Final Blog Post

I have grown up surrounded by technology no matter where I went. My relationship with technology started with my parents. I got my first technology when I was five, and it has been a never-ending cycle ever since. My current relationship isn't unhealthy, but I always have an alarming amount of technology as I write this paper. I have my laptop on which I am typing this, my iPad and phone next to me, and my TV in front of me. Generally, on a day-to-day basis, I have a perfect schedule when I am on my phone. I limit my screen time to when I am home after classes and can relax. Technology is now an essential part of my life; with it, my days are the same. 

Overall, with all the time I spend on my phone, iPad, and laptop, I think technology is helping us become smarter, and I see myself learning through these devices as I am right now. There is also so much wrong information through social media that it can lead to misleading information and cause many issues. Social media has been known for its adverse effects on body image and mental health. Mass General Brigham's says The platforms are linked to physical illnesses, anxiety, and depression, and they are made to be addictive. Social media has been a leading cause of depression and is so fake. 

 Why is social media fake? Many influencers even said that social media is fake. Instagram is full of faceting and photoshopping, and people change their appearance to improve it. People also love romanticizing their lives to the point where they aren't true and hide their actual lives, which can be a real downside of social media. People aren't their true selves. The app can break down someone's self-esteem, body image, and overall happiness from a young age. It has been demonstrated that young

women who use Instagram, mainly when posting selfies, have a higher chance of developing eating disorders. Body image is something special, and no one deserves to judge themselves based on other people. This is why the use of social media and honesty needs to come toward. 

This is why the age limit for social media should be set lower. An article said 42 percent of kids have a phone by age 10. By age 12, it's 71 percent. By 14, it's 91 percent. If children under 14 have a phone, I think it should be for safety reasons, and the phone should be restricted to help them develop properly and not have them addicted to social media and enjoy their childhood.

In Futurama, the video goes over what they think the future will look like in the eyes of the people from the 1964 World's Fair in New York. This video says we have men living on earth and on the moon. They also say we have information shared worldwide in milliseconds, which is true. It also goes over machines going into the water to collect minerals, which is true, but we do not have a world under the sea where you can take weekend trips. They say laser beam cutters take the trees and destroy them. We have this but with saws, and we have made highways where once forests were. It is extraordinary that some of the things that were said years ago are true today. 

I keep my digital footprint very clean and respectable. My mother works in HR, and I have learned all the importance of how fast something from the internet can be dug up and ruin your career and reputation. I have a medium online presence. I do not post often; when I do, I am private on all social media just because of everything she taught me. I have heard horror stories from her hiring people and the stuff they find that sadly makes the applicant not get the job. I recommend always being careful what you post and making sure you post it privately if you don't want the whole world to see it.

EOTO Presentation: Blog Post 11

 We learned about different types of awareness, mediasphere, theories, and policies during class presentations. Each group went over a different category and each person chose a subcategory. I learned a lot I had never heard about during these presentations.

 One that really caught my attention was disinformation; disinformation is information that is maliciously shared by someone who knows it is untrue and knows it to be false. Some causes of disinformation are the collapse of traditional business models, The digital transformation of newsrooms and storytelling, and the Creation of new news ecosystems. Some types of disinformation are satire, false context, imposter context, manipulated context, and fabricated content. Disinformation has impacted a number of things, including our ability to combat climate change, sustain a stable democracy, and enhance public health. By offering insightful information on how and why we are likely to believe. 

    Another type of awareness I learned was propaganda, a tool used to push a particular idea onto people, and it has been around for a very long time. It is used in order to communicate a specific idea to people. During this presentation about propaganda, we learned about the Smith-Mundt Act Moderation, a law that went into place in July 2013. The Smith-Mundt Act Moderation is amending the U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948. Propaganda today is still around. Some daily examples are the COVID-19 pandemic, War in Ukraine, Political Campaign posters, and Anti-smoking and drug campaign ads/posters. This has never crossed my mind when seeing or thinking of one of this propaganda. Propaganda aims to influence people's opinions and change their minds and opinions on certain things. Propaganda is used a lot in our day-to-day lives, and it is even used with the government they can use propaganda to get us to sway one way or another on a topic or severe matter. During this presentation, I learned so much about awareness.

