Final Blog Post Embrace Technology

 Technology is a tool and just like any tool it can be used for good and it can be used for evil. In the age of information we are presented with new tools everyday that make our life better in some areas and worse in others. While reading this paper you must ask yourself some questions. How much should we give up to progress the evolution of this technology? At what point should the pursuit of the greater good outweigh the good of the individual? Lastly, what are we truly afraid of when it comes to technology?

    Just like a car, a gun or medicine, technology is a tool that can only do what the user tells it to do. Whether or not that use is good or bad is completely up to them. A car can be used to get from point A to point B in a timely manner or it can be used to run over a crowd of civilians. A gun can be used to hunt and provide food to your family or it can be used to commit massacres. Medicine in the correct doses can cure diseases and increase quality of life or in the wrong doses it is a poison that can kill whatever it touches. All of these examples are things many of us either have or know someone who has them. So if we're not that afraid of these tools, why are we afraid of tools such as artificial intelligence and data collection? The simple answer is that the majority of people don't understand them or their purposes yet. The examples I provided earlier have been around for longer than most of us have been alive and have been tested through time. This time has allowed them to gain our trust, unfortunately some of the new technology we have been presented with today hasn't had the time to gain our trust. Concepts such as machine learning, artificial intelligence and mass data collection are all very new and we haven't even scratched the surface of what we can do with them. Naturally this makes people uneasy and rightfully so but this isn't the first time this has happened and it won't be the last. In 1913 when Henry Ford invented the assembly line these same concerns were being raised one big concern that is the same back then as it is now is job loss. Before the assembly line Henry Ford had around fifty two thousand workers and after most had to be let go. While this was terrible for the people that lost their jobs and their families it was good for humanity as a whole. Without it we either wouldn't have the car or we’d still be in a state where cars were something only the rich could possess. Even now one hundred plus years later we are still using the same technology to make everything, airplanes, machines, phones and most other things with mechanical components. We are no longer afraid of the assembly line because the good it provided us greatly outweighed the bad and I believe in time artificial intelligence and mass data collection will do the same thing.

    So if we now know that technology is a tool that can be good or bad depending on the user then what other reasons would we have for being afraid of them. I believe it is not the technology we are afraid of but rather we are afraid of ourselves. It is human nature to use this for war, once our ancient ancestors millions of years ago developed they could make fire they started using it to burn villages down. When the ancient Chinese developed gunpowder and guns they realized they could use them to obliterate their enemies. Nuclear energy has the strength to power entire countries but every major super power holds them only to destroy the other. It is who we are as people to create tools of destruction because it is what we have done since the first person used a big rock to kill someone. We can not project our failures as a species onto the technology when we are the ones that are flawed, not the machines.

    So why do I bring all of this up? Why am I so adamant on the evolution of technology? Technology removes the flaws that we have as humans. We aren't strong enough to lift boulders so we created technology that was and we weren't smart enough to do the vast amounts of computation needed to understand the universe so we created something that could. We must continue to use technology not to harm others but to increase the lives of those around us. In the short term it can often seem that what we are doing is harmful to us but when we step back and understand that we must give these things time we will realize that technology will help us overcome any obstacle as long as we allow it.

Sources

• https://youtu.be/5dZ_lvDgevk
• https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/one-hundred-and-three-years-ago-today-henry-ford-introduced-assembly-line-his-workers-hated-it-180961267/
• https://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/inventions/who-invented-the-first-gun.htm

Blog Post #11 Skynet had potential

 

When hearing about artificial intelligence and big data many people are scared to ask questions such as what will they do with this data and what will happen when AI becomes too advanced and takes everyone's jobs. While I do have those questions myself I have a different outlook on this technological evolution, I am not afraid I am excited for the future of AI. A future fueled by AI is one where humans aren't forced to do repetitive jobs they hate or work in dangerous fields. When AI replaces these jobs people will be happier and safer for it. Not only that but the world will be more efficient, humans are flawed and so is AI but they are less flawed and they have the ability to improve on their flaws in ways that humans are unable to. This is why I am fine with big data as it stands right now. Yes these companies know all of my information and the information of those around me but it is a small price to pay to contribute to technological evolution. Throughout history people have been afraid of change but it has always been for the better. When the assembly line came out people feared it would take many jobs away, which it did but people did what they do best and they adapted. Now we have assembly lines in every factory and there's no one saying we should get rid of them so that we can give more people jobs. This is because the good of the assembly line outweighs any of the bad it had and I believe the same thing will happen with AI and big data. So we must not be afraid of progress, we must embrace it and do whatever we can to aid in technological evolution.

sources

https://youtu.be/5dZ_lvDgevk

https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/history-artificial-intelligence/

Blog Post #10 American Propaganda

 One of the theories from the presentations was the one discussing propaganda. From the time you are young in this country you are taught that propaganda was just something hitler did to convince people it was right to kill ten million Jews or that North Koreans used to keep potential defectors in line. I never thought about how propaganda is still something that is actively used today and it's not something that only happens on foreign soil it happens here in the United States and quite frequently actually.

