Final Blog Post

I feel like I have both a positive and negative relationship with technology. Being able to connect with people that live in different states or use technology for work are just some of the ways that I use technology in a positive way. If I am using the internet in a way that will actually benefit me then I would consider that healthy. But when I am using technology way too much or getting addicted to the useless features that technology has to offer than I would consider that negative. I couldn't remember the last time that I checked my screen time but when we checked them in class it showed me that I have been using technology in a negative way. Tiktok was my most used app with it being used more than three hours a day. This was very alarming to me as I realized that I was watching mostly stupid videos that wouldn’t benefit me in any way. Over the rest of the semester I set a screen time limit on a bunch of useless apps and my screen time has decreased a lot.

I have seen my friends, family, and people around me use technology in worse ways than me. During the first two weeks of my freshman year I remember hearing my suitemate getting into an argument with his girlfriend over the phone. They kept arguing and I remember him telling her that he needed more time to play his Xbox. I didn’t think anything of it and minded my own business. The next morning he’s comes into my room and told me that he broke up with her so that he would have more time to play a new video game that just came out. Remembering this story makes my past Tiktok issue look like nothing. I have seen my family use technology in a positive way. My parents need it for work and my siblings need it for school. When there it’s a family member’s birthday and they live out of the state, we can FaceTime them to wish them a happy birthday. 

    When I use the internet I trust most of the websites and videos that I have seen. I trust these websites so much that I feel as they do make me smarter. Without the internet there would be tons of skills that I wouldn't have learned. Obviously there’s fake content out there that can manipulate the truth that you have to watch out for. When reading about deepfakes for one of my presentations it was ridiculous how real some of them looked and sounded. As someone that trusts around sixty to seventy percent of the content I see online, it was alarming. I wonder how many fake videos have tricked me into trusting their fake information. Something that I like to use to verify if a video is real or not is taking a look at the comments. This doesn’t always work but if people are disagreeing with the information, most of the time the videos fake.

In class we watched the Mad World  Remix Of Moby, and it shows how people view the real world vs. their phones once they get addicted. When people are on their phones the actual screen has color but when they look away from their phones the environment around them is black and white. This is showing how our cell phones have isolated us from our society. This video had great animations and the scenes were genius. The artist came with great ways to display how our phones are taking away human interaction. At the end of the day being on your device can be beneficial but when it makes the real world boring that's when it becomes a major problem.

Blog Post 10: Age of AI

   In the Age of AI video, what frightened me the most is that AI is taking peoples jobs. I couldn’t imagine going to college for four years just to have a computer take the job that I have worked so hard to get educated on. In the video they stated that there was around seven large investments on AI and the downside of those investments are that they decreased the ability for humans to get. Ai won’t take blue collar jobs but they will most likely take white collar jobs. Currently AI isn’t good at jobs that needs hand eye coordination which is essential to a blue collar job. People that work as reporters, traders, customer service, and much more are at risk. AI won’t go away even if we like it not. Jobs overtime tend to be replaced by technology such as bowling pin setters so hopefully with AI there will be new jobs that open up as old ones come to a close.        

Learning about the game “GO” was really interesting. After four thousand years of the game being played AI has came up with new strategies that humans never have thought of. It was really cool seeing professional players lose to the AI computer. Powering this AI to not only learn the game but have it come up with strategies of its own must have taken a lot of time and work. Seeing the human beat the computer in one game just shows how skilled he is. I have never played the game as it’s not popular in the United States but it was definitely and eye opening moment in the history of AI. I wonder what games or sports that AI will takeover in the United States. As a basketball fan it would be really cool seeing an AI robot that can shoot the basketball and never miss. Seeing an AI that could play chess would also be very interesting. 

