Final Post

     For as long as I can remember technology has always been a part of my life and has brought me a lot of joy over the years. More specifically, I spent a lot of my childhood playing video games with my friends and family.

    When I was younger my relationship with technology was unhealthy but not terribly unhealthy, I would spend more time watching television or playing video games than I would being outside. That's not to say I was a hermit or anything, but I preferred to spend my time inside.

    Technology most definitely consumed more of my time than it should have while growing up. I missed out on a lot of great moments because I chose to stay inside and play games. Having said that, my relationship with technology has gotten significantly healthier as time has gone one.

   Today, I spend significantly less amount of time on the internet and on technological devices as I noticed over time that it was taking a toll on my mental health. What made me notice this was during the COVID lockdowns in 2020. 

    There was an incident with then New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees around the topic of kneeling for the national anthem. He had stated that he would never kneel for the anthem because he views it to be disrespectful, in return led to him receiving a lot of backlash on the internet.

    This was when I was first subjected to the kind of terrible things in store because of technology, you can't even let people express their beliefs without people attacking them. I have found that in today's world if one does not agree with everything you have to say they will begin to lash out at you.

    Realizing this two years ago was honestly the best thing for me because ever since then I have deleted twitter and Facebook. Now I do not spend much time on Instagram or any other social media for that matter. If I find that I am spending too much time on these apps I will delete them for some time and focus on other real world problems.

    The older I have become the more it has occurred to me just how negative of an impact technology can have on people. However, that does not mean everything about technology is negative there are still many positives that come from technology. 

    A lot of the information that I have learned over the years has come from the internet and I am grateful for the fact that in a second information can be brought to me. That does not mean that everything on the internet is truthful, which unfortunately a lot of people do not seem to realize.

    I am grateful for the fact that I was able to prevent technology and social media from taking over my life, hopefully other people being to see that technology can do more harm than good. If they do not the world may quickly turn into something similar to the "Tears For Fears" video we watched in class where everyone is so engrossed in their phones that they lose out on everything going on around them.

    Unfortunately for many, technology has become a major part of our everyday lives which makes it difficult to use only in moderation. I believe it is important to learn to be able to do so as the real world has a lot to offer and, life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. 

     

EOTO #2 - Reaction

     There was plenty that I learned from each presentation, a lot of them focused on similar ideas while also expanding on many different things. The topic that intrigued me the most was Total Information Awareness program.

    This was originally created following the events of September 11 and was meant to help detect terrorist attacks before they had the chance of occurring. The program quickly came under fire by people as they believed that it was just meant to spy on the American people. 

    Overall, the program was meant to be a good thing but was turned to just be a surveillance system for every American citizen, which violated people's privacy. Today the program still exists even though the government claims it does not, this was proven by Edward Snowden.

    The next presentation that was able to really grasp my attention was, Social Credit Score, which is a credit ranking system based in China. This is something that has been recently adopted in China and has been available for almost a decade.

    A Social Credit Score is supposed to give businesses or individuals a score based on how responsible they are when it comes to financial decisions. If these individuals are found to have a bad credit score they can be blacklisted and it will be harder for them to live a successful life. 

    This is something that has been talked about potentially being introduced in other countries around the world, the problem with it is that many people believe it to be a violation of their privacy.

    Lastly, the final presentation that caught my eye was Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality allows internet services to provide equal access to people no matter what that service is.

    If there were to be no such thing as Net Neutrality it would mean that services such as instagram, twitter, and many other websites can charge you money just to use the site. Whereas, with net neutrality one can use all of these sites for free and can choose if they want to spend extra money.

    There have been many times where Net Neutrality was almost overturned by the government and there are still companies pushing for this to happen sometime in the future. It would be extremely damaging to those that do not have much money to overturn Net Neutrality as they would be missing out on a lot of important parts of technology.

EOTO #2 - Spiral of Silence

     The Spiral of Silence, is a theory that was first introduced by German communication researcher Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann in the 1970's. The theory shows if people will change their opinion on a controversial issue based on how the public views it. 

    Neumann first came up with the idea for the theory during the 1965 German election and found that the two parties, Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP), had an even amount of voter representation 45% for both.

