Final Blog: Technology and Me

    I would say that my relationship with media and technology is an interesting one. Growing up my dad and I would often bond through watching movies and playing video games together. As I got older technology was able to provide a creative outlet where I could express myself through a number of online programs, and in doing so I realized that I wanted to go down a career path that had a focus on technology. I have worked jobs where I have had to operate large machinery such as amusement park rides, but I have also had the chance to look at the broad effect of technology by doing market research for Intel’s Internet Of Things Group.

    Despite my more favorable impression of technology, my online footprint I would say is actually fairly small. While I do technically have both a Facebook and Instagram, I post at best on an annual basis, and I mainly use them as ways to directly message others, or find information about local events going on. Even on more personal apps such as Snapchat, I almost never post anything for large amounts of people to see, and mainly use it as an extension of texting. This is not to say I am anywhere off the grid, as my current job as an online journalist has me constantly posting news articles under my name making my online presence much greater than it used to be.

    I do have some important thoughts regarding the role of technology in our life. In my opinion our relationship to technology is the same as cavemen first discovering fire. The internet and associated technology is new to us and can be scary and dangerous as it paves the way for new problems we as a species have not dealt with throughout our history, such as data and privacy leaks, and because of that we as a species will have to adapt to these changes it will cause. Technology is also unpredictable, while we may have some vision of where technology will be ten years from now, the reality is that technology is advancing so fast that it is impossible to know for sure. But just like fire, now that technology has grown and spread it is almost impossible to stop. Whether we like it or not, we are heading towards an automotive tech driven era, and there is nothing we can do as individuals to stop it.

    This does not mean that I think that technology is evil and is bringing about the end of society, but what it is bringing is change. The innovations and applications associated with technology will change us as a species and how we approach different problems, potentially leading to breakthroughs such as an end to cancer or world hunger. But change is not inherently good or bad, it is just different. Progress has always been a mixed bag in all industries, for example the invention of the automobile has had tremendous impacts on how connected the world has become and how businesses ship and receive products, but it has also caused major damage to our environment and has caused hundreds of thousands of people to lose their lives in accidents. I personally am someone who is interested in seeing where progress will take us, and am morbidly curious whether technology will eventually lead to an interconnected utopia, or an oppressive dystopia.

Blog 12: Awareness Words

  

    The presentation that I found to be most interesting from our second Each One Teach One project, was the presentation on Awareness Words. While the other presentations including my own showcased some aspect of communication issues and disinformation, the terms and concepts presented in the Awareness Words presentation had a greater focus on the purposeful and often immoral side to the spreading of disinformation.

    The presentation first talked about propaganda which refers to the spreading of ideas ,information, or rumors that can hurt or help people, organizations, or causes. We have seen numerous examples of propaganda used throughout history from multiple cultures. Governments will often use fear mongering propaganda in order to unite and control their citizens under the disguise of being patriotic. One of the most despicable examples of propaganda comes from the anti-jew propaganda used by Hitler and the Nazis during the Holocaust.

    Another concept from the presentation that fit this theme of the spread of misinformation is the concept of False Flags. False Flags are operations that are committed with the malicious intent of putting the blame on another party. This to me is an extremely detrimental and potentially dangerous practice because of how hard it can be for citizens to distinguish what is the truth. Our government has the funds and the manpower to pull these False Flag missions off, and if they do we may never know they had any involvement.

    Our ability to discern real and credible information from false information is critical to being well informed and responsible citizens, but due to these concepts laid out during this presentation, it is becoming harder and harder for us to do so. What we should take away from this, just like with other of our discussions, is that we should try to stay open to various sources of information, as if we limit ourselves we may be more likely to fall victim to the negative effects of disinformation.

Blog 8: The First Television

    One of the technologies that I found to be the most interesting from our Each One Teach One presentations was the creation of the first television. While I had some knowledge of the history of the medium before, the presentation highlighted a lot about the life and intentions behind the creator of the first television. I learned that the inventor of the first television was Philo Taylor Farnsworth. Farnsworth had thought up an invention in High School that would allow moving images to be captured and coded into radio waves in order to then be transformed back onto a screen.

    The purposes that drove the creation was to provide entertainment to people and to bring people together within the home. Today this concept of togetherness has mostly been lost as more people are turning away from television in favor of online video services such as Netflix or Hulu. Now there is a greater focus on creating personalized experiences as opposed to creating one thing everyone watches together. People are able to watch whatever they want from a variety of devices, so the technological need to have a dedicated entertainment system has mostly vanished.

