Blog Post #11 (Option #1) - Personal Use of Technology

 

As a member of Generation Z and a young college student, I am a constant user of the internet and social media. Personally, I have tried to make strides toward using social media less often. Last year, I made the decision to permanently delete TikTok due to its intense tracking routines. I also made the decision to temporarily delete Instagram and I only did it temporarily because I use Instagram to promote music I’ve made. During this experiment, I noticed my focus went up a bit in class, and while I occasionally felt the desire to engage in some social media scrolling, it made it so that I would have to find different activities to fill in small portions of time. 

In my opinion, regulated use of the internet and social media can provide benefits. After all, the internet can provide a lot of useful information and facts. You can find anything in the database of human knowledge on the internet. Although, due to the plethora of information available, some of this information becomes susceptible to misinformation or even disinformation. Fake news is everywhere on the internet so while there is valuable, factual, information out there, users must remain vigilant to avoid fake news. This fake news can lead to bias’ built on false pretenses and belief in false ideals. This can become dangerous to our democracy and our society. 

Even though there are many positives, there are known negatives to social media and the internet, especially when it comes to unregulated, overuse. Teen suicides are at an all-time high because of cyberbullying and isolation. Before social media, cyberbullying wasn’t even a concept. Due to the increased use of social media as a form of communication, face-to-face communication has suffered. This will become one of our biggest societal and psychological problems, people aren’t having real conversations anymore. Before my classes, I notice that people choose to use their phones instead of talking to each other. Its become an unexpected phenomenon and I’m scared yet interested in how we will cope with this odd phenomenon. A personal issue I suffer from and am working to overcome is FOMO (fear of missing out). This is easily amplified by social media because you see all the fun things everyone else is doing. How I help avoid this feeling is by remembering that social media is a highlight reel of people's best moments and their life is not like that all the time, we never see the bad. Another issue is the tracking and privacy invasions that come with the internet and social media. As talked about in my privacy blog, our every move is being tracked, whether that's with data points spread through digital footprints you leave everywhere you go on the internet or its cameras on the street scanning your face, taking pictures of your car, and tracking where you go. Privacy issues must rise to the top of our attention, it infringes on our rights as lawful citizens. Often with just a Google search of a name you can find way too much personal information. 

Luckily, when I searched up my name on Google there were limited results. While there were those person lookup websites that had my address and parents' names, there were mostly links to my high school soccer and track statistics along with honor roll postings. What pleased me the most is that I didn’t find a single picture of me posted on Google Images. This showed me that I am somewhat succeeding or at least doing better than others at reducing my digital footprint and keeping my private information, private. We should all remain constantly aware of what traces of information we can leave around on the internet and make an effort to reduce those data points so we can retain our privacy. While the internet is a powerful tool, it comes with many dangers that we need to address. These are all fairly new issues that came with the quick rise of technology and the faster we can regulate it, the better our society will be for it in the future. I am scared to watch the people in this world I’ve grown up in, turn into mindless zombies who only care about their devices. Hopefully, people will help in stopping technology from ruling our lives while also letting it assist us.

Blog Post #8 - Privacy

Our right to privacy is a fundamental right to our existence as a society. Within the technological age, this privacy becomes difficult to retain. Most of this is caused by the individual release of data via posting pictures openly on the internet. This should be known as an acceptable risk because if you are sharing your information for everyone to see then you should have to deal with the consequences of your actions. I do believe that people should have the right to have personal information or media permanently deleted if they choose to do so. Unfortunately, this is not the society we live in so we must stay vigilant and remain aware of the dangers of sharing too much on the internet publicly. 

What should stay private is pictures, videos, or information sent to another individual privately. It should be the same as having a face-to-face conversation with another, it should be private from the government. Nowadays even our phones and texts are being tapped so that the government can listen in on our private conversations. This is an outright invasion of privacy for the majority of people who are law-abiding citizens. As stated in one of the videos, it seems like the government can just track criminals' conversations because those are the only ones we see on the news but with the decreasing costs of data storage, information on innocent people is being stored in the hopes that one day it will become useful. Personal data should only be stored if that person is a suspect or has committed a crime.

Darieth Chisolm made a good point in her talk by saying that the internet is an international thing, therefore it should be protected under international law. This means that people who commit crimes over the internet, especially internationally, will face punishment faster and issues can be solved quickly. Hopefully, more and more people, primarily women, will no longer have to face horrible attacks, such as revenge porn, and we can retain our right to privacy. Policies all over the world should be created to prevent such rising issues in our society. The internet is a very powerful tool and can easily be misused, but with the proper sanctions in place, people can peacefully browse, consume, and share internet content without the fear of privacy invasions.

