Final Blog Post

Technology is a double-edged sword.  On one end you get amazing technological advances that can save lives.  At the other end though you get something that can be so overpowerful so quick something that almost has a godly-like power to where we almost need to question is too powerful for us.  

    The first video was about what people in 1964 thought it was going to be like in the future.  The crazy part is they were almost right.  It is scary how accurate they were on an almost 60-year prediction.  Technology has a ton of upsides and this video prediction of the future showcases a lot of those and some that we haven't accomplished yet.  Only this video is missing some things.  Technology over the past 60 years has also brought a lot of negatives.  Cyberbullying is a huge one that no one thought of and now is so common that it has to be taught in school.  Technology took something like bullying and with the help of us creating social media we gave it this new platform where it can spread like wildfire.  All it takes is pressing a screen, not even a real button just a flat surface, and someone's life can be ruined.  That's not even where it stops though.  This then has a direct effect on youth suicide rates.  Think about that, YOUTH, not even old enough to be considered an adult.  They didn't even get a chance to see how amazing the world really is.  Are we really that sucked up in the latest and greatest technology not to realize the monsters we have become?  I'm not saying technology is bad or evil but at what point do we take a step back and say how do we fix this and prevent it from happening again.  They say that love can be blinding in a relationship, so are we blinded in our relationship with technology?

    The second video is so so powerful and honestly catches me off guard every time I watch it.  It's so sad to think that we are disconnecting from the world more and more.  I never understood the middle school and high school trips out into the wilderness to go camping or to Costa Rica but I honestly am so grateful for them now.  It's trips like this, we as a world need to keep doing to show the true beauty nature has to show us.  We can go a couple days without our phones and survive.  I think it is tremendously important that we keep connecting with nature because with the runaway rise of technology we are just going to get pulled away from nature more and more.  I think we need to wake up and make technology help us in this sense.  Technology is such a powerful tool but when it is used in the right way.  It is sad to see where the world has gotten to and this video is a wake-up call for me as I am one of these people so obsessed with technology. 
 

Technology is not only coming for our attention though, it's also coming for our jobs.  With the rise in AI technology, we are losing power more and more of technology.  Once again we are giving it the power to control our lives.  Things like self-driving cars might sound safe and innocent but are they?  Where does the technology go from there?  We are already seeing AI-driven trucking companies.  Are we going to have AI servers at restaurants?  AI police officers? Then what?  The World is not black and white and yeah that might not be the best thing but it makes us human.  We make mistakes and screw up, but we all have a heart deep down.  You can program a robot to see the world in black and white, right and wrong, but you can't program them to see the rest of the world, to feel the world.  Sure a car driven by AI isn't that bad right now.  What happens when you give that AI too much power though.  Not to get into every movie about robots taking over the world but what happens when they are smart enough to control themselves or each other.  Once you show an AI robot how to code no human is going to be able to outcode it.  Once again technology is so powerful to where we really need to question when enough is enough.  Is it too
powerful for us?  Are robots going to turn into the next nuke?  Only this time it will be dropping off a couple in a country and letting them take over the country as they want just like an invasive species.  When will we stop?  When will we draw the line?  Technology is like medicine, take the right amount and cure your illness, take too much and it can kill you.  What is the right amount?

Blog Post #5 -Privacy

 Privacy, Online and Off

These issues affect everyone these days.  Computers and technology are extremely scary in what gets saved.  Not only is everything you do and say kept on the web but it gets sold to other companies looking to mine it.  These companies are anything from Facebook to department stores looking to create ads that are better tailored to you so you will buy more.  Today facial recognition is getting more and more advanced to where you can take a picture and a company can tell you not only exactly who is in the photo but also everything about them.  Face.com was a prime example of a company that has the software capable of doing this.  The scary pare gets into when Facebook bought them in 2012.  Would I trust the government with this software?  Possibly, but I would for sure not trust a social media company.  Facial recognition software is something that should be kept at the same level as full-auto rifles.  The public can't have.  The government should crackdown on companies that use these types of overreaching software to keep the United States the free country it was.  Privacy should be right behind the freedom of speech.  Without privacy who are we?  We all might as well move to China where everyone is on display for whoever to see.  How is it constitutional for these companies to be accessing these types of information on my life?  These software have the real ability to be extremely dangerous and ruin someone's life if they haven't already.  How is this constitutional in the United States of America where men and women fight and die for our freedom?