EOTO Deep Fakes #9

      With artificial intelligence becoming more advanced, making deep fakes have became more common and more realistic. A deep fake is a realistic looking unreal video that's created by using computer software. People also are trying to figure out if deep fakes are protected by the first amendment. While the First Amendment safeguards the right to free expression, including the right to create and share content. There are certain limits to this freedom when it comes to certain forms of speech. The First Amendment will never support a Deep fake that is created to spread threats. It's interesting see how rules and peoples options on deep fakes change daily. Deep fakes and be used in both positive and negative ways. People can use deep fakes as entertainment which is a positive use. With the use of deep fakes we can bring back actors that have passed away and use them in movie scenes. Theres also a lot of social media accounts that use deep fakes to make "AI Music." An example of this is putting Spongebobs voice on the song Marry You by Bruno Mars. Deep fakes can also be used in a positive educational way. For example, surgeons can create made up situations to teach new surgeons content that could be helpful. Our military can use them in a similar way to create situations to better train our troops. There also a lot of cons that come with deep fakes. People can make fake convincing videos to change a group of peoples opinions on a view point. These deep fakes usually use a well known people to manipulate groups of people. Another con about deep fakes are people can make threats and it will look like another person said them. I couldn't imagine waking up one day and checking my phone and seeing a deep fake of me saying something that I didn't say. Lastly deep fakes can be a threat to cyber Security. As the technology advances it becomes more accessible. Potentially enabling terrible people to create deep fakes for cyber crimes such as identity theft or financial fraud.            The use of deep fake technology significantly alters societal perceptions and trust in digital media. As deep fakes get used more society is going to have to understand that not everything they see online is real. A deep fake is very easy to make this day in age. Anyone can go onto the App store and pay a subscription to an app. After paying they just need to pick a famous person and type in what the want to make them say. Deep fakes will affect the rich people the most in society as they are more targeted as rich people tend to be well known. Rich people could also be targeted to try to make them lose their high paying job. I have seen a lot of deep fakes and they really could ruin someones life. I hope that as time goes on, people will be able to make some sort of deep fake detector so that peoples lives do not get ruined.

Anti war Websites Blog #6

 For this blog post I took a look at two websites. These websites are called Antiwar.com and Theamericanconservative.com. Both of these websites supply anti war news that really isn’t told on mainstream news sources. The mainstream news network focus on gaining the most viewers by covering interesting topics and anti war just doesn’t pull enough views to make it into mainstream news for the most part. Another reason is editorial bias. At times a writer might pick a side of the war and if a news channel or article doesn’t like that side, the won’t support it by not covering it.

I’m addition to anti war not being a popular topic, I have never heard and been on Antiwar.com and Theamericanconservative.com. I barely go onto news websites so that’s probably part of the reason. But for Antiwar.com, the website layout looks kind of messy which makes it look like an unreliable source. They have topics broken down into categories but there’s a ton of links to other websites articles with those topics which makes the website look messy. When I fist clicked the link onto this website it felt overwhelming with the amount of links on the screen. I don’t have an ad blocker on my computer and in addition to having a ton of links they have a ton of ads which made the website look even worse in my opinion. There’s a lot of good news on the website I just feel like the look of the website is going to draw users away to other news options. For Theamericanconservative.com, the layout of the website is way better. I like how instead of just using a link they have a photo with a description for each article. I feel like using the word conservative will draw some users away. But besides that I really like this news source and I will probably start looking at it more as I found the articles interesting and important.

I don’t feel like I would have to look at other websites to hear stronger anti war voices. These websites do a good job at displaying tons of news articles on anti war. Maybe the conservative one has a voice that people will disagree with. But these two sources should be talked about more as they are very strong anti war sources with interest opinions and facts.

EOTO Technology presentations Blog Post 5

  One of the presentations that stood out to me the most was the history of the ballpoint pen. Through out history there has been several versions of writing tools that include metal nibs, feather quill pen, and much more. The ballpoint pen is the most effective writing tool other than the pencil. Laszlo Biro invented the ball point pen around 1938. His design was genius as it consisted of a tiny ball bearing at the tip of the pen that would rotated to release ink onto paper. At fist the pen wasn't easy to get a hold of and it was expensive. Nowadays you can purchase a whole back of ballpoint pens for less than ten dollars. Its really interesting to see the what price of what we consider expensive today will be in a hundred years.  

Mass production of the ballpoint pen started during World War II as the ink in these pens would last a long time. Before people would have to rely on filling pens with ink much more often. In a war situation time management is key and wasting time on filling a pen with ink wasn't very productive. In addition to these pens being much more time effective they also were very durable. Dropping a ballpoint pen which happens a lot won't do damage to it which made the pen an essential tool during the war.

