Blog #10: Age of AI

    AI is a tool that has become increasingly popular extremely quickly. AI stands for artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is a new technology that has had a rapid growth within our world. This age of AI that we live in comes with many new innovations. These innovations bring positives and negatives to our world.

    In this video, these advantages and disadvantages of AI are brought up. AI has grown and advanced which has threatened the workforce of many Americans. These robots are taking the jobs of people therefore affecting their income and their way of life. While to product numbers are increasing, the amount of workers and available jobs are decreasing.

    Many of these positives and negatives of AI also deal with the nature of our privacy. AI can be used to find out private and personal information about an individual. As stated in the documentary by someone with knowledge of AI, "you would be horrified if you knew how much we knew about you."  These companies know private information about billions of people. 

    Companies have been caught in situations in which they were collecting personal information from people using their site. An example of this shown in the documentary is with Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg is the creator of facebook. His company was caught collecting data of information from its users. He was fined $5 billion for this situation by the Federal Trade Commission. After this, Facebook now prioritizes data protection for its users. 

    After watching this documentary, my view on AI and technology has shifted. It has shifted to a more negative view on this technology. AI is a scary technology that has access to too much information. This technology can be used to quickly access information people believe to be private. This access to information can be used for identity theft or fraud. People need to be more aware of this easy access of their private, personal information by using artificial technologies.

  

Blog #9: EOTO: Propaganda

    Propaganda has been a tool used for centuries in order to

influence certain ideas onto the public. It is used to communicate and push an idea onto people. Propaganda is still used in the current day to promote concepts people such as the government want the public to support. 

    Shown to the right is an example of current propaganda. The Covid-19 pandemic has many examples of propaganda used today. The government was using propaganda to encourage the public to stay at home and wear a mask if they need to be in public. Using this propaganda during the pandemic, the government held a lot of power. They had the ability to get millions of people to quarantine, wear masks, and get a vaccine all using propaganda.

    Propaganda can be used to manipulate minds. What could be promoted as a good thing, could actually be harming people. The government can use propaganda in order to benefit themselves by wording it correctly and convincingly. The government uses propaganda strategically to influence the thoughts and opinions of the public. 

    There are also ways that propaganda is used that is not necessarily posters and slogans. This could be through restriction. This is seen in the Smith- Mundt Act. It restricted news in the US from foreign sources. 

    In the Smith- Mundt Modernization it now "allows citizens to receive information regarding foreign broadcasts via Freedom of Information Act requests, which were previously prohibited on the basis of the Smith-Mundt Act." Before this moderation to the act, US domestic audiences could not access US sponsored foreign information.

    While this is considered censorship, it can also fall under the idea of propaganda since it is controlling the way the audience thinks by promoting certain ideas and restricting others. The Smith- Mundt act was used to limit foreign information broadcasting in the United States.

    Propaganda affects every person no matter that person's race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc. It is used to alter the way every person thinks. Not only does propaganda influence your thoughts and opinions, it also effects your interactions with other people. Since propaganda affects all people and influences how they think, each person could have differing opinions. These opinions that are influenced from the propaganda could affect how people interact with one another in regards to that topic.  

    Propaganda can influence people to start protests on a topic, which will only result in even more propaganda on that subject. In furthering and expanding this propaganda, that specific idea that is trying to be conveyed will spread and influence more people. Protests can be a form of propaganda because they are meant to convey and push a certain idea or message onto people. 

    Propaganda has had an effect on me in my life as well. I have seen propaganda in a variety of ways. I have seen protests, movements, speeches, posters, and so much more. These are all forms of propaganda.

    One of the biggest examples of propaganda I have seen in my lifetime that has effected me is Covid-19. The use of propaganda to keep people inside. From the government spreading these ideas to keep people inside I was in my house for months, unable to leave. Propaganda was used in order to influence the public that going outside and near other people would harm their health. This forced people to stay indoors for months which overall affected our entire society as a whole.  

    Propaganda is a tool that has been used for thousands of years in order to control and influence opinions. This tool is still extremely common and influential in today's day and age. I believe it will continue to be used by people especially the government in order to influence people's thoughts and opinions. 

Blog #8: Privacy

    In watching these videos, many concerns for my own privacy were raised. These videos discussed many privacy issues that directly affect me and the people around me. 

    One of the concepts one of the speakers talks about is our "electronic tattoos." The speaker is saying that our online presence has the equivalence of getting a tattoo on your body. It is permanent. I found this topic extremely relevant and interesting. Our social media and online presence is permanent and everlasting. We create electronic tattoos with our lack of privacy. 

    One feature that has been introduced in recent years in facial recognition. We use facial recognition to log into our phone, online accounts, and much more. As technology gains access to our facial recognition it can be used in so many different ways. 

    An example shown in the video is if you take a picture of someone out in public, by using facial recognition features you have access to personal information. With just someone's face alone you can gain access to social media accounts, bank information, criminal records, etc. This is an extremely scary thought for people, such as myself, since I have my face posted in very public ways. It is posted all over various social media sites and the internet. The thought of someone being able to use my picture to find out personal information about me does not seem right to me. 

     

      The government should be controlling how accessible personal information is. There should be more laws in place protecting our privacy. In one of the videos, the speaker discusses how her privacy was violated in the use of revenge porn. Nonconsensual images of her body were used and posted online without her permission. These public images affected her work, social, and personal life, yet there was nothing the government could do about it. Darieth continued her fight and became the first winning international case against revenge porn.   

    We can personally protect our own privacy by limiting what we post. We need to be cautious of how we use the internet and social media. People should not give out personal information so freely to people or the internet. This information can be used against you to find out everything about your identity.