    However despite the recent shift away from television, the technology paved the way for further innovations we enjoy today. Television has affected and influenced the development of many different entertainment industries including but not limited to film, gaming, and music. The creation of television also provided a new way for citizens to receive news and stay informed on current events. While we may now choose to use a number of new devices for our entertainment purposes, the invention of the first television will always be one of the greatest stepping stones in media history.

Blog 9: Netflix and Diffusion Theory

   As of 2021, I think it is fair to claim that traditional television is dying medium. A shift to alternatives such as online video streaming services, has had a dramatic impact on the creation and consumption of media that can not be overstated. But his change was not something that just happened overnight, as just like other successful innovations video streaming services went through a gradual process that led to how successful they are today. To showcase this I will be looking at Netflix, one of the biggest pioneers in the medium, through the lens of Diffusion Theory.

A major reason why Netflix was able to grow was because it fulfilled a niche that at the time major companies were not willing to take a chance one. Before Netflix there had already been platforms such as youtube that featured online videos, but these were shorter, typically less professional, and had a much smaller budget than the average television show. People could also view their favorite shows online before Netflix, but doing so usually meant going through untrustworthy sites that could cause harm to their computers. Netflix was able to position themselves as the sole solution for those wishing to watch their shows online, and this heavily contributed towards the acquisition of early adopters.

There are however, many people like myself who were late to adopting Netflix, and this could be due to a number of reasons. First the use of the service requires technology that can access the internet which may not be available to those of lower financial status. Second there is a level of trust associated with being able to purchase physical media such as DVDs and knowing it can not be lost through online errors. These are issues Netflix has been addressing through the years by letting people access the service through their phones, and having the service be essentially a database people are paying to have access to, rather than make customers pay for individual shows or movies.

Sources:

https://www.statista.com/topics/1594/streaming/

https://ukdiss.com/litreview/netflix-disruptive-innovation.php#:~:text=2)%20Early%20Adopters%3A%20This%20section,enthusiasts%20in%20trying%20what's%20new.

Blog 5: The Age Of AI

    After watching the video “In The Age Of AI” I have many conflicting feelings regarding this new shift in technology. On the one hand artificial intelligence is able to assist in our society and benefit us in a number of ways. By removing human error we are able to reduce the chance for accidents that could be harmful to professions such as truck drivers and other manual labor positions. We can also use it to enhance security systems, as facial recognition and fraud detection can help lower criminal activity both for online and offline services. On a more broad scale Artificial Intelligence has the ability to create solutions that we as humans could have never thought of. Sure we have not been able to do things such as create a cure to cancer, or solve climate change, but these computer algorithms could finally provide the information or breakthrough that makes these problems solvable.

    There is of course the elephant in the room, that AI technology is vastly diminishing our privacy. The ability of computers to take in countless pieces of our data and make decisions about us without us knowing, is frankly terrifying, especially because we have become more and more dependent on technology, and are using it in almost every industry. It is not even that companies have access to information that they may want, it is that they are collecting more data than they even know what to do with, and having that data sitting around with the possibility of theft or misuse, can be unsettling to most people.

    AI just like other forms of information technology has its positives and negatives. Its application could have an effect on our ability to function as a society the likes of which has not been seen before. Only time can tell whether the application of these technologies will be a net positive, or a net negative.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dZ_lvDgevk

Blog 10: Echo Chamber

    The term I researched for my Each One Teach One project was “Echo Chamber”. The simple definition of an Echo Chamber is an environment where a person only encounters opinions that reflect and reinforce their own. This goes hand in hand with the concept of confirmation bias as people are more likely to believe in things that coincide with their current beliefs and reject things that do not.

    Echo Chambers are able to arise from a variety of sources and many people may be unaware that they are currently in an echo chamber. Echo Chambers often are the result of the formation of various groups and organizations. Those who lean more Republican or Democrat often will choose to accept information from others who support their side of the political spectrum. These groups do not have to be as large as political parties, as they can be small ones too like the group of friends a person chooses to associate with, or even groups a person may not be able to avoid such as family. Friends and family often will share some of the same views as you, or at the very least will try and be supportive by not arguing with what you believe, so they can indeed act as an Echo Chamber. Whether we know it or not, it is very likely that each of us are currently stuck in at least one, if not multiple echo chambers, but they can be hard to identify, and even harder to get out of.

