Blog Post #11 Final Post

 My Relationship with Technology

Technology is such an important thing to know about these days. Everything is online now and it has made life easier and more difficult at times. There are so many different effects of technology and media. Parents are giving their children more and more access to the internet at such young ages. It is really affecting how kids grow up, an example is the term "iPad Kid," it is showing how kids are becoming so addicted to their electronics so early in their lives. Everyone is a little addicted to their phones, me included, but when you are growing up with it, then you start to rely on it as you get older. I wish my parents didn't allow me to get a phone so early on. It is affecting students in school because they can't go without their phones for more than 10 minutes. Technology has made a big impact on everybody. 

I could argue both sides as to whether my relationship with technology is healthy or not. I would say I am addicted to my phone like most people my age, but I also understand the dangers and risks of technology. A lot of my job is online and uses technology and the media everyday. But I do think it takes up too much of my time. I wish my parents waited longer to expose me to technology so I could grow up without it and not rely on it so much now. 

I think technology is definitely teaching me a lot more than it is misleading me. It has shown me the opportunities I can have in my dream career and it lets me learn more from others on how to improve my work. But I do think about the misinformation that gets spread online and how it spreads like a wildfire. There are many different sources online that release information that don't know the truth and then they continue to spread what they thought they knew to others. There are so many things to worry about when it comes to technology but in the end, it is a part of society and it will continue to grow and potentially get more dangerous. Especially with the new developments in AI. 

I think for my friends and family, technology has really helped connections. It is easy to connect with family or friends that are in a different state or country. It also helps to just keep up with everyone's lives even if you aren't in constant communication. But while technology has definitely helped improve different relationships, it can also cause issues. For example, texts can be easily misinterpreted because you cannot hear their tone of voice which can cause fights or disagreements for a lot of people. 

My relationship with technology and media has expanded a lot over the last few years. Being a social media major, majority of the work I do is online. I am constantly on my phone and different apps I need for work. It has made a big impact on my life because media and technology has provided me with the opportunity to pursue my dream career as a social media manager. Without the media, I would not be able to continue into this field. 

I've learned a lot about how the internet really works and how everything you do leaves a "digital footprint." Which means that once something is posted, it is out there forever even if you delete it. People have lost job opportunities because they have failed to remember that their footprint is out there forever and their potential employers have been able to find it. When you look for my digital footprint, you will find photos and videos of me playing softball. There is not much about me specifically online because there are so many people with the same name as me but in a different variation. 

Blog #9 EOTO Reaction

One topic I was very interested in was agenda setting and gatekeeping. It talks about how the media can really affect the society's mind and what it limits the public from seeing. 

Agenda setting is when the media focuses on a topic, the more likely the public is to see the topic as important. It applies largely in social media because it shows how much power the media has over society. The media has a big influence on how the public views a topic because of the presentation of a report or issue. An example would be the extensive media coverage given to the withdrawal of American troops in Afghanistan in 2021.

Gatekeeping is withholding information and access to something. Lots of people choose to gate-keep different things, it is very popular on social media. It is controlling access to resources, information or opportunities. 

They relate because gatekeeping is usually the start of agenda setting. When selecting what information gets shared, gatekeepers get the option to withhold which topics they want for themselves. A good example would be if the media is focused on vaccine distribution, and it is viewed positively and safe, gatekeepers can amplify the possible negative effects, which changes the public's perception.

I think this interested me a lot because it is crazy to see how the public can change society's mind and how much information is withheld from the public. Gatekeeping is such a popular term nowadays especially with influencers. You never really think that it could be anything extreme because it is typically gatekeeping a makeup product or a type of shirt. But it could get really serious when it comes to society and the public. Gatekeeping is in all different worlds, like in business, or relationships, and even in healthcare, which is scary to think about. Some cases of gatekeeping can be very serious, when a primary care doctor limit's a patient's ability to seek a specialist's care. 

Blog #5 The Age of AI

'The Age of AI' talks about the impact of AI in society and economics. There's potential in education, healthcare and the justice system. AI in the last few years has become very popular. It has been utilized for many different things like businesses, privacy, surveillance, and medicine. There has been so much development with AI and how smart it has gotten. Technology has advanced so much in the last few years that it is honestly scary. All of our information is available to so many different people. It is also easily accessible to skilled hackers.

There are so many ways to protect our own data but on the other hand, there are so many ways for people to access it. There is no definitive way to protect our data. AI has become insanely smart and has led to many positives and negatives. A positive has been the advance in the medical field. The work that AI has done to advance the research for cancer is amazing. AI is able to go through data and find people's health records. It also works hand in hand with doctors because it can sort through scans and find things that doctors might have missed. It can also assist doctors while there are lots of patients by pointing out mistakes doctors could have made or missed. It is truly amazing to see the advances in AI throughout the years to benefit society. 

 A negative of AI is privacy. Since AI has become a thing, everything you have is a lot less privacy. AI is so smart that it can find anything about you. Especially like the Snapchat AI, you could send a photo to the AI account and it will analyze your photo and respond with what you are doing and it is honestly a little scary. Being so smart, AI is starting to take over jobs that humans have been doing for years. In the line of work I would like to pursue after graduation, AI can easily take it over and I would be out of a job. AI is programmed to act like a human which is scary. 

Blog #8 EOTO Terms & Concepts

 Third Person Effect

The Third Person Effect relates to a perceptual bias that leads people to believe that they are less susceptible to being persuaded by media than others. This idea was introduced in 1983 by sociologist W. Phillips Davison, it reflects the perception that others are more vulnerable to persuasion or negative impacts of media than "I am." 

