Blog Post #12

 

The second EOTC presentations gave me a realization that not all of my information is private and it was a little bit scary. A topic that intrigued me the most was Deepfakes. Deepfakes summed up are the way people make the funny videos of Donald Trump singing Firework by Katy Perry. They use technology that can manipulate your face into saying something you never said or doing something you never did. Like everything else there are pros and cons to the subject. 

In the presentations, it was discussed that the negative impact of Deepfakes is bring lied to. Deepfakes can cause a lot of controversy regarding fake news. It is hard to know what is real and what is fake because some Deepfakes are designed so well you cannot see any flaws in the design and it looks real. 

Some pros to Deepfakes is having the technology to take every feature off of a face and use it on another body. That is huge technology advancement and can be used for the good in proper hands. Deepfakes can extinguish a bad interview or a mess up in vocabulary or even letting a wrong word out. They can also make a funny video to make someone feel better, like the videos of the Presidents singing silly songs. That is used for comedy and personally I find it harmless. The real question is are people going to use it for that or are they going to take advantage of other people?

Blog Post #11

     In this class, we watched a video that contained graphic videos odf our own men being shot by us in Afghanistan. We also discuss the rights that journalists have when they write about the government or anything that will being up controversy. The video was absolutely heartbreaking for me to watch because that is our men being shot by US military because they were there and looked like the opposing side. This class also reflected on the term we have used all year which is prior restraint. This term is not okay and especially when you are talking about the 1st Amendment which is freedom if speech and many other things. 

    Ken Ilgunas also joined us in the classroom on this day and he talked about his travels ti different places and how he is a journalist. The question that we asked Ken was "do you ever feel Luke yay could be attacked by the US government?" His answer was ask like others and revolved around the no, not really thought. No journalist should ever feel link that because they are giving people answers the government will not. He also mentioned how he never really thought about the consequences that people receive from the government especially if it is stupid or not.

Blog Post #10

 

During the video, I learned that technology is advancing very quickly. I knew it was, but I didn't think it was to that extent. After seeing the system, AlphaGo, beat Lee Sedol in a game called go, all I could think was that soon computers are going to be smarter and gain emotions and try to end the human race. Looking back at when I first watched the movie, Hidden Figures and seeing how computers could replace people, it showed how they could process data quicker and with a high accuracy rate. This seemed promising to me, but then seeing the advancement in AI technology in China,I found it disturbing.. I think the technology they are making is innovative and helpful, but when used for the wrong things, I think it can be dangerous. The facial recognition app scares me because the creators said it is better than a human at this point and you could be fined for jaywalking. It was stated in the video that they use it for jaywalking, but do they use this facial recognition for criminals? If they are not, this doesn't seem right.

As far as privacy goes, I think it is a huge invasion of privacy. People are going to get to the point where they are not going to be unique anymore and they are just going to be like everyone else. As stated at the beginning of the video, "When we search Google, they are really searching us."  I truly after watching this video believe this is 100% true. I see ads on Google all the time that I have never looked up before, I just have discussed verbally with someone. This to me is an invasion of my privacy. From a national security standpoint, I think it is helping the United States figure the advancement of other countries in AI, but they are also learning about us. The AI time is reminding me of the space race era, who can get the most advanced information the quickest? In summary, I think there is a time and a place for AI. Using artificial intelligence to steal somebody identity is not ethical, yet using AI for the health/safety reasons is ethical. There is a moral line that has to be drawn at some point in advancements in AI. 

Works Cited:

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

Blog Post #9

 For the second EOTO project, I chose Social Media Addiction. Social media addiction is the behavioral addiction that is defined by being overly concerned about social media, driven by an uncontrollable urge to log on to or use social media, and devoting so much time and effort to social media that it impairs other important life areas (www.addictioncenter.com). I think this is an important thing to discuss in today’s society because it affects everyone who owns a device and accesses social media. There are some very good things about social media, but also some very bad things. Some of the pros are: you can get information fast and you can more easily stay connected to distanced family members or friends. Some of the cons are: misconceptions, messed up sleep schedules, failing grades, giving away important information about yourself or your family, and most importantly losing the basic ways of human interaction.

    Society as a whole is affected because of how quickly news travels and how it impacts people. For example, recently in my hometown and on the street where I live, 2 individuals were murdered in their home. A friend of mine from home saw there was police activity on my street and immediately sent me the blurb and asked if my parents were okay. Because of social media, my mom had actually contacted me minutes prior to let me know what she knew, in case I somehow heard anything, but all of the information was not available. She knew what house, but at that point nobody knew how many bodies and who was in the house; even the children who lived there, who I grew up with.  Before social media existed, I would have learned about the incident after the fact, not while the event was happening. My friend who sent me the blurb would have known nothing unless she was physically on my street. In this instance, society was affected because it drew panic when panic wasn’t really necessary. What was being said on social media, while accurate, did not depict the complete reality of the situation.

Society as a whole is also impacted because the more we use social media to benefit us, the more we are being used to gather information. Everyone who has owned a phone and used it to search Google has given away information about themselves or their families. Google uses what you search on to target you. For example, if you search up on google an outfit you saw at a specific store, you will start to see ads from that store in other places that you access. Additionally, I think people who are attached to social media find it very hard to communicate with people face-to-face because hiding behind a screen and saying something is easy compared to saying it in person. There are also many things such as tone that as not portrayed accurately in social media. This actually leads to misconceptions by people. We are also becoming so dependent on our devices that I am concerned what happens when they break?  How will we function?  Will we just not socialize because we have no idea how to reach people then other through social media applications?