 The reason why I chose to write my blog about the pen is because this was the only tool that was presented that had nothing to do with electrical technology. This made the ball point pen stand out to me. I never new that there was originally a ball that would rotate as you drag the pen across paper to release ink. I just assumed that friction would some how release the ink. I have lived with pens all of my life and I didn't realize how helpful they are until the presentations.

  

The Telegraph

The main job the the telegraph is to send electric signals through wires. Samuel Morse started working on the telegraph around 1832. In 1844 after years of trial and error Samuel was able to send his first message. This message stated "what hath God wrought." Starting in Washington DC,  Samuel worked very hard to extend his telegraph. He was slowly able to get his line to New York. While  Samuel was working on his telegraph, other companies such as Western Union were competing with him from other parts of the country. 

The biggest problem at the time was not being able to send messages quickly among states. This is why serval of people were competing to have the first successful telegraph. Before the telegraph was invented, people such a massagers would have to help send messages. This was a very slow and physical way to send messages and it would lead to a countless amount of problems. The telegraph also helped solve business problems. The telegraph allows businesses to obtain market prices. This is very important as business owners can communicate prices of the market and economy to find a perfect price for whatever they are selling. The last problem that the telegraph solved that I researched and found interesting is that lack of military communication. The military is made up of a huge group 

Something that I didn't know about the telegraph was how it helped out with the railroads daily. Being able to communicate where trains will be, this allowed trains to collide way less than they did before. This opened the door for modern railway communication. I can only imagine how hard it was to communicate where a trains location is without any communication between stations. Another very helpful use of the telegraphs on the train stations was the ability to communicate train failures. In the 1850s our trains would have Aton of failures. Being able to report these failures was essential as it allowed workers to keep working trains off of the same tracks with a broken trains. 

Eight Values of Free Expression Blog Post #3

  Free Expression

One of the Eight Values of Free Expression that feels the most important is promoting tolerance. With freedom of speech promoting tolerance allows an extension of hate speech. If people got thrown in jail for saying something hateful, it would be a dangerous amount of power given to the government. When a person says something hateful society can deal with handing out punishment such as taking away an athletes contract. Being able to talk about politicians in a negative way is also important because it allows people to criticize the government without being punished.  This is protected by our First Amendment right. If we punished everyone for hate speech then we would be like China or Russia. 

Atlanta Hawks Owner Exposed For Racist Emails

In 2014 the owner of the Atlanta Hawks basketball team was forced to sell his team because one night he sent racist tweets. This is an example of promoting tolerance as he got punished by the NBA rather than having to deal with the government. With free expression his words on the email were protected. Society was able to deal with this issue as his contract was cancelled after the emails got exposed to the public. Sending racist emails is beyond stupid but especially for a basketball team owner that works with all races. If this problem didn't occur he would be making hundreds of millions. He however apologized and is embarrassed as he said, "I’m truly embarrassed by my words in that e-mail, and I apologize to the members of the Hawks family and all of our fans." A harmful statement that he said is that the white fans are more valuable than the black fans. If I was a player for the Hawks I wouldn't want to play for him.                                                          

                                                                                                                    Promoting Innovation

Promoting Innovation connects to me the most as I value a community that freedom speech is looked up upon. The government silencing people can be a powerful action that is not supposed to be used in the United States. We wouldn't be a free country without a community that values the freedom of speech. Promoting freedom of speech also promotes the ability to give diverse options. Ninety Five percent of people can agree with a topic and the Freedom of Speech allows the other five percent to disagree. I couldn't image living in a country where its illegal to share my opinions. A time that the United Stated government countered the promotion of innovation is during 2020 when Covid was at its peak. The government started silencing scientists when we needed the help of scientists the most. I have seen a lot of conspiracy theory's on why maybe the government wanted to silence the scientists. The one that made the most sense to me is that the government was trying to test its boundaries. There has been so many times that people have gotten punished by the government for using their first amendment right and I am highly against that. Promoting innovation definitely connects to me the most.