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

Blog Post #1 News Sources

 My first new source is a collection of sources and it is just to surf the web for trusted news sources and read their articles. I do this because it allows me get a broader range of perspectives about a situation instead of looking at it from just one angle. I would recommend this to anyone who only uses one news outlet to gather information from.

My second news source is CNN. Of the five this is my least used source because I don't like watching too many mainstream sources of media. I do prefer CNN over other news sources like fox or msnbc partially because of my political leanings and partially because I try to avoid biased news sources. I would recommend this to anyone who only uses social media sites like facebook or twitter for their news.

My third news source would be Tiktok. I use it less as a factual news source and more as a way to put myself onto current events and then I use the other news sources listed to get more credible information so that I am factually informed. I recommend this source to the younger generation because it's a way for important issues to get onto your radar without you having to watch the mainstream news sources.

My fourth news source would be Twitter. Like Tiktok I use this source to gain information on what issues are going on then research them later. Recently Tiktok has been taking this position as a news source because twitter has recently been in hot water for censorship concerns. Like Tiktok I would recommend this to young people however I would have to recommend Tiktok over twitter for now.

My final news source is Youtube. I believe Youtube is one of the best sources we have now because of how many content creators are actively on there. Not all of them are credible but when you have this many people giving their opinions you are able to see a much broader range of opinions and perspectives than if you had just looked at any of the previously listed news sources. I would recommend this to everyone who is interested in getting many different viewpoints on current issues.

Blog Post #2 The Supreme Court

1. From the video I learned that supreme court members spend a large amount of time being on the supreme court. the video said they average around 16 years and some can go on to double that. Whether or not that length of time is good or bad is an interesting topic for discussion. On one hand all those years of experience give the judges knowledge that no ordinary person could obtain but at a certain point if all the judges are double or triple the ages of most Americans it can lead to a wedge between the judges and the people they are working for as government officials. This is why I believe term limits in the supreme court should be something that us as the American people push for as part of our agenda.

2.The most important takeaway from the video for me is how long and tedious the entire process of being heard by the supreme court is. Not only will the vast majority of cases never make it to trial but even the ones that do can take months to reach a conclusion. With the court taking that much time to come to a conclusion on a case the American people can have faith that every piece of evidence and legislation pertaining to the case was reviewed multiple times to get the most fair and impartial ruling possible.

3.The most surprising thing I learned about the supreme court is the sheer amount of cases they get and that they all range in topic, origin and recipient for instance the video talks about how one request can be from an inmate who believes they should be free and another could be from the president trying to prove their authority over a certain matter. I believe this amount of case diversity is crucial to upholding the values of the American justice system. If you only hear the needs of the rich and politicians then you leave out the voices of the American people but if you only hear the peoples needs then those who are elected to govern this country wont be able to properly do so.

4.The video changed the way I saw the supreme courts role, I was always under the impression that they mostly handled country wide laws but in fact they take cases from citizens and corporations too. This is how the highest court in the nation should be run as a workforce for all not just the elite.