Blog Post #11 - EOTO Reax

 One of the most eye-opening and, in my opinion, important topics we covered in our EOTO presentations was Whistleblowers. In short, Whistleblowers are the people on the inside who leak information that generally shows wrongdoing. These people are usually government workers but could also be employed by a large company. They became a whistleblower because they saw some sort of mal intention or action occurring and instead of staying quiet, they risked their job to leak classified information, they think, the public should know. 

Information useful, yet hidden, from the public, can include secret attacks, torture, privacy invasions, and much more. Essentially, any wrongdoing a government entity or company is committing can and should be shared with the public to condemn such action. Whistleblowers help fight corruption and limit rights violations. They are righteous citizens and should be respected for risking harsh punishments. 

Whistleblowers can risk losing their job (this almost always happens) and even prosecution from the government. Luckily, OSHA has created some protections for workers who want to report wrongdoings. One example used in the presentation was Edward Snowden. Snowden was an NSA employee and noticed all the ways in which the United States government spies on us and invades our privacy. He leaked this information and it caused a major stir from the general population, and rightfully so, our rights to privacy were being invaded. Snowden lost his job and was forced to move to Russia where he still resides today to avoid prosecution from the American government. 

Whistleblowers are incredibly important to our society. Without them, we would be blind to all the evil things happening right under our noses. We deserve to know the truth and whistleblowers help protect our rights. When we become aware of a fact that only employees of a company know, and it affects our well-being, we can react and make sure those activities no longer continue.

Blog Post #9 - EOTO: False Flags

According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, a false flag is defined as an incident designed to deceive people into thinking it was actually carried out by someone else. Generally, it is a fake military attack fabricated to point blame at an opposition. They are mainly used as a reason to attack or go to war with another nation by creating a false prejudice against the targetted nation. 

 

This exact tactic was used in the proposed false flag, Operation Northwoods. The proposed plan outlined in a classified document, later declassified in the Kennedy files, was a false flag operation that would target American citizens and property and then would later be blamed on the Cubans inevitably to draw up enough public support for a war. The document contained possibilities of sabotage by the American government such as the assassination of Cuban immigrants, making it appear as though planes were shot down, blowing up a U.S. ship, and orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities. All of these would have been staged attacks by the U.S. government that killed or injured the American people. Luckily, Kennedy rejected the operation. 

On April 7, 2018, a chlorine chemical attack reportedly left 43 people dead in Douma, Syria. Both the governments of Syria and Russia denied having anything to do with the attack so a fact-finding mission was launched to try to find what was really going on. Before the report came in Donald Trump launched a billion dollars worth of missiles toward Syria in response to the chemical attack which destroyed a scientific research facility. When the fact-finding mission came back, the reports were drastically different than what was originally written. Those who wrote the official report weren’t even the same team on the ground in Syria. The attack was made to seem like chlorine canisters were dropped through the roof but the evidence says otherwise. Although not a confirmed false flag, it was advantageous for the United States to launch an attack. We just had no reason to do it yet.

In February of this year, Ukraine and Russia accused each other of carrying out shelling attacks in Donbas. According to media reports, shells hit a school building and left two civilians injured. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson directly called the school shelling “a false flag operation designed to discredit the Ukrainians, designed to create a pretext, a spurious provocation for Russian action.” Other Western leaders did not go that far but agreed that it was highly likely that it was a false flag operation. 

False Flags can have many negative effects, for example, they can lead to hate against another nation under false pretenses. Views on certain nationalities or ethnicities could be warped due to an attack that did not originate from the targetted group. This shatters trust and damages the relationship between the government and the people due to their commitment to deception. False flags are dishonest actions, primarily committed by governments and powerful organizations, therefore they have widespread influence to promote hatred and hostility against others. If one was posed against us, like Operation Northwoods, it would most likely affect the poor or minorities because there would have to be fewer reparations paid if any. Governments could also get away with such actions easier if those people were targeted. The mere existence of false flags makes some very skeptical about any planned attacks. While they are a good war tactic, they drastically affect everyone on either side of the conflict and only benefit the wealthy and powerful. 

