Our Relationships With Technology

 I think we can all agree Technology has worked wonders in our lives. But I think we can all also agree that it has not always worked in our favor. Today we have so many technologies that people from the past could only dream about. But we also have issues that we dream about not having. 

    Technology today has brought us many things such as smartphones(or mini computers), laptops, smartwatches, bluetooth headphones, smart cars, and so much more. Technology has also brought us most recently advanced AI which has been all the news has been talking about the past couple of days.

    A big problem with technology and people my age is that we are finding we don't have a healthy relationship with technology. We are overusing technology and spending extremely unhealthy amounts of time on technology. 

    With Apples "Screen Time" feature in iphone settings, you can see how much you time you spent on your phone that day and that week. You can see how many notifications you receive for each app,  how many times you picked up your phone, and how long you've spent on each app. 

    When discussing screen time with others my age, we found we were spending anywhere from 5-9 hours on our devices a day. That just shocks me when I really think about it. When I think about what I could do with those 5-9 hours not on a phone, it's mind blowing and definitely not something to be proud of. 

    

It seems screens have become an addiction. Most can even admit that they have an attachment to their phone. Phones are the one thing we pretty much never forget to take with everywhere. And if one who was attached to their phone was to accidentally leave their  phone at home per say, they are likely to feel uptight and stressed. This is because of that attachment. Separation from the item can cause anxiety. This shows lots of reliance on these devices, and it's scary. Another scary point, there's a name for this attachment, nomophobia.

    Of course, not everyone is a victim to nomophobia. There are people who use technology while maintaining a healthy relationship with technology and there are those who do not use technology at all. 

    Technology is of course useful,  and isn't just something people are addicted to. For instance, you can go to google and have the answer to your question in less than 1 second. Technology is also used by most universities and school now to assign and turn in assignments. This is extremely convenient and quick. 

    Just as there is a positive side to using technology in school and universities, there is also a negative side. A new innovation "Chat-GPT" is being used by many students recently. This is not good. 

    Not only are students receiving credit for work they did not complete, they are not doing the assignments given by their teachers or professors and when we especially think of college students, maybe hoping to be nurses or doctors one day, this can get kind of scary. Personally, I don't want my future doctors and nurses to have earned their degree with the help of a robot. Will they even know how to help their patients? 

    Technology is evolving faster and faster. The good news relevant to Chat-GPT is that there are AI detectors teacher and professors can now download to detect AI work such as GBTZero.

    This is the good thing about technology, some issues caused by technology, can also be fixed by technology. 

                                  

Twitter's Diffusion Of Ideas 9

 Each big breakthrough of Technology has had a period of "Diffusion of Ideas". 

    This "Diffusion Of Ideas" period occurs throughout the course of the existence of the idea. 

    The "Diffusion Of Ideas" begins when the innovators of the idea get the idea and craft the idea. 

    Next, the innovators must find early adopters. These early adopters invest in the idea to get it going. This is also a time innovators can try and get others on the bandwagon. For a technology such as Twitter,  they did this by introducing their product first to certain groups of people, such as college students. Their goal with this step is to get the college students to love their technology and hopefully those who know these students will download and grow to love the technology as well. Those who get the technology because of the early adopters are known as the early majority. 

    The "Early Majority" are those that really take off and love the idea introduced to them by the early adopters. They see the vision (such as using Twitter to communicate with others), they understand the purpose and they use and support the product. 

    Of course, not everyone is on board at first. There are some who are just skeptical or really just do not see the point in the idea. They feel the world doesn't really change with or without it. Or, there is something about the technology such as Twitter they just don't agree with such as privacy restrictions, data collection, etc. Eventually, some of the people who feel this way latch on as well and are known as the "Late Majority". 

    When both the Early majority and late majority are on board and are loving and using your idea, this is known as the tipping point. The idea has finally reached its peak potential when it hits the tipping point. But of course, things cannot stay at the tipping point forever, and from the tipping point things begin to fall. 

    As the technology or idea falls it's not that it ceases to exist, it just is no longer used as much as it had been used before. Of course there will be people who do continue to use it, but it is nowhere as prominent as it had been in the past. 

    Of course, innovators fear what happens after the tipping point. They don't want their idea to die and many have a solution to this fear. Take Apple for example, they release "new" products every year. Lots of people go crazy over these products but in reality this iphone just released is barley different than the one they released last year. Maybe they will add a camera here or there or take away something such as a home button to make things sleeker. But really, the point of it all is to keep their idea from  dying. They need a way to keep people coming back and to keep their products and ideas fresh and relevant. 

