georgia. People who have moved a few times and made those connections with friends understand how hard it is to leave those friends. The opportunity to create new friends and new groups is always out there but there is something different about the friends you had from the earliest points you can remember when life was so simple and carefree and the only worry was who was playing quarterback after school. The good about technology is that you can get connected or just stay connected so effortlessly. This goes hand in hand with family. My extended family lives in Jersey and I don't get to see them as much as I probably should but we are always connected. My uncle lives in Switzerland and Japan and of course there is a time barrier but at the end of the day, we can still get in contact. Talking about some of the negatives of the relationship to tech is pointless if we don't give its advancements the true credit it deserves. 

Another thing to keep in mind when we talk about a relationship to tech is the way it has thoroughly changed the workplace environment. We have online interviews over zoom and tests to even get an interview. Digital footprint is defined as information that you leave about  yourself online. 

The presence you have online is sometimes the first impression of many. The accessibility to be able to search up yourself and anyone else at any time is something that is prompting the security of technology and again calling into question the amount of reliance that one should have on technology. I took the opportunity to search myself up and when I narrowed it down to information actually about me, what came up was things about my running or athletic career, my linkedin and some accomplishments I had during my grade school time. My presence is not huge but it gets the image across for the type of person I am. If we turn the topic to the political digital footprint, there is nothing on political candidates that can't be found from a quick search. This is that double edged sword that tech creates. For someone like me, it is a clear image builder. For a politician, tech is a source of manipulation where information that is misleading is spread. This shows how multifaceted tech truly is. 

How do we as a society push for healthiness with tech? How do we get smarter using tech? How do we change our digital footprint to be good? How do we change all digital footprints to be better? These questions percolated through my mind during this entire research process. The answer to each comes in the fact that we need to find all of this in ourselves before we can begin to change the world's view on the questions. We need to balance ourselves with tech before we can balance the ever growing threat and prospect of technology in the world.

EOTO 2: Reactions

 

One of the presentations that truly struck a chord with me came from the theories group 3 represented. The biggest one that I found to be very interesting was the Spiral of Silence. The concept was created by Elisabeth Noelle Nuemann and she was a German political scientist from the early 1900s and she created this concept. The Spiral of Silence is described as people or a group being less likely to voice an opinion when the majority thinks something else. It is found that the inkling of fear that comes from even the thinking of a separate opinion from a group is what causes a person to go down in the spiral of silence in order to either fit in with the status quo or ultimately keep the relationships that they have formed in a good place. We see this when it comes to politics.

A lot of friend groups have different views and I think that we all subconsciously think about how we can not talk about the views, especially in this year of the utmost importance, or we will create a rift that may not be repairable so we keep the views separate from the friendships. With that being said we notice that those who do voice opinions become isolated from society and that strikes up another fear which also leads to the spiral of silence. 

This fear is the association of negative consequence with the voicing of opinions going beyond that of just being isolated from friends, colleagues, and family. This fear is associated with quality of life and sometimes jobs as well. We see this often and don't even realize that we are seeing it or witnessing it. There are times where I feel like I shouldn't speak on topics for the sake of holding friendships or just staying publically neutral under the looks of so many people throughout my everyday life. It was interesting to learn and it also is interesting to realize. We live in a time where speaking our mind will undoubtedly be met with backlash which isn't necessarily a bad thing in some cases.

Blog Post 7: Antiwar (opinionated piece)

The biggest take away from this class is going to be the fact that there is no trust that can be instilled in any form from anywhere. There is bliss in not knowing. That's how a lot of people feel and thus approach the way that they look into the government and also how they look into the media. This class really opened my eyes to the true realities of what is going on around the world and how the US has its hand in a lot of wars and things that we are told that they don’t. 

Every 4 years there is a big emphasis on pulling out of wars and although we may pull out a little bit we are never fully out of the wars or the countries that have been destroyed by the decades of turmoil that has faced them from trying to mess with the US. We look at these sites and see that the top stories are about the US but they aren't all. These sites open our eyes to the detriment that is taking place all across the world from Canada to Iraq. These governments don't want the people to know what they are involved in. Just as obscure as these websites are, is the information we get regarding what our country is involved in most of the time. We as the people aren't privy to the things we should know like when we drop a bomb on another place, meaning that we as the citizens should know the places that our county has made into our enemy. We should know what we are facing and how we are going about the issue instead of finding out after the action has already been done. 