Living in the age of AI: Blog 10

 During the video, I learned all about Artificial Intelligence's past, present and future. We are officially living in the age of AI, and everything we know is about to change if it has not already.  AI has come a long way since 1951 when the first documented success of an AI computer program

was written by Christopher Strachey, whose checkers program completed a whole game on the Ferranti Mark I computer at the University of Manchester. AI's popularity started in 2016 with a program called AlphaGo, designed to teach itself the machine learned moves and patterns against itself and won every single time. This invention has forever changed the world. Sadly all the more uptake in AI will be much more rapid, and 50% of jobs will be threatened by AI. Many jobs have already been replaced by computers and technology. Many people work two jobs as it is right now to support themselves and their families.

The standard of living has dropped 10-15%, which is genuinely saddening, putting people at a greater risk of depression and illness after losing their jobs due to AI. So is AI helping or hurting us. The good news is that the jobs taken by AI still have to be monitored by a human so although one job was taken, another was created but it is still a sad truth to face. Due to these jobs being taken the new generation must learn a whole new set of skills than we already know. AI is still a silent job killer but is much more silent when we think.

    Technology listens to us. Yep, you heard that right whatever you are reading this on is listening to your searches, your voice, everything. There is no escaping the devices; the future is devices. AI is a lot smarter than we think it can detect faces, voices, and body language and track it to a person which is horrifying. There is no such thing as privacy anymore anywhere we go. There are cameras and AI-generated work. Technology is adapting at a rapid pace AI can tell a change in our voices now if we are in a good mood or mad or angry. The world today is already dominated by two AI-dominated forces. AI doesn't always have to be wrong it can help push us as a society in the right way but it also can be taken advantage of and used for harm. We must be careful as a society to ensure

we keep AI being used for good because it could be crucial to the world. AI has helped in medicine As a result of AI healthcare, people's interactions with medical experts are already altering. Thanks to extensive data processing capabilities, AI can identify diseases more quickly and accurately, advance and speed up the development of medications, and even monitor patients via virtual nursing assistants. AI in education will alter how people of all ages learn. Artificial intelligence (AI) uses machine learning, natural language processing, and facial recognition to digitize textbooks, detect plagiarism, and monitor student moods to determine which pupils are struggling and which are bored. Artificial Intelligence is changing the world forever and this is a huge stepping stone for us I am interested in seeing where the world will take AI.

Blog Post #8 Privacy, Online & Off

    In today's technology, everything is different, and nothing is seen as private. Technology has expanded and adapted more and more as we go. We have fingerprint and facial scanning on our phones, but technology and identity goes deeper than getting into your phone. Electronic tattoos and facial recognition are seen everywhere now; these images can get all of someone's information. Face.com is a website talked about in this TED talk. It is a website with people's faces scanned and uploaded, giving all types of information from name to credit score. These electronic tattoos will live longer than we do. Be careful what you post online because it is forever like a digital tattoo. Nothing can be erased. 

Most people have no idea how much their privacy is violated on a daily basis in  TED talk by Catherine Crump, she talks about Mass surveillance. Mass surveillance is helping police gather information that was never possible before. Location can be seen on this surveillance, where you go and what you do, giving the government an inner scoop of what happens behind closed doors. Police make guesses based on this location tracking. The government has thousands of pictures of us doing our daily lives even when you do nothing wrong. The federal government is collecting all this information showing where we traveled. In the TED talk, we were shown a situation of a guy who asked police for the pictures of his license plate that they took, and thousands of photos came up of him walking by his car and driving in it and then even being able to identify who is in the car. Every time you drive by a police car, whether or not you are doing something wrong, it takes an image. If this doesn't have you shocked about privacy, keep reading.