Sources:

WEEK 4, pt. 1: Privacy, Online & Off videos

Blog Post #3 -Eight Values

 I agree with promoting innovation, promoting innovation means that our first amendment, freedom of speech is protected and respected. I think that it is very important for people to speak their minds in an appropriate setting because with this being done, it enables communities of certain groups to express similar interests as well as voice their opinions. By doing so, people can get a better understanding of where certain people stand with certain topics and either avoid future conflicts or be able to discuss them in a civil manner, which is something that I feel as though we greatly lack in today's society. If we carried some of these values today and were able to discuss opposing topics in a civilized manner then I feel as though our nation would not be as divided as it is today. With that being said, people do greatly exercise their first amendment, but not in a way that is well appreciated.  (incomplete)

Blog Post #8 - The Progressive Era

 The Progressive Era

News today in my opinion is awful.  News outlets are running on money from views.  The more viewers they have the better.  This causes them to tailor the information to catch people's eyes and make them watch the nightly news.  This means they are not only going to show shocking stories to get people to watch but they are also going to leave a lot of important stories out.  The Government also tries to cover up and sensor events so the public doesn't know.  These sites are sites that don't have to worry about getting views and instead post the truth about what is really going on.  These are life-changing stories that should make the front page but never seem to make the light of day.  In order to find the truth of what is going on in the world, you have to actively seek it out.  We have to seek out these websites for the strong antiwar voices because we are trying to cover our own butt of why we went in there.  A perfect example is the war in Iraq.  The U.S. said there were Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) in Iraq's possession.  The U.S. then invades going to war with them only to realize there aren't any.  They don't want to show their mistake so they try and cover it up.  News sources like antiwar.com however are not forced to tell the lies and instead can tell the truth that there never were WMDs there in the first place.  You will never find a source/story like this on mainstream news because again the government is trying to cover it up.

Sources:

https://www.antiwar.com/

Blog Post #10 -AI

Living in the Age of AI

In watching the video about AI it is incredible to see how far we have come in technology.  For starters just the fact that China used to be behind in technology until a few years ago and now they are so far along it's scary.  The AI implementation China has is a little concerning and scary, however.  Privacy is a huge right in the United States and to see a country like that where they give up so much consent is mindblowing to me.  Everything you do as a Chinese citizen is watched and can have a positive or negative impact on your day-to-day life.  Even down to how charged your phone is can decide if you get a loan or not.  Does their technology make sense?  Yes, but to a degree.   I understand taking human emotion out of something like getting a loan to make sure that they qualify but your every step shouldn't be impacting that decision.  There are instances where certain actions may make sense but there is a fine line where those stop making sense and start producing privacy concerns.  At the beginning of the video, they also showed the facial recognition software from the iPhone camera which is also scary because what if they get to the point where they can find anyone anywhere from any camera.  This reminds me of the show Person Of Intrest with the big brother software that could legitimately find anyone anywhere.  This again is overstepping and is scary as a U.S. citizen because what if we are next?  We seem to be getting closer and closer to mimicking China every day.

Sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dZ_lvDgevk

Blog Post #6 Diffusion

Diffusion of Innovations

 In 2017 a company called ByteDance created an app called TikTok.  The soon-to-be viral app started in Asia where there weren’t many pioneers jumping on board.  Pioneers were the first people to discover the app before it ever became anything.  Then the early adapters came along pushing the app to the U.S. where it merged with the companies called Musical.ly.  Musical.ly was an app that had been around but never really took off.  The concept was good just the wrong execution was inflicted.  When TikTok and Musical.ly merged it gave the world this app that was just right for the next social media icon.  Early adopters at this point were middle school kids who started to push it up to their high school friends.  Once high schoolers got a hold of it the early majority began.  This was not only high schoolers but college students as well.  I still remember sitting at a soccer game at my high school as a senior and thinking about how dumb the freshman were for downloading this stupid app.  Once I got to college TikTok was blowing up big time.  This was the tipping point or just past it.  By this point, everyone and their mom had the app.  The late adopters were starting to catch on to how addicting this app actually was.  This is about at the point where we are now in the TikTok trend as everyone has it but there are the typical few who still don't.  My prediction for TikTok is that it is going to start to slowly decline after about a year.  TikTok is one of those apps where you rely on the content.  If people are posting good content then the app will stay alive but if not then comes the laggers.  These are the people who don't even know what TikTok is or how to use it.  

Sources:

https://christinagayton.medium.com/the-origins-of-tiktok-5efa7da4b3e6#:~:text=Also%20in%202016%2C%20Douyin%20was,for%20nearly%20%241%20billion%20dollars.

Blog Post #7 EOTO Tech

EOTO Presentations

Carrier Pigeons was a technology that I learned about during EOTO presentations.  I knew they existed but that was about the extent of my knowledge.  Carrier Pigeons were so cool to me because it was a reliable source of information before there was technology.  I also learned that this information source dated back some 5000 years ago to Egypt which is astonishing to me that people were that advanced all that time ago.  Not only to think about the outlandish ideas but to also be able to actually train a bird to fly to a location.  

I had known that carrier pigeons were used during WW1 but I was unaware to the fact that carrier pigeons are only flying back to their nest.  This means that if I want to send a message from High Point to Greensboro, I have to get a pigeon from Greensboro and then attach my message and let it fly and it will head home to Greensboro.  When I learned this it immediately made sense to me why it was easier to train them than people thought.  

I also learned that even today carrier pigeons can still be the faster mode of transport for information.  I learned this with the test done by the wifi company in South Africa I believe it was.  This again was super shocking to me and got my interest as it seems like something that shouldn't be true was true.  It amazes me that a technology that worked all the way back 5000 years ago was so advanced that it can still be better than technology today.

Sources:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Gx6TesPg5S5dSn6jGAlNIEkFaNdxttpcSCiIpmvv7O4/edit?usp=sharing