    

Social media addiction can affect different “segments” differently based on what socia
l media is being accessed or not being accesses.  I brought this up briefly during my presentation, FOMO. FOMO stands for the fear of missing out. Parents put parental guidelines on phones, meaning the user can access somethings but not everything. Or parents can limit the usage of phones throughout your day. FOMO comes from when someone misses out on something “fun” because they weren’t connected. 

I think Social Media addiction affects the young more than it affects the older generations. Social media addiction affects me because I feel like I truly don’t know what is happening in the world because I am too busy being concerned about what others think or what others are doing. Instead, I should just be living life and enjoying the moment. For example, when I go to concerts, I am too busy recording the act going on than living in the moment and enjoying the show.

Overall, I don’t have an issue with social media as long as people are cognizant of how much they are using it and how much they rely on it. Any type of addiction is a serious problem and measures should be taken to avoid it. When my parents grew up, they would always tell me stories about how they would have to use paper maps to get from point A to point B, but in today’s society you can just look it up on Google maps and it will give you an arrival time and an estimated traffic time, which you could not do back in the old days. I, myself have taken breaks from social media because of my mental health and it has helped a lot.  I too fall in that trance where I am meant to be on my phone for 30 minutes and then that 30 minutes turns into three hours and 30 minutes. It is crazy how much time you waste on your phone and if you’re curious about this you can look up your screen time on any device.

Works Cited:

• https://www.healthline.com/health/social-media-addiction#downsides​

• https://www.addictioncenter.com/drugs/social-media-addiction/​

• https://socialmediaweek.org/blog/2018/07/why-are-we-addicted-to-social-media-infographic/​

 

Blog Post #8

 After viewing each of these websites, they both support anti-war movements. The first website, https://www.antiwar.com/who.ph, is read by mainly “libertarians, pacifists, leftists, greens, and independents.” These people are opposed to war. Their political views do not represent either of the 2 major parties of the US government today: Democrats and Republicans, who monopolize mainstream news. The second website,https://www.theamericanconservative.com/state-of-the-union/woman-n-charge/, is run by “new” conservatives, who also oppose war. Mainstream news today is neither anti-war nor pro-war. They either support the views of Republicans or Democrats. They do not support the views of other political parties, which is what those 2 websites represent. Majority of the American population today falls under either Democrats or Republicans. Americans do not tend to cross political lines frequently.  

So, if the mainstream news did share this type of information, they may lose some of their followers to these other groups. This could then lead to their power being lessened, which is something they do not want. There are probably negative financial implications as well. They would also not want to share this news, because they simply do not agree with it.

This really shed some light on how one-sided our mainstream news is. In the future, when I am researching or trying to learn about somethings, I’ll be sure to seek out some of these obscure websites to be sure I get a more comprehensive view. I never really thought about not hearing about anti-war because I was raised in a world where it had been hidden from me via the news. My family and I try to as up to date in politics and what everyone is thinking, but I will definitely be more willing to check out some more of these websites. 

Blog Post #7

    During the EOTC Presentation, I learned from someone else more about the evolution of computers. I learned that when computers were first created they could only do minimal things and they were huge. Computers were first made to make calculations in math equations. So, like I stated before they had very minimal jobs to do and could barely type words. Knowing that they have evolved in machines that can do searches in less than 6 seconds is amazing to me. But with the pros to something, there is always cons. Who would have thought that computers would be so powerful in the future? Or that they could solve/possess things no human could understand? 

    With learning about the evolution if computers, I also learned the evolution of emoticons and code. Emoticons are used so you can know how someone is feeling over text. I felt like I should have mixed this in with computers because it is about texting which is also used on a computer. I think it is also interesting that emoticons evolved into emojis which are a more detailed version of emoticons. The computer and emoticons were both made in the 1900s, but many years apart. I think this was very good planning on both designers parts because they fell onto one another. 

    Coding was also anther thing I found interesting, I forget sometimes that computers rely on codes to be told what to do. So to learn about the first way inventors went about creating the first command for the computer must have been tedious and a long while worth or works and errors. I took a coding class in high school with directions so to do this blindly must have been very hard.

Blog Post #6

    The Diffusion theory is "a theory that seeks to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations_ There are four main elements that influence the spread of a new idea. They are "the innovation itself, communication channels, time, and a social system.   

    A newer social media platform, Tiktok, started out very small and then blew up into one of the most popular apps used today. Looking at Tiktok through the Diffusion theory it started off as an app named musically and then turned into Tiktok, so it has been around for a while. Musically was made in the year 2014 and was popular in this year too. The app itself was made for dancing  and funny videos. The videos ranged in short time spans (15 seconds). In the year of 2018, Musically had become Tiktok so that was 4 years where the platform was growing. That is the time aspect to the Diffusion theory.

    Communication channels are when the application switched over from musically to Tiktok. Since Musically was used by millions of people when the communication channel switched and got a new look, new users came and used the application to see what the uproar was about. The social system is the people that use the app. The age group that uses these apps vary from age 16-35 , so it is a large social system. I think it really had gotten big in the past couple of years, especially in the quarantine times because it gave people something to do. When I first heard about it, someone told me I should download this app very similar to vine and musically, so I downloaded it and got obsessed. 

    So many people became early adopters of the app because so many people discussed and talked about how funny or fun it was. The late adopters were the ones who previously had vine or musically and knew how addicting it would get and decided against getting the app, the non-downloaders also fall into this category. The negatives is getting addicted to the application and getting to the point where you can't go without it. Peoples screen time for Tiktok can range from 3-10 hours a day. There was also a bug in tiktok where it gave out some of your personal information, so people were extra cautious on downloading it.