    Privacy is a big issue in our world today and be more addressed and taken more seriously. People need to do what they can to protect their own privacy in order protect themselves and their own identity.  

Blog #7: Innovations through the Diffusion Theory

    The Diffusion Theory of Innovation is a theory of how new ideas or innovations spread through the population. This model shown to the left shows the theory on a graph. It starts with the innovators, or pioneers, in the launch phase of the concept. This is the very beginning of the new idea. It then moves to the early adopters which is the uptake phase as the idea gains more traction. The next phase is the tipping point which includes the early majority of people using the new idea. The idea continues on to the late majority beginning to adapt to this new concept which happens in the maturation phase. Finally, this new idea goes to the laggards in the saturation phase. These are the people to last come to use this new idea.

    A newer innovation that has gone through this diffusion theory is instant messaging. Instant messaging was not always as popular as it is today. It went through the phases of the diffusion theory as well. In the first few years after its invention, instant messaging was not very popular. The early adopters consisted of people using it after the Iraq invasions of Kuwait in order to get news in real time. The spike in instant messaging usage occurred when they made the innovation to be able to message people under all different mobile networks. 

    While instant messaging was a huge innovation, there were still many late adopters as well as people who never adopted at all. Many did not adopt this innovation due to a generational gap. People in older generations had other ways to communicate that work for them and they did not find a need for this new innovation for communication. 

    Instant messaging also comes with many downsides and negative impacts. When sending messages, people send them quickly without thinking. This could cause them to send things they don't mean or send messages that do not even make sense. There are also many privacy issues that could lead to identity theft or viruses on your server.

    Instant messaging was a major innovation that impacted how we communicate with others. This innovation went through the diffusion theory and shows the example of users using a new innovation to change their lives.     

    

Blog #6: Antiwar

    In looking at the websites  Antiwar.com and The American Conservative I learned more about an anti war perspective and speaking out against wars. It is rare to read articles against war and I personally do not see it often. These sites are trying to show the real history and agenda of these wars. I have never come across these sites specifically or any sites similar to them, especially when wars are a high topic in mainstream news. 

    On one of the sites I read an article discussing the real history behind the war in Ukraine. In this article, it is explained that Biden is the one pushing the war and is lying to the people as well as the mainstream media. The mainstream media is feeding these lies by sharing the stories without all of the true details according to this article. 

    I believe we don't see articles like these in the mainstream news and media simply because they do  not want us to see them. They sensor which news we are hearing in order to make it sound better. They tell us what they want to. The government promotes these other news sources and covers up sources such as these articles I am discussing. For example, during World War II, the promoted news had to go through a source to approve what was being said about the war. The media had to run their news through The Office of War Information in order to be allowed to share this news. 

    Our media can be very censored. It is controlled by what is promoted in the news and what is the top story. We talk about and focus on exactly what they want us to do. I think I have personally never seen these sites because the government and the media did not want me to. These sources are more hidden and harder to find than the media that is mainstream and focused on. 
  
 

Blog #5: EOTO Reaction

    In watching and listening to all of the presentations I found them all fascinating to learn about. I learned so many new things about technologies I use everyday. One presentation that stood out to me was learning about the history of the google search engine. This intrigued me because google is something that I use in my everyday life that I could not imagine life without it.

    Google has had a major impact on the way we use the internet today. It was invented in 1995 by two Stanford students named Larry Page and Sergey Bryn. They originally called it "BackRub" relating to the back-links used in the web page. Google began to grow in popularity and created the mission statement: "To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." The company quickly grew in popularity and they soon had offers from companies like Yahoo for $3 million to buy the company. They realized the potential of their new invention and ran with it. From the years 2005-2012 google began to create new google ideas. They create google maps, google calendar, and so much more. They used google in every aspect to help make people's lives and internet searching easier.   

    This easier way of browsing on the internet made google extremely popular. The use of these things known as spiders made it possible for these quickly accessible searches. These spiders essentially "crawl" using an algorithm to find the information you are looking for using keywords in your searches. This allows for the information you are trying to find to appear in seconds, or even less, on your screen.

    The quick searches and other google platforms allowed for rapid growth in users of google. These google platforms are used every single day to help makes people's lives easier. The use of google has become so common to be used daily by professionals, students, and even just the average person.   

Blog #2: The Supreme Court

    Before reading this article on the supreme court, I did not know much about it. I learned a lot about the supreme court from this article. One major concept that I learned was how much power the supreme court holds. The supreme court holds the power to create amendments to alter the constitution and bill of rights. An example the article discussed was the case of Brown v the Board of Education. In this case the supreme court made the decision to end segregation in schools. The supreme court makes many major decisions, such as this, that alters how Americans live their daily lives. 

 I was most surprised to learn that these supreme court justices are chosen then serve on the court until they pass away or retire. This was interesting and surprising to me because I did not know how the supreme court was chosen and how little they make changes to who serves on the court. The supreme court was originally made up of six justices but in 1869 a change was made and it is now made up of nine supreme court justices.

    A take-away that I got from this article was learning about the powers and authority of the supreme court. The supreme court justices are appointed by the president and are approves or denied by the senate. The the justice that holds the most power is known as the chief justice. The chief justice presides over the supreme court and also over trials of impeachment of the president of the United States.  

    I was surprised by everything I learned from this about the supreme court. I have a better understanding of how the supreme court works and what they are actually in charge of doing. This has changed how I view the supreme court because I now know the operations of it. I know how laws are made and changed by the supreme court the powers and jurisdiction they hold. I understand the importance of the supreme court and how their role in the judicial system impacts the nation and our lives.