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. 

Blog Post #5 - Anti-War Voices

The mainstream media constantly produces news about the active war in Ukraine as well as years ago in Iraq. Personally, I remember watching coverage of the war in Afghanistan as a kid because my father was deployed out there. I never thought about it too much but I never really heard about people who opposed the war. Mind you, this was mainly ABC and CNN who both now have live Ukraine coverage that is updated by the minute. Looking at this now, I wonder why I need to know every tiny detail of a conflict happening on the other side of the world. This is because governments like war. War is beneficial to both the economy and nationalism. Governments and politicians thrive off of economic booms and nationalist demographics. Nationalism helps bring people together for a certain cause which can help politicians get the points they need to win close elections. Wartime also brings increases to the economy which can be pointed to as a reason to re-elect as well as a reason to stay at war. Anti-war voices are dangerous to these politicians' attempts at gathering voters. It's easier for mainstream media to silence these voices because they negatively affect politicians. Without support for a war, politicians can’t exploit the factors that make them primary candidates. There is obvious evidence of suppression and censorship within today’s media that silences Anti-war voices because they are harmful to these narratives. This is why websites like ANTIWAR.com and The American Conservative are harder to find and must be searched for because they contain strong anti-war voices. They speak about the truths of war instead of the temporary facade it brings. 

Blog Post #4 - Google/Search Engines

 When the World Wide Web was first created, there were just files everywhere but no way to specifically locate them. The search engine was invented to solve this very problem, you were now able to type a word into the search bar and it would give you files that existed with that keyword on the internet. Originally, search engines such as Archie and Aliweb were created to organize the ever-growing discombobulated files on the internet. 

Web crawler was the first widely used platform by making every known phrase searchable. In 1995, Yahoo was launched and search engines became way more important with the integration of computers in schools and libraries. Around this point, spam was becoming a real problem. Especially as the internet started to get used for more commercial purposes, ads were getting in the way of the content people were searching for. Google joined the game in 1996 and built mostly on existing technologies until they unveiled their system, PageRank, which ranked webpages based on the number of backlinks a page had. They also were able to filter the quality of the links so that a link to a reputable website like the New York Times would come up over a spam website with loads of backlinks.

Google also created a formula that would help weed out spam while keeping relevant ads which helped them propel up to the top of the search engine game. This system was called AdWords and it helped companies advertise on the internet easily. AdWords made it easier for companies to advertise their product on the internet through a pay-per-click system. Google was actually sued for this because it was eerily similar to “Overture”. Google paid out around 6.9 billion dollars (adjusted) worth of stock to Yahoo. 

With the growing use of mobile phone searches, people have even faster access to information than ever before. Now with the addition of voice searches, someone doesn't even have to use their hands to find info. This makes information able to travel at ridiculous speeds. People can find any webpage based on keywords from anywhere in the world instantly. To increase mobile users, Google even signed a deal with apple paying them nearly $9 billion a year to keep Google as the primary search engine on Safari. This has made them the top search engine by far and with this, Google has inadvertently created a phenomenon known as digital amnesia or more recently, the Google effect. Because general information is so readily available and easy to find, we tend not to remember that info because it's always available. Why would people remember when the Constitution was written when it takes seconds to look it up? We tend to repeatedly look up information instead of committing it to memory. This may have an effect on our school systems because it's less important to teach facts and dates now that they're always available. The invention of search engines rapidly sped up communication by making it easier to find different facts and opinions about the world. Search engines revolutionized the way we look at the internet. Before them, it was near impossible to find important information on the internet and with all, it encompasses now, it is integral to have a searchable organized list of information.

Blog post #1 5 News Sources

Nowadays it becomes more and more likely that people will get their news from social media. The issue with this is that many companies all over social media out inaccurate and often incomplete information in the form of colorful, easily consumable, infographics. If you are going to get news from social media, it's important to look past these infographics and find more reliable sources. It's also important to get off social media and check other sources for accurate information. Here are my top sources of news both from social media and not. 

1. NowThis News

NowThis is readily available all across different social media platforms. I mostly see it on the Snapchat featured stories page. NowThis provides quick recaps of current events in an easily digestible fashion. They tend to provide just enough information without being too brief and leaving some info out. I would recommend this for young people always on the go. They provide short descriptions of what's going on but if you want something more in-depth, this is not the place to go. 

2. WTNH Channel 8

WTNH is my local news station. I grew up watching this every day, they always updated me on the weather, traffic, and any other events in CT before I went to school. Their information was always in depth and reliable, I felt as though the whole story was always told. I would recommend anyone from CT to put WTNH on in the morning for current events. 

3. SpillTeaCT

SpillTeaCT is an informal Connecticut news source. They provide information generally for young people on events happening throughout the state. Stories often get sent in to them and they post it (after checking that it is at least partially true). They are not a reputable source for news, but they are a great space to know the general idea of what's going on locally. Whenever I see something interesting there I tend to always look it up on a more reputable source like WTNH to confirm its validity. I would recommend this for high school and college students throughout the state that like to hear the buzz. 

4. New York Times

The New York Times is one of the most reputable new sources out there. I always check out the New York Times to confirm stories I've heard on other sources. I can trust the New York Times to give me the most reliable information because they have been around so long and built up credibility. I would recommend this source to people who want to confirm other things they saw online. 

5. Complex

Complex is my favorite news source for pop-culture news. Anything happening in the entertainment world, I generally find out about it from Complex. Compared to similar sources such as RapTV I generally find Complex to have more complete and trusted information. With all the fake news out there especially in the entertainment world, its integral to find the most quality resources for trusted news. I would recommend looking at complex for pop culture news over the commonly used RapTV.