AI documentary 8

 Watching the AI Documentary could not have been done at a better time. Around us right now it seems everyone is talking about AI, it' s development, how much further it is going to go, and how much further we should let it go. 

    The documentary went into the detail about how people have been using AI and how AI has already affected us and how it is believed to affect us in the future. 

    AI is becoming more and more real as the days go by.  AI development sounded years away, but it seems everyday there's new talk about AI and what it is doing next. Recently, on an extremely popular  communication app used by teens around the globe (Snapchat) AI was integrated into our daily lives, and we weren't even aware it was to be happening or given a choice. A few weeks ago, Snapchat released it's built in AI chatbot "My AI" which appears pinned on users chat list and is not removable (that we know of yet). This AI bot is there and you can talk to it and ask it anything you please. 

    The uneasy thing about this AI bot is the unknown data it is collecting. Snapchat users were informed that the data given to the AI bots are collected by snapchat in order to "better the app", however we have reason to believe we don't really know what "My AI" is collecting from us. 

    Recently, ticktockers have been posting their message threads with these AI bots where they ask the bots if they can see(collect data on) photos they send the bot. The bot replies with no. So, the user sends a photo and uneasily the AI bot comments on the photo. The user asks how the bot knows what the contents of the photo were if they cannot see it, but the bot just continues to say it can't see the photo, even though it had just described it. 

 

EOTO Technology Presentation Reaction 7

     During the EOTO presentations of Communication Technologies, I learned a lot from my peers about different kinds of technologies. 

    Most of the technologies presented, while just as important, were those I am familiar with such as ipods, cd's, and other well known technologies. 

    The technology that stuck out most to me was Petroglyphs. The reason I believe Petroglyphs stuck out to me was because I was just not expecting to see it presented as a communication technology. Although it is a communication technology, I think I speak for many when I say that when we think of "technology", we often are thinking of devices such as phones, computers, ipods, etc. 

    Petroglyphs are considered a communication technology because before we had what we now consider "technology", people would use petroglyphs to communicate with others. Similar to how we use our phones to send a text to someone today. 

    

    When we think of Petroglyphs as a communication technology, it's amazing to see how far we have come. While Petroglyphs were a great asset back then, people today would never communicate with one. Today when I want to communicate with someone, I send them a text. To do so, it takes about 10-15 seconds. To communicate with a Petroglyph, you would need to find a stone to chisel at the rock with. By the time you chiseled enough to reveal your message, you would have dedicated a pretty significant amount of time to do so. 

    

    We wouldn't use Petroglyphs today because 1, we don't need to, they're outdated and 2, it would be so inconvenient to us. I don't know many people with the patience to sit there and chisel their message into rock. 

    During these EOTO communication technology presentations, I grew very impressed with how far we have come with technology and was impressed with what communication technology looked like with technologies such as Petroglyphs before "Technology" as we know it started evolving. 

Find Your Voice

    Why is there no anti-war talk today? How come Ant-War doesn't appear on mainstream media services. Are there even people who are anti-war? The answer is yes. And you can find them in places like antiwar.com and TheAmericanConservative.com. But why isn't anti-war advertised more?    

    

    This is because Anti-War is "Good for few, bad for most." Some like war because of the increased employment and production it brings while other look at it and see the countless lives being lost that most don't even bat an eye at and the destruction of physical and human capital.

    

    The benefits from war believed by by those who are not anti-war and really not as great as they think they are. Some seem to believe that war gives the economy a boost by raising the employment rate. Those people who are now employed will start spending more and this will boost the economy.  But actually , this increased business will cause the retail spaces to hire more help, which will cause unemployment to drop even further. Countries involved in war are not getting an economy boost because that money people are spending would have actually been spent eventually somewhere. We don't need a war for people to start spending their money. 

     

    We never really hear about the anti-war movement in mainstream media because it's against what the government wants. The government doesn't want everyone to be anti-war because that would ruin their plan if everyone was against their ideas; it wouldn't be as easy to execute. They want and need everyone on board, and it's for selfish reasons. War brings death to many soldiers and really does not improve economy as everyone believes it does. 

    

    We must do our own research and not be naive to believe that the government has our best interest in mind. Not everything the government does it right. Read up on war and its effects, and make a personal decision. What do you believe is right? Just because the government agrees with war, doesn't mean you have to too. 