The First Amendment's main speaking point is that debate and discourse on public issues is open. The government does however fully have within its power to limit free speech if it is a circumstance that presents a danger to the nation's security. It seems as though these antiwar sites stay under wraps because the government sees them as a “threat” to the security of the country again instilling the concepts of being on a need to know basis and discourse between us and those in charge. 

Blog post 5: Privacy

 The information discovered through the videos almost reminds me of some of the issues that we are currently facing in relation to the age of AI that we live in. Privacy is at the forefront of many issues today. Everyone is starting to realize that we don't have the privacy that we originally assumed we had when it came to looking on social media and looking online. The thing about that is, we are doing it to ourselves. We most of the time dont know what we are allowing these big brands to have access to by clicking that button to move a pop up off the screen.

The fact of the matter is these companies aren't the only ones taking our privacy and running with it but the third party companies associated are too. The government needs to have more cybersecurity infrastructure in place for this exact situation. For years that has been a talking point across the state of technology upgrading and becoming more advanced. I think we are beginning to see that become a priority by the blocking of tiktok. I think the issue shouldn't have had to come from the US being scared of another country seeing our privacy and gathering our information when the real enemy is most of the time in our own country. To protect ourselves we need to look at what we share and what we give permissions to. We also need to go back to elementary school computer safety courses for people of this generation. Before we click on sites and ads, we need to ensure that they are safe and overall just know what we are clicking on before we click. Its all about safety right now and monitoring what we do for our own accord because no one else is really trying to help us when it comes to upholding and advancing the privacy that is necessary online.

EOTO 2: Terms and Concepts

MSM is an acronym used to describe mainstream media which is classified as the collective various large media masses that influence many people and shape the prevailing currents of thoughts and culture. The current state of the world and in specific this country, is overly saturated with information. Mainstream media is something to look towards that helps to better explain our understanding of the world. News in itself is a glimpse into the values, hardships, good and overall changes within society. It informs while giving an effort at keeping diversity of views and opinions at the forefront of the media distributed. Within this generation and century, those true intentions of values and integrity have been called up to be explored under a close and watchful eye. Mainstream Media was built upon set of values which had the goal of serving the public and the publics interest. 

In recent years, this set of values has swayed beyond a return point especially currently with the state of the political times we are in. With that comes the sway of peoples votes as well as the sway of violent behaviors and evaluations while also destroying the first level of basic understanding that goes into that of societal groups and societal opinions. A very key quote that I found by Jim Morrison said that, "whoever controls the media controls the mind". This quote is a direct output of how putting the wrong people in the places of control can ruin us as a whole society, That quote also plays into the various cons that are associated. Along with that comes the fact that media empowers the already hateful while spreading hate and false information that homogenizes the culture and overtakes personal connections to effectively ruin those aforementioned connections.  Society is spread into sub groups. That meaning that the spread of society is so vast from the rich to the poor and from the young to old that everyone within these sub groups hears different things through the media causing a complete disconnect between each group in society.  

This is the evidence of how the hateful and disrespectful feelings, thoughts and actions are spurred up and ultimately spilled because there is so much that mainstream media causes that is only in place to tear down instead of build up those connections between the sub groups. Being a minority in this country, I sometimes feel that mainstream media destroys our sub group more than that of others. I feel as though because of the path that this country has gone down in recent years (continues to go down), there is no way for us to trust the media right now and that is because the media has been so tainted and utterly taken over by people who have terrible intentions. There is no other way to look at things. To explain that point I think the perfect thing is the state of the political concept in America and also the recent incident at a college. Gettysburg college had an incident where a student of color was chased down and forcefully had carved a racial slur into their chest. I look at this and I personally feel scared for how we have gone into what feels like a regression after on all accounts. This fact in its entirety is what the mainstream media spews though. To African American and people of minority in general it spews facts for us to be frightened and hold our friends and families closer while for people on the opposite end of the spectrum, empowerment and protection is spewed. The fact of the matter is we all will never be on the same playing ground nor will it ever be close to being equal but media early on had the chance to change that. It had the chance to be something different and in that it did change things and to not discredit its entirety, it continues to change things little by little. The question I'm left with after this project is whether my entire conception of media changing things for the better is real because the more research and time that I've been able to put into looking at it, although there are some good things it does partake in, the overall arching things that it does is bad. This generation is easily influenced and when you encourage kids in this generation with ideas that are negative and give them a sense of invincibility who isn't going to take that? Furthermore, when you give them that sense of invincibility after having not experienced life in its entirety, what person wouldn't truly think, consider and sometimes act upon the things that are being spewed and exhibited?