There are two facets of human nature that support this idea:

- Illusion of Invulnerability: We want to protect our sense of control over our own lives. Because of that, we believe that we are less vulnerable to negative influences compared to others. One way that we do that is assuming that ads only work on others and not ourselves. 

- Poor Self-Knowledge: We really don't know what goes on in our own brains. Many of our own intuitions about how our brains work are scrambled and subject to different biases like the illusion of invulnerability. 

It is hard for people to believe that we don't know everything that goes on in our minds. But if we were to acknowledge the fact that we will never understand, we would be able to protect our minds of persuasive advertising easier and take back control for ourselves. 

There was a telephone survey of 721 adults that examined the impact of the third-person effect on individuals' perception of media and immortality effects with three issues. The perceptual hypothesis predicts that other people will be persuaded by media more than themselves. The behavioral hypothesis predicts that the third-person perception will lead to support for restrictions on media messages. In the end, the findings confirmed the support for the perceptual hypothesis. These hypotheses led to a few studies in the 1990s but later in the early 2000s research led to total of 135 studies. 

Researchers wanted to see how much people thought they were affected by persuasive messages and compare it to attitude changes. During the studies, the participants watched an ad, read a newspaper, or another form of a persuasive message. Then they were asked how much they thought it would influence other people as well as themselves. After completing the studies, they found that participants thought others would be influenced but they would remain unaffected. This was then dubbed the 'third-person effect.' 

People underestimate how much they actually get affected by persuasive media. It can affect their behaviors, there are many things that could be a result of the third person effect. It also leads to people to believe that others are more gullible which pushes different stereotypes even more. 

Blog #10 The Progressive Era

 Antiwar Voices

Dissent refers to "the expression or holding of opinions at variance with those previously, commonly, or officially held." Dissent plays a crucial role in the political world because it pertains to an opinion that goes against an idea that was already had. The First Amendment protects the right to express dissent because it guarantees freedom of religion and expression without government interferences. The Supreme Court has previously had dissenting opinions which led to the change of how court cases are decided and looked at. 

A very important dissenting opinion is Yates vs United States (1957). In 1951, Dennis v United States, the Supreme Court upheld the convictions of 11 members of the American Communist Party for violating the Smith Act. Also known as the Alien Registration Act, made it illegal to advocate for the violent overthrow of the government, or to be a part of an organization that participates in those actions. The Supreme Court found that the law did not violate the First Amendment, in a 6-2 vote. However in the Yates v United States, 6 years later, the Supreme Court reversed this decision. It ruled that speech is only illegal if it poses a "clear and present danger." This clarified what kinds of speech are truly protected by the First Amendment. 

Antiwar.com and Theamericanconservative.com are not very common websites. Therefore, I never knew about their efforts to lower the amount and severity of war across the world. I feel we never hear about these in mainstream news because the government is trying to censor us and what we can see because it could possibly change everyone's views. It would cause a lot of issues if these websites were a part of the mainstream news. After seeing everything on these websites, it is really heartbreaking to learn what is really going on in different countries and how many people are affected by war and how no one is helping them. The American Conservative has very unfiltered authors that publish their stories and are not afraid to truly voice how they feel. 

Blog #7 EOTO Presentations

One presentation I was very interested by was the Telephone/Cell phone. In 1874, Alexander Graham Bell discovered the principles of the telephone, He experimented with Thomas Watson to create the first telephone connection. The first outdoor wire was strung in 1877, it was a commercial telephone service that began in the US. The payphone was invented by William Gray in 1889. It allowed people to make phone calls in public places when they didn't have access to their own phone. In 1891, the rotary phone was invented by Almon Strowger. 

This was a very important invention because it allowed people to be able to call others independently in your own home. Oliver Lodge demonstrated wireless communication over 150 yards, which marked the beginning of cell phone technology like we know now.Motorola demonstrates telephones where people can call wirelessly which birthed cellphones in 1972. In 1989, Motorola introduced the first "Pocket" cell phone, called MicroTAC. During the mid to late 1990s, cell phone companies made their mobile phones lighter, faster, cheaper and, slimmer, to evolve the mobile phone. In 1999, Motion introduced the Blackberry 850 which began the Blackberry craze. Then in 2007, Apple launched their first iPhone which changed the game completely.

Blog #4 Privacy, Online and Off

Almost everyone is always constantly on their phones or on some sort of electronic. There are so many risks to your privacy every time you are online. In the first TED talk, he talks about how our phones are like electronic tattoos. Facial recognition has become very impressive and can easily detect different faces just through a photo. Apps like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter use technology to easily track people's searches and what they have been doing. Thinking about how companies can easily track all my stuff is scary to think about because they have access to all of my accounts and nothing is private anymore. 

Once something is posted online, it is out there forever, even if it was deleted. But once you are constantly online, your internet presence grows more and more and the internet knows more about you. I'm sure that everyone has had a scary experience of talking about a topic and then your phone shows you exactly what you are talking about. That is how developed AI and the internet is today. The 2nd and 3rd TED talk touch on security with license plates and our cars. There is so much software that can detect where we are at all times. The government also has access to all of our phone calls and can hear everything we are saying. Which is also scary to think about. 

The government should be reassuring us that our data is being protected and isn't easily accessible to hackers. They should also be actively making sure that our data is actually private. I think the government could also be more transparent with their access to our data and assuring us that is it not going to be used in a negative way. This affects everyone a lot because everyone provides data for everything online, even if it is not necessarily something super important but everything is tracked. There should be more protection on everyone's data because you never want it to get into the wrong hands and it could be dangerous for the person involved.

These TED talks have made me really see the dangers of technology and having my data online especially if the government doesn't protect me in the ways that they could.