    For months the two parties were in a stalemate but one day, only a few weeks before the election, more voters said they were starting to vote in favor of the Christian Democratic Union. Now it was more than 50% compared to less than 40% in favor of the CDU. 

    What caused the sudden swing in voters was, as time went on more-and-more voters started to believe that the CDU would become victorious. Instead of voting for the SDP, voters changed who they were going to vote for simply based on public opinion.

    It was not only those that were voting for the SDP that changed their minds, but people who were unsure of who they were going to vote for also switched to the CDU simply because of public opinion.

    The main reason for the public believing that the CDU would win has a lot to do with Queen Elizabeth II visiting Germany while being accompanied by the CDU chancellor, Ludwig Erhard. Voters saw this and began to believe that this meant the CDU was the more popular party and changed their view on the election. 

    This led to voters from the SDP party to believe that they were in the minority and their votes would end up not meaning much, in return they either switched who they would vote for or did not end up voting at all. 

    In conclusion, Noelle-Neumann found that SDP voters were discouraged from publicly talking about their views on certain issues because they felt that there was no purpose because the CDU would win easily. 

    The overall takeaway that Noelle-Neumann had after the survey was finished and proved her theory to be correct was people have a fear of being isolated by others if their opinions are not similar to the rest of the public. 

    Instead of voicing their opinions on a specific topic, people will choose to not say anything at all, or they will side with the popular opinion all because of the fear that they will be an outcast or even receive verbal threats.    

    This was a theory that I found to be extremely interesting because it is something that is becoming more prevalent in today's society. People on both sides of the political aisle feel that they can no longer speak out on issues that they believe to be true out of fear.

    As time goes on, we have started to see that people become much more vocal about their political beliefs and have even started to become aggressive towards those that do not share these same beliefs. An example of this would be the surrounding the topic of abortion, both sides have very obvious opposing viewpoints. Instead of talking about these different opinions they start to verbally and maybe even physically attack one another.

    If this continues and starts to become more frequent in our society it will do more harm than good and it is best if we stay away from this kind of thing. How do people think countries will improve if they can no longer have multiple political parties have a civil conversation?

    

    

Privacy, Online & Off

     Over the summer I watched a documentary about the website "Is Anyone Up" this was a site that provided revenge porn and people would frequently visit it. It gained such a massive following that the man who created it slowly started to become a celebrity and he started to make a decent living off of it through ad revenue. 

    The documentary was very appalling to watch because there were hundreds of women that were affected by this individual and the incident ruined their lives. It was heartbreaking to watch these women break down while describing how they felt when they found out their nude pictures were out on the internet for everyone to see. 

    When one of the videos featured Darieth Chisolm and her experience with revenge porn, I immediately thought back to that documentary and how the man that created the website did not face a lot of criminal punishment. The only reason he was arrested was not because of sharing explicit pictures of women without their consent, but because he had hacked a few of their devices. 

    This video in particular got me thinking about how much technology can hurt people even though it was originally meant to help. When doing things today with technology you must always make sure you are doing the right thing, because you might not get a chance to undo that mistake. 

    These issues directly have an impact on my life because I have practically spent my whole life using technology and have always been aware of the fact that if I make one mistake it could potentially ruin my life. 

    Learning to protect oneself from making mistakes on the internet is something that everybody should learn to do, because online privacy is quickly becoming non-existent. If people do not start to learn how to keep their private information private, it can potentially make their lives very difficult as they have made themselves an easy target for hackers. 

    You can protect your personal information by refusing to use websites that request this type of information or you can create fake information about yourself, in order to make sure these companies are unable to track the things you do.

    I do believe that the government has some responsibility when it comes to these issues as they have the power to stop these types of things happening to people. It is perfectly understandable that there were not many laws preventing these types of things happening as technology was still relatively new, but there should be more laws today as technology is a part of everyday life. 

    

In The Age of A.I.

     Over time as technology continues to become more prevalent in our society it has helped a lot of people with communication, entertainment, and safety. As much as technology has helped with the safety of people's lives, it has also caused harmed to their safety as well. 