Blog 10: Age of AI

We live in a time where technology is something that is so strong in our society. It has infiltrated everything that we used to think of as being self-sufficient. From class work when we break down the use of chat gpt to the supermarkets where there are becoming less and less workers being physically in the stores. This in itself is such a scary feat to consider and be able to take in general. The 1 hour and 25 minute mark of the video is what made me really realize the treacherous waters that we are in. It was said essentially that the power AI holds is something that is at a rising boiling point. At the current moment, the use is in a relatively solid state where it is being used to help a lot of people although we have those who use it for ulterior motives like in the education setting. 

The part that speaks to me and scares me is that it was said that the power of AI is so expensive on the flip side, that if someone who controls the tools of AI does not have the interest or values that are essential to sustaining something as big as our democracy and how we run as a society then we are all screwed in one way or another because as much as it has the power for good it also has the power to completely demolish what little semblance of a balanced and safe society we have left. I ask myself the question of how can we stop the power of AI? How can we rein it in to not be controlled but be better monitored because of how dangerous of an effect it could impose? These questions for many raise the opposite end that it is in fact doing good for us so we should let it run as it runs for now and with that I can see the appeal. 

AI, surprisingly enough, is truly enhancing that of privacy because it is a fully automated system for the most part that can monitor things in the background and safe guard against those privacy concerns. I believe this fact to be the same with national security and identity and/or personal security too based off the fact that it is always in a state of constant monitoring. AI has some good aspects to it but we cant discredit the fear and the turmoil that it could and is almost surely going to cause.

Blog Post 6: Respons to EOTO Presentations

 

One of the most interesting EOTO technology presentations was on Bluetooth. I am someone who uses bluetooth practically all day and everyday. Apple watch, speaker, car, airpods, laptop and many more things throughout the day. I had heard rumors about what the name actually came from but the fact that a viking king was nicknamed bluetooth is very fascinating. The tooth being blue is disgusting but bluetooth is something that shows advancement in tech but it also is strong. 

You can't use bluetooth without a strong connection between the devices so when I think of bluetooth I find it makes my brain just think of the word strong. This king that it was named after was very strong having the capabilities to unite Denmark and also be respected enough to convince people to convert to christianity so early on. Many people, such as myself, didn't know the true legacy that came along with the name bluetooth. My EOTO was on the IPod and how that changed the way we communicate and technology as a whole but bluetooth was the backbone of a lot of tech advancements and communication advancements even before the boom of updated tech that came in the early and late 2000s. Without bluetooth many of the items we have today wouldn't even exist or be usable if they did exist. Jaap Haarsten single handedly made the initial plan for almost every bit of tech that we use without even realizing that he was making something that was going to be so influential to all of society across the world and beyond as bluetooth has recently made its expansion into the field of space exploration. 

The coolest thing is that it is a byproduct of radio. As crazy as it sounds, radio and bluetooth have always been two separate things to me. I knew that bluetooth could, in a way, jam that of radio waves but I didn't know that it was actually just radio waves as a whole. It is crazy how advanced the technology behind bluetooth is, especially to be discovered and broken down to be studied and figured out in 1999. Even today the technology behind bluetooth is such an advanced field where not many can actually break down the process and explain why it even works. The presentation as a whole was one of my favorites because it opened my eyes into seeing technology very differently than what I thought it was even as someone who uses it everyday.