    Echo Chambers are especially relevant today because of our increasing reliance on the internet. Search engines such as Google use data and complex algorithms in order to show results more accurate to what the user wants and are more willing to click on. This creates a special breed of Echo Chamber that is tailored towards each of its users. If a person is convinced that the Earth is flat and is often on sites created by other people who believe the same thing, the search engine will automatically showcase similar sites, in turn creating an Echo Chamber. However this is not exclusive towards any one group or belief, as everything from religious beliefs, political affiliations, and geographic location can have its own Echo Chamber created from these search engines. With our increasing use of computers and the internet for things like the news, these Echo Chambers drastically influence the beliefs of the people, and help cause the spreading of misinformation within our society.

    Echo Chambers have a large negative effect on our society. We have seen first hand some of the harm Echo Chambers can cause due to the limitation of communication caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. More people than ever were stuck inside and had no choice but to get their news from electronic sources. Choices like what news channel to watch or what news outlets online to view kept almost all U.S Citizens in a constant Echo Chamber, as social interactions and outside information was limited. This led to many citizens blindly believing what their chosen news source was telling them, and paved the way for the insertion of misleading information and propaganda, like the conspiracy theory that the democratic party had influenced the presidential election. For the future we as individuals need to recognize that the information we receive may not paint the full truth, and that we should do our part to pay attention to a wider range of sources, including those we may not feel comfortable with.

Sources:
https://edu.gcfglobal.org/en/digital-media-literacy/what-is-an-echo-chamber/1/

https://theconversation.com/the-problem-of-living-inside-echo-chambers-110486

https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2017/dec/04/echo-chambers-are-dangerous-we-must-try-to-break-free-of-our-online-bubbles

Blog 6: History of Personal Computers

  

    The communication technology I chose to research was the first personal computers. The date from our timeline listed the first personal computer as being created in 1975, but this is a very broad approximation as its creation was gradual and over a long period of time. Prior to 1970 computers were very large and heavy unlike what we are currently used to. On top of this computers were expensive and were used mostly for research and performing calculations.

    The first major breakthrough would come in 1971 when Intel released their 4004 Microprocessor, the first commercially available microprocessor. This would drastically reduce the size of future computers and was a major step to getting to personal computers. 1975 would bring the next important innovation in computer development, the Altair 8800. This is considered to be the first commercial personal computer, but it was still far from the design of modern models. For starters it needed to be assembled from kits, and utilized a purely text based display. These computers were mainly for hobbyists and were not yet accepted by the general public. However it was with these computers that allowed for further advancements and improvements in the next few years.

    In 1976 both the first word processor “Electric Pencil”, and the first text based adventure “Adventure” were released which are both important applications to the success of personal computers. 1977 Apple released the Apple II personal computer, which were fully assembled and more aimed towards the public.

    1981 would be one of the most important years in the history of computers. The first spreadsheet program “VisiCalc” was released, which demonstrated how computers could be used to enhance businesses and were not simply game machines or digital typewriters. Then IBM released their version of the personal computer which allowed for a plethora of different options and customizations, such as the type of floppy disk drive. One of these customizations included the MS-DOS operating system which IBM agreed would not be exclusive to IBM. This decision would create a shift in the tech industry as it meant that any computer created by any company would be allowed to use MS-DOS. This led to a boom in the PC industry in 1982 as a wide variety of new computers and models were released rapidly. Finally in 1984 Apple released the Apple Macintosh, what would be the closest model to what the average person thinks of when they imagine a personal computer. This computer came with a mouse and graphical user interface where users could click on and drag icons instead of typing out command lines. The computer was also much more affordable than other models released around this period and quickly became a standard for other computers developed after it.

    The invention of personal computers have had a drastic impact on us as a society. This level of advanced technology was finally put in the hands of the public instead of being used solely for scientific purposes, and would later be expanded upon further when the World Wide Web was finally created. These computers have had an effect on the business world that can not be overstated, as word processors and spreadsheets redefined how to properly organize a business. Personal computers served as a catalyst for future developments that would lead to the highly digital and connected society we have today.

Sources:

https://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/computers/

https://www.britannica.com/technology/personal-computer

https://lowendmac.com/2014/personal-computer-history-the-first-25-years/

https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=274

https://www.encyclopedia.com/computing/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/social-impact