In a following TED talk was about wiring and phones and cell services being hacked. When talking on the phone, someone can always be listening. A hacker, a criminal, the US government to another government. The iPhone is hard to wire the same with WhatsApp. These companies' ability to encrypt their phones and services has the government mad. They cannot see messages and track our calls and texts. In the TED talk, he talks about how it will make the police's job more problematic when it comes to tapping a criminal phone, but it is for the sake of our freedom and our privacy. I agree with him. I'd rather have better protection and inscription and have the police have difficulty than be spied on.

People in the world are cruel. They will take any information or evidence they can get and ruin your reputation. We have to be careful and stand for better privacy rules and regulations. The scary truth is this isn't even when we always pay attention. Technology is always listening to our conversations. Everything around us always has eyes on us, and it is unfair we deserve to be able to walk and be free without being spied on. Our government should protect us from this new technology and give people the right not to worry about the risk of our private information and lives being leaked. 

Blog Post 9

    In the world, there is false information and many different types. One type of incorrect information I researched was False Flagging. False flagging originated in the 16th century as an expression. It means an intentional misinterpretation of someone's alienation. False flagging has been around for centuries. The Oxford English Dictionary traces false flagging to 1560; false flagging is harmful. It is often a military event or action designed to appear as though it is done by someone other than the group/person responsible for it. This is typically used to calculate and generate sympathy for the attached group, sometimes to describe a deliberate misinterpretation of someone's motive. 

    False flagging traces back to pirates when they would fly the flag of a target ship until the ship got close enough to attack. They would then raise the skull and crossbones flag, which was too late for target ships to escape. 

    False flagging goes deeper and more mainstream than pirates. In a 1914 law journal article, The Law Maritime, it was perfectly legal for a ship to have a false flag to chase an energy ship or to escape. It is widely acknowledged that a boat must fly its national flag just before an attack. US maritime had "false flag" prohibited. When breaking the maritime law, the first citation of the maritime meaning is "A flag used to disguise a ship by misinterpreting its nationality, allegiance, intent, etc. It's from 1824 through it was in use much earlier."  

An important time in history when false flagging was used was the German invasion of Poland. In 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, seven SS men on the German side of the Polish border assaulted the Gleiwitz radio tower while posing as Poles. The outbreak of the Russo-Finnish War in 1939 was when Shells were fired toward the village of Mainila in Russia. The Soviet Union used the alleged strike to violate its non-aggression pact with Finland and launch the so-called Winter War because it occurred not far from the Finnish border. Following this, it was established that the NKVD of the Soviet Union, not Finland, was responsible. These are just two past examples of when false flagging was used, but it has been used recently in 2020 at the Kashmir Border, and in more recent news, Ukraine accuses Russia of planning a "false flag" attack in Belarus. False flags have been seen all over in history. False Flag is a term generally used by conspiracy theorists to explain world events such as terrorist attacks were done by the government to create fear or a political or social goal. 

False flagging can also be seen in social media. People post fake news and fake facts all the time that relate back to the original definition of false flagging which is an intentional misrepresentation of someone's identity on social media or spreading false news that could harm others. Not only does false information hurt the people reading it, they impose themselves as other brands and ruin their reputation. Social Media apps started to filter this information to help people sort the real news from the false news. This is important because a lot of the false flags look real which is why social media apps such as Facebook are labeling fake news as fake and is known as“epicenter of misinformation,” which is an expanding network of professional fact checkers.