Blog Post #7 - Diffusion Theory

The website Reddit.com was founded in 2005 by 2 college students at the University of Virginia. It was originally created as a forum-based website where you could create separate forums for individual hobbies, activities, or subjects also known as “subreddits”. After it moved onto AWS servers in late 2009, Reddit tripled in page views and reached a billion page visits by 2011. By this point, Reddit was a popular forum website, widely used across the internet. It made it possible for people with smaller interests and hobbies to communicate and bond with people with similar interests. This is what the early adopters were using Reddit for.

Once more people joined the website, the number of subreddits increased rapidly and eventually there were so many, you could look up anything and you’d be sure to find what you were looking for. By the time the late adopters rolled around, Reddit had been a place to trade information. Personal experiences, stories, and how-tos all became staples of Reddit. Generally, if there is any activity-based information that I need, I go to Reddit first. For example, there are many times I need to fix my car but I don’t know how to do it. First I would locate the subreddit for working on my specific car and then find the exact question I need to find. Often times there are people, even if it’s few, that have the same issue as you. I would’ve never been able to fix some problems I’ve had if some guy on Reddit didn’t have the same issue and posted his solution on the website.

Communication is sped up rapidly with Reddit, it makes it easy to spread information on primarily niche topics. But Reddit isn’t all niche activities. People now post up-to-date news and current events as they happen. You also get a lot of differing opinions on Reddit, many users often engage in vigorous discussion and debate with other users based on their particular views. This exposes people to other opinions they might have never heard without this resource. In the case of Reddit, the positives outweigh the negatives. Leaving comments on a thread leaves a limited digital footprint as opposed to Instagram or Facebook, which are more personal-based. Users of Reddit can make their opinions known while staying anonymous. I think this is really what makes the website work. 

Blog Post #10 - AI

AI as we know it today is growing at a rapid pace. The future is full of exciting new technologies that will benefit us in many different ways, but these technologies can hurt us as well. There will be consequences as a result of large-scale automation, people will lose jobs and we will be forced to face mass unemployment. The choices we make in how we use AI will be crucial to our survival as a species. 

Looking on the good side, AI would increase efficiency, one reason being, a machine can work 24 hours around the clock, but a human cannot. A machine can also calculate more accurately and faster than a human making it a good tool in banking industries. They can run simulations free of bias unlike humans and their tendency to judge others based on certain characteristics. Ultimately, after the technology is installed, AI will become cheaper to maintain than human workers, faster, and smarter. This can have wonderful effects, it will make a lot of people rich and hopefully will help provide crucial healthcare services. In fact, AI can be applied to many industries including but not limited to, transportation, finance, agriculture, education, and surveillance. All could have tremendous benefits to our society but at least more myself, one sticks out. 

Surveillance has always terrified me, especially when in the video they noted that 500 million cameras would be put up all over the world in the next few years, which really scared me. I’ve never liked the idea of being watched, even when I’m just minding my own business. We should have a natural right to privacy and shouldn’t have our moves watched wherever we go It was even scarier to see that in China, people were being scanned on the sidewalk identified by their faces. With this technology, militaries will be able to identify someone with face-scanning technology and potentially kill them with a drone. To me, this is my worst nightmare of how the world could turn out. 

There is hope though, if we make the correct choices on where we apply and limit AI, we will have a better chance at seamless coexistence. Mass unemployment will become one of our top issues looking toward the future and how we confront that could make or break our society’s survival. AI has brilliant potential but with great power, comes great responsibility.

Blog Post #6 - Reaction to Presentations

 The general information from the presentations included dates and the history of the invention followed by the impacts on communication it had. These inventions spanned from the making of paper thousands of years ago in China to the recent developments in cloud computing and Bluetooth in Silicon Valley, CA. In fact, one of the first interesting facts I hear during the presentations was that Bluetooth can be found in hearing aids, pacemakers, and refrigerators. I did not know this and it opened my eyes to how widespread Bluetooth technology is and how many different spaces it can be applied in. Another interesting fact I learned was, 2.6 billion emails are sent a day. This was mind-boggling to me. Especially because that means over 600 billion emails are sent every day. Email has vastly sped up technology and it got me thinking about how inventions that help speed up technology also speed up how quickly inventions are adopted and improved, making the advancement of technology move faster than it ever has before in an exponential trend. 

Before it took 20-30 years for one invention to actually become widely used and effective. Because of the increased speed of communication people can actually create new things and get the word out there faster. People can give feedback faster which is fixed faster so more things can be made faster. It creates the cycle of inventions being able to be adapted to the general public faster at a previously stated exponential rate.