My favorite piece of American propaganda is the pledge of allegiance, as a kid you think nothing of it but as you get older it starts to raise questions as to why we force kids to pledge allegiance to their country as if that will prevent them from growing up to hate it. That is why you are seeing a rise today in the amount of people that not only don't say the pledge of allegiance but criticize the government for the way it handles things. People are starting to remove the propaganda that had been implanted in them since they were children and the country is becoming better for it. Another example of propaganda is by the United States military, we are always told that they are at war on foreign soil to defend our country and to instill democracy but as you grow up and become more educated you realize not only are we the ones who don't need defending but we are the ones that others need to be defended from. In addition to that, why are we trying to force democracy on countries when they never asked for it and on top of that we can't even figure out our own democracy. Shouldn't we be trying to make sure our system is safe and secure before we start spreading it across the globe. These thoughts and criticisms are only possible once we realize our own bias from years of propaganda from our own country and start to reeducate ourselves with our own research

Blog Post #9 Everything is a Computer

 

The evolution of the computer has gone from something that was only accessible for those who knew advanced math's and technology to something that today's infants can use. When you look at computers through the lens of the Diffusion of Innovation theory you get an interesting perspective on this unique piece of technology. For the majority of technology the diffusion theory describes how quick something is to catch on and become mainstream. This is mainly due to how useful something is to everyday people but with computers it was more about how accessible it is to not only use but obtain. From the time of the first computer invention to a few decades ago computers would fill up entire rooms and were only able to be used by those who were smart enough to use them but as time went on and the technology progressed so did the ease of access. So there is a direct correlation of the popularity of the computers not with how useful it was but how many people had the knowledge to access it. Over time the barrier to entry continued to drop lower and lower. First it was only used by the technologically elite, then it became used by the technologically savvy, usually young people with an interest in technology, then it became mainstream enough that even those who had no knowledge about technology or no desire to care about it were able to use it with great success. Now computers are everywhere, every office, home and public area has one. Even things that we don't consider to be computers in today's age are still computers. Phones, tablets and even cars all use the same technology that computers use to fulfill their tasks and there are billions of us using these technologies every day. This makes for a pretty interesting perspective not just on computers but on the diffusion of innovation theory as a whole

Sources

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computing-history/

https://www.insider.com/how-computers-evolved-history-2019-9

Blog Post 8 The Main Stream Media Sucks

 

Today the mainstream media gets a lot of backlash for being biased and being good at core journalism principles. That is largely due to the fact that the majority of the channels you watch are owned by the same companies and if they aren't, they are owned only by about five other companies. In the 1980s around ninety percent of the media was owned by about fifty different companies. In the 1990s that number had shrunk down to about twenty. Today that number is between five to seven depending on how you view things. The largest of these companies is Comcast, they made about sixty nine billion dollars last year and are the largest cable provider in America as well as covering nearly half of everyones internet service. Walt Disney, the second biggest company, made around forty eight billion dollars last year from their wide assortment of theme parks, film studios such as Pixar and Marvel, and television networks like ABC and ESPN. 21st Century Fox, the third largest company, made about thirty two billion dollars last year from film and television with their most popular show being Fox News. The next companies are where the number starts to get slightly more confusing. Time Warner and Time Warner Cable each made about twenty seven billion dollars last year. They were originally one company but had to split after a failed merger with AOL which left them with relatively nothing. These companies both have large percentages of their stock owned by the same people making them governed by the same people in a way. The last companies on this list are CBS and Viacom who each made about fifteen billion dollars last year. They were originally owned by the same company but when that company died they were forced to flesh themselves out more and become more of themselves. Just like Time Warner and Time Warner Cable these companies are owned mostly by the same people which is why some people still consider them to be one company in a way. This is why I said earlier that the mainstream media as we know it today is owned by five to seven companies depending on who you ask.

Why is it so bad that the mainstream media is owned by this small number of companies? For one it decreases representation for certain demographics mainly people of color, women, the LGBTQ+ community and many more. Along with under-representation of those demographics, when they are represented they are misrepresented. For instance it is common amongst all media sources whether that's movies, television shows or even the news to paint certain demographics with stereotypes and more often than not these stereotypes are negative and harmful. Another problem besides representation is the fact that all these stations are owned by billionaires and billionaires will never understand what it's like to be one of the common working class people so how can they correctly make content for us especially when it comes to the news when they don't actually know what we are going through in our everyday lives. The rich have too much power to control what we see and hear everytime we turn on our favorite television channel or go to our favorite website. We must hold them accountable to make sure everyone is equally represented and that these media sources have the people's best interests at heart.