   I remember years ago when I would be on the computer looking something up, I would go to another website and ads would be popping up for what I was just browsing. It was always intriguing to me as to how the computer knew what I was looking at buying, until years later information started to come out that companies will track everything you do.

 Companies today are able to track almost everything you do online, this can range from the things you look up on your phone or computer and even information you did not know was available on the internet. Facebook has been caught multiple times taking information about people and selling it to third-party companies just to make some money.

    It is not just Facebook that does these types of things, almost every social media and browsing company is involved in something like this. It allows for them to target their consumers with specific things that they are interested in searching for or buying, in return they get a certain percentage of the revenue. 

    The most pressing issue in today's society is how will the development of artificial intelligence impact the human civilization in the future. There have been growing concerns over time about how intelligent will A.I. be, the biggest cause for concern is if they will surpass humans.

    Recently an A.I. system created by Google was able to defeat the number one Go player in the world by using a move that no human had ever thought of using before. This is great cause for concern because it means that Artificial Intelligence has the capability of coming up with ideas that never seemed conceivable to people. 

    The other main issue with A.I. is that they are starting to take a lot of people's jobs, if this trend continues there could end up being a lot more homeless people living in the United States. It is important to make sure that people are able to keep jobs and get paid, so they can afford to live under a roof and provide for their family.

    There is a lot to be worried about for the future of technology, especially with the way everything has been going over the past few years. If something is not done about it could end up being really bad for the future of the world, it is important to make sure that humans are the number one priority, not artificial intelligence.

Diffusion of Innovations

    Video Games have not been around for a long period of time, but even so, there have been hundreds of millions of people who have become avid "gamers". These games allow people an escape from the real world while also being an amazing form of entertainment that can be played for numerous hours. 

    The first mainstream popular video game was made by Atari in 1972, the game was called Pong. It was a game that was about the sport Table Tennis, and it featured two bars that the player would control and have to move in order to hit the ball back and forth. Obviously, video games have changed a lot since the first mainstream one was created 50 years ago. 

    When video games were first introduced to the world, they were thought to be a fun activity that one would partake in when they had nothing better to do. At first it was thought that playing these games were unhealthy for people as they were spending more time sitting down instead of going outside and being active. 

    As time went on and technology started to become increasingly better more people began to invest time into video games, the release of the first SONY Playstation console in 1995 (North America). The intrigue behind these video game consoles is they gave people the ability to be entertained when playing by themselves or with their friends. 

    There were some people that were skeptical about video games for a long time and there are even still people to this day that do not play and/or own any video games. This is due to them believing that there is nothing special about them and that they are a waste of time, the other criticism that has gained more traction lately is, video games can potentially make people aggressive. 

    Some of the criticisms that people have made are very reasonable as video games can certainly cause people to become less active and may lead to bad posture. I believe the positives of playing video games does outweigh the negatives by quite a bit as it is a great source of entertainment that people can be engrossed in for hours.

#6 - EOTO Reflection

    Growing up I always had a love for movies, for as long as I can remember I have been watching movies, my parents are both big movie fans so that was basically going to be a given for me as well. Whenever I am bored the one thing that I can go to is movies; some of my favorites growing up were the Star Wars and Harry Potter franchises. My favorite individual films are Halloween and Seven, these movies are both very thrilling and keep you on the edge of your seat throughout the entire time. This is why I was looking forward to hearing the presentation about the history and impact of motion pictures because they have a big impact on my life.

    A day after the presentations I saw the new Jordan Peele movie, Nope, it was my least favorite of all his films but, the one thing I took away from the film was a small plot point. The characters of the film are related to the black man on the horse in the first movie ever made, this was something that was mentioned in the presentation on motion pictures. Due to the family being related to the man in the movie they decide to run a company renting out horses to be put in movies.

    Movies have been around for over a hundred years and have provided people with hours of entertainment and fun, but they were not always like that. When movies were first introduced, they were black-and-white and silent, mostly everyone knows that, but what they might not know is they were very short films. The first movie ever made was just 2 seconds long and it was a film of a black man on a horse, which is the clip mentioned earlier. This presentation was very interesting to me because I thought I knew a lot about the history of movies, but in fact this was not one of the things I knew, but I am glad to know about it now.