Blog Post #7

     An app called TikTok is a new innovation that has been on the rise for the last 5 years. TikTok is an app where users can post 15-2 minute long videos of them doing anything from cooking to dancing to life advice. Diffusion Theory is a theory that explains why how, and what rates new types of technology are spread. This theory was published by Everett Rogers in 1962. TikTok follows this diffusion theory, a chart that starts with pioneers who originally had the idea. Then moves to early adaptors, which are people who see it can be something and take it above its original idea and purpose. Next is the early majority, when most people start to use and get ideas when using it. After the early majority is late majority. These are people who realize if you're not on it you have to be by now because its all people talk about. Last is the Laggards which are people who refuse to get it but eventually do after years or months. 

    TikTok follows this Diffusion theory very well. TikTok started in 2018/2019 and wasn't very popular. It was just coming together as an app, and the majority of the people who used it were from the app Musically which got taken down and renamed and branded as TikTok. This was after the crash of Musically. This is in the Pioneers phase, where the app is getting its title and forming what it is at this point, TikTok started off as almost a recreation of Vine which is when it started to pick up. It began to pick up when early adapters began to get the app. I was part of this group of early adopters. TikTok was a funny app used to get away from school work mess around with friends and make videos. For a few years, people were very skeptical if they wanted to download t TikTok or not but it took off the ground fast after this and the majority of people from ages 14-20 had the app and made videos and watched other people's videos. After this point, I believe TikTok has just finished and reached its early majority point. I feel people of all ages now use TikTok and that it is used for more than funny videos with friends. There are thousands and thousands of videos posted about anything you can think of. There still is a late majority that just got the app because everyone is on it, and there still are laggards that do not have the app because of its negatives or just the fact that they aren't up to speed and see why they need it. 

    Although  Tiktok is slowly taking over the world from all aspects, the app has some negative aspects. The app can be seen as addicting and ruining people's focus and patience. Since the videos are so short, studies are starting to be done so that fewer people can sit through a TV show or movie or anything longer than 30 seconds to 2 minutes because of this app. This has caused a negative perception of the app, and rumors of it being taken down have gone around a few times, but nothing has happened. The app TikTok continues to grow every day with more users and more videos posted.

Blog Post 6: The Progressive Era

 These websites were eye-opening to me. I have never seen sources with such strong antiwar opinions.

 All of the sources in ANTIWAR.COM  and  The American Conservative are new blogs and research done on these issues that are need nowhere in the mainstream news. Nothing of this sort has crossed paths with me on social media or any type of social media. In one of the articles I clicked on was about the rejection of banning cluster bombs. The amendment was defeated by a vote of 160-269, with only
85 Republicans and 75 Democrats voting in favor. If you did not know what a cluster bomb is  , Bomblets, the small submunitions used in cluster bombs, are put over a vast region. They are so harmful to citizens. Numerous submunitions do not explode immediately upon impact and can be discovered years or decades later; most commonly, they are found by children. Over 100 nations have banned cluster bombs because of their indiscriminate nature. So why not in the US? We actually tried to ban cluster bombs by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) after we dropped cluster bombs in Ukraine. The question of why this is happening and why we didn't ban these issues is even more vital. It is because issues like this are kept from news sources from mainstream journalism and from regular civilians. This is one of the main concerns shown from mainstream media. 

In research Jon Schwarz, a writer at The Intercept what he thinks about war and social media. Schwarz mentioned  an anthropological concept called “social silence.” The topics that are talked about the most in every culture are those that are most significant but the truth is that it's the complete opposite. Sadly, this is the truth about most things in the media which is why you have to seek out things like this. Things people don't want to hear are often hidden from the media. 

Regarding the government, the media's ability to accurately report on wars involving its own state is likely to rely heavily on domestic elite sources in the military and government. Based off what the government allows to be posted a lot of it can be censored or have limited information shown to the public about the topic. 

 If you notice the website linked is very cluttered and very unorganized, and this is because it is hidden from people you have to dig to get this information. It is crazy how much important information about our country is hidden from us. I noticed that these websites aren't owned by any big media companies and all of the writers linked are very strong Antiwar but why is this hidden from mainstream media.