    

    

Twitter- How & What

    Twitter is an online microblogging platform which was created in 2007 and was actually the product of the podcast venture “Odeo” which was founded in 2004 by Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Noah Glass

     When Apple had announced in 2005 that they were going to add podcasts to iTunes, Odeo’s leaders knew they probably wouldn’t be able to compete and that they needed a new idea. Jack Dorsey then proposed a “short message service” that shared small blog-like updates with friends and Glass offered the name “twttr”. In 2006, Stone, Williams, and Dorsey bought out Odeo to start the “Obvious Corporation” and further develop Twitter . 

    
    After the idea was presented at the “South by Southwest Music and Technology Conference”, and received interest, 1 month later Twitter Inc. was created and Dorsey became Twitters first CEO. 

  

    Although Twitter started off with the idea of a blog-life update service, it quickly became many other things too. Business started sending tweets about promotions and events, and even political campaigns started making their way to Twitter.

    Twitter also started becoming a news source in 2009 when Janis Kru
ms shared the story of the US Airways Flight 159 Water Landing. Twitter was quickly becoming a hub of information. Today, you can go to Twitter and find out practically anything. Twitter has changed News, business, and politics. Today you can read up on news stories, look at what politicians are saying, look at what your friends are saying, receive ads and promotions on new products which often times are sponsored by the celebrities you follow, and more all from one app.

    
However, in 2017, Twitter made a decision that some were not happy with. Previous to 2017 Twitter followed a chronological timeline. In 2017 Twitter replaced that chronological timeline with an algorithmic one. This means that tweets which were more popular or tweets that were liked by the people you followed were shown to you first. Many people argued that this would keep users in a dangerous bubble which would confirm their existing biases. And many believe this is the reason many do not get along, especially when it comes to hot topics today. Thanks to algorithms, many people are only ever seeing one side of the story on these apps such as Twitter and as people suspected it is confirming their biases. This is dangerous and a major downside to these apps such as twitter. 

    Today we have run into an issue with Twitter where our rights as American citizens are not being supported. I also want to note I find it interesting it was hard to find an article backing this up. Over the past couple of years, twitter has been suspending or banning accounts which simply didn't do anything wrong. The only thing those user are guilty of is tweeting about things Twitter does not agree with. This could be argued both ways. Some are okay will this as they believe that because Twitter is privately owned, they have the right to do so. But others feel silenced. The question we face today is, does Twitter have the right to silence on their platform?

The 8 Values Of Free Expression

    There are 8 values of Free Expression we can all reflect on here in America today. These 8 Values include The Marketplace Of Ideas, Participation in Self-Government, Stable Change, Individual Self-Fulfillment, Check On Governmental Powers, Promoting Tolerance, Promoting Innovation, and Protecting Dissent. 

    The 8 Values Of Free Expression are all important and necessary but the importance factor of each will differ depending on who you ask. 

    Personally, there are a few that seem most important to me. These Include "Checking On Government Powers", "Protecting Dissent", "Stable Change", and "Participation In Self Government".    

    The "Checking On Government Powers" value of Free Expression is a value which allows citizens to be learn about abuses of power, but also let's those citizens do something about that abusive power when they vote. This is of the most important values to me because I think the freedom to not only realize the higher powers are abusing their power, but also to be able to do something about that abuse at the ballot box is extremely important. I wouldn't want someone in charge to get away with a power they do not have, especially if they are using that power in a negative sense. Someone must be able to speak up and stop this. And thankfully as American citizens, we can and we will.

    "Protecting Dissent" is also a highly important value of Freedom of Expression. This value of expression says that everyone's view is protected and it is your protected right to disagree with not only everyone else but also the government. This value is greatly important. The ability to disagree with the government and not have to agree with everything they say is something we might take for granted. Some other people in other countries aren't fortunate enough to have that right. Governments might not always do something we agree with, and fortunately for us, we don't have to agree with them. Any and every American citizen has the right to disagree and  can even peaceably show that disagreement. 

    

    Another very important value of Free Expression is "Stable Change" which is the ability for citizens to speak their mind. The thought process behind Stable Change was to allow citizens to peaceably speak their minds so that they would not result to violence. It's in the government's best interest to allow stable change. I think that Stable Change is one of the most important values of free expression because it is important to give citizens that right to express how they feel in a peaceful way. I also think it's true that without allowing your citizens to peacefully speak their minds, you may have more violent ways of doing this to deal with as a government.

    

    The last value that I find to be most important in the 8 Values Of Free Expression is "Participation In Self Government." The "Participation In Self Government" value allows a state to govern itself. This is important to me because it means that your state is free from external government control without fear of higher government.