Sources

https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/futureofmedia/index-us-mainstream-media-ownership

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awRRPPE3V5Q

Blog Post 7 Big Data

 The collection and storage of data is a large part of our modern age of information and with it come many pros and cons. These large databases full of our private information such as address, location or place of employment are what we call big data. This “Big Data” is a tool and just like any tool it can be used for good or used for evil and oftentimes we see it being used for evil. These issues affect all of us, even those that think they are somehow protecting themselves by not posting information online. Every text, call and email is stored on mainframes in warehouses so big they cost millions of dollars and acres to create. This data is being used by tech companies, the government, both state and federal as well as police. All of these entities have a track record of using the tools they create for wrong doings which is why we shouldn't trust them with our data. Tech companies like facebook and twitter have a record of using the data they collect from their users to sway people into voting for particular candidates which was a big talking point in the 2020 presidential election. The federal and state governments have a history of oppression and mass imprisonment throughout the almost two hundred and fifty years that we've been a country. Lastly the police have a record of using the data they collect from multiple sources, including buying from those big tech companies, to discriminate against certain people with specific backgrounds, ethnicities and religions. These are just a few examples of what happens when those with too much power are given the tools that let them expand that power and do whatever malicious things they want to do unchecked by the populace. This is why as a people we must demand change, trying to hide your data from these entities is not enough, they've planned for that and have ways around that. We need laws in place that prevent them from collecting and storing this private data from us without our permission and we should hold them accountable for all of their actions involving the use of our data.

Sources

https://www.oracle.com/big-data/what-is-big-data/

https://www.ibm.com/analytics/hadoop/big-data-analytics

Blog Post #6 Look Mom I'm on TV!!!

 

From the “each one teach one” on television I learned a few things that included when the television was first invented and the evolutionary process that it had to undergo in order to be the mainstream technological giant that it is now. Television was invented in 1927 by Philo Farnsworth, John Logie Baird and Charles Francis Jenkins and the first television broadcasting station was created the following year. Back then a tv would have about 200-400 resolution and now we are up to 8k worth of resolution. While the television revolutionized entertainment consumption for many individuals it mainly took place after the end of world war 2 because people were able to see the current events pertaining to what happened in the war. This is when we started to see the change of journalism styles from writers to in person interviewers because it is one thing to read an article about the news but it's another thing to actually see the news unfold and see the reactions from the people live on the scenes. The amount of television users then grew even further in 1960 when the first television satellite was launched into space making it possible for people to watch the moon landing from their homes. An event like this had never been heard of before for most people they never thought they would be able to see space from anything beyond a photograph so seeing it on their screens would have been an event they never would have forgotten. Unfortunately they had to watch all of these event unfold in black and white. It wasn't until 1966 when color television broadcasting became a thing allowing people to see the same television they had loved before but now in color the way they were accustomed to seeing everything in their day to day life

War never changes Blog Post 5

 For government officials who will never have themselves or their family members boots in a war on foreign soil, war is good. At the same time for capitalist weapons and defense manufacturers who also will never have to be in a war on foreign soil war is good. So if war is good for the politicians and the rich it only makes sense that they would work so hard to silence the loud anti war voices of the populace. To do this they would employ many tactics aimed at making you change your stance on war with disinformation or be so ignorant to the facts of war that you don't question what they are doing.

One famous campaign the government had under the nixon administration was to associate certain groups of people with certain ideals. For instance John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon once famously said “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” This method of negative association is not as present today but what we see now is that those who support war are patriots who love their country and anyone who opposes hates the country. When you look at this past example of how far our government would go to silence the voices of those that would oppose them if only makes sense that they would continue to employ these methods to this day. In addition to that they would also have gotten better at hiding it from the public which is why it is so important that we have good journalist who can uncover these stories and put an end to the governments wrong doings

Sources

https://www.vera.org/reimagining-prison-webumentary/the-past-is-never-dead/drug-war-confessional

https://www.cato.org/cato-journal/winter-2020/effect-war-economic-growth

https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterpham/2017/11/06/is-war-good-for-economies/?sh=1a12932b4d9d

Blog Post 4 History Gamer Frenzy

 When discussing the history of anything it is important to understand the exact origin point of the subject. For Video games, that was in 1940 when a computer scientist with knowledge of advanced mathematics was bored and wanted to see if he could create a game on a computer the way we had non-digital games for so long. He coded the game we now know as Nim which is a math game about drawing sticks until none are left. He then took it a step forward to create an AI partner that would play the game with you. This is the first instance of what we now refer to as NPCs which stand for non-playable characters and the creation of video games as we know it. 

Fast forward to 1967 and we have inventor Ralph Baer who wanted to expand on this video game technology. It had already been proven that games could be played digitally but only on computers and at this time the vast majority of people didn't own computers and even if they did they wouldn't have known how to use them. This gave Ralph Baer the idea to create a mini computer that was made specifically to play games on. This device would be small enough to hold in your hands and wouldn't require the knowledge of computer science to use it. This invention became known as the brown box and is referred to as the first gaming console to ever be released. Ralph Baer patented this earlier but was only able to start selling these commercially in 1972.

The commercial release of the brown box is when the gaming craze began, now people all over could play games on a television and not have to buy a computer. This same year is when the game Pong was created which is known as the grandfather of all games because it was the first game that was widely played on the brown boxes. After a few years of people getting into this new hobby of gaming others have seen the success of pong and want to create games for themselves. This is when you get games like Space invaders, Donkey Kong and Pacman all games that are considered classics by the gaming community at large.

The Popularity of games only began to surge from this point but a big spike in popularity came in 1999 when Sega released the Dreamcast. What made this so special was the fact that this new console was able to have players play games online. Up until this point people could only play multiplayer games in the same room with separate controllers. This opened the world of gaming to be worldwide so even if you didn't have any friends in your state you could play with someone across the world who enjoyed the game just as much as you and build that friendship through games.

A large amount of progress has been made in the field of gaming since then, for instance in 2006 the Nintendo Wii was invented allowing players to essentially use their bodies as controllers forcing them to be more active. After that in 2014 Facebook acquired Oculus and pores money into research of virtual reality which had been something that existed for sometime but now it could be used for gaming actually making the player feel like they were in the game. So what does the future hold for gaming? Some companies have already started research into deep dive gaming which is when you are no longer playing the game but you and your consciousness are actually inside the game. It might be a while before we are able to see something of that scale but it quite impressive how far technology has come in this field in less than a full decade

Sources

https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_1301997

https://www.stash.com/learn/defining-moments-in-video-game-history-a-timeline/

https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/history-of-video-games

Blog Post 3 All Ideas Should Be Heard Even The Stupid Ones.

 In today’s time when we think of innovation we tend to think of Apple creating the newest phone with an extra camera on it or Elon musk creating cars that drive themselves. So if Innovation is about the creation of ideas that lead to technology how would it have anything to do with the first amendment which was written over two hundred years ago. Innovation isn't just how we see it today, when the first person created the wheel, that was innovation the same way it is when one of the big tech giants of today creates something new. 

So how exactly does free speech affect the innovation of new technology? It is mainly due to the free flow of ideas. When ideas are allowed to flow freely every idea gets heard increasing the ability for us to hear the good ones. Additionally when ideas are allowed to flow, more people are willing to put forward ideas even if they're bad. There are countless instances of accidental inventions that we consider important to us today. For instance the inventor of the pacemaker was doing experiments on radio frequencies and temperature, while Coca-Cola was a “snake oil” remedy that people realized tasted good even though it had no actual medical benefits, quite the opposite actually. The point is these theories would have been shut down at first because they lacked any scientific backing if we didn't have free speech. This is why America has historically been one of the highest countries in terms of patents created because our speech is so strongly protected that all ideas are allowed to flow.

So what does it look like in a world with no free speech as it pertains to innovation. I believe it would be similar to the dark ages a thousand years ago because when speech is censored so are thoughts and ideas. This “Dark age of censorship” would stunt growth in almost all fields from technological innovation to societal progression. In terms of the aforementioned societal progression, you would have a country where politicians are never criticized, laws are never changed and the political climate of the nation stays the same. For some people this would be ideal but for most it likely starts the fires of a revolution as people should have the right to say what they want and put forth any idea as even the bad thoughts and ideas have the potential to change millions of lives for the better.

All of this is why we are obligated to fight tooth and nail for our first Amendment protection. Without this first amendment protection our ideas do not have the ability to flow naturally and not all ideas can be brought out. This level of censorship would create a world where everyone would be afraid to talk about their ideas because that would be perceived wrong or not accepted by the community as a whole. As an American it is our constitutional right to put our ideas on the table, even the dumb ones the same way that every person has the right to voice their opinions even the stupid ones.

Sources https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/innovation https://www.statista.com/statistics/256845/ranking-of-the-10-countries-who-filed-the-most-international-patent-applications/ https://www.businessinsider.com/accidental-inventions-that-changed-the-world-2016-6#corn-flakes-14