Final Blog Post / Presentation

My relationship with technology is very extent and plays a huge role in my life. Beginning with my family, I have three older sisters, nieces and nephews, and of course my parents and grandparents, and we all live in different parts of the country. With that being said, I heavily rely on technology to keep in contact with them. I probably call my sisters and or parents 2 times a week minimum and without the technology to do that, I think I would have a big struggle with living away from them. 

In terms of my digital footprint, I did some research on myself and found that when I looked up my own name, there was a lot of information about me that someone else put out. When I looked up my name my instagram account, Twitter and TikTok account came up but what I found most of was about my athletic career. Since I've been playing Volleyball since I was 10 most of what I found was pictures and interviews of me that were posted and I had no idea. There were also volleyball blog pages that have covered me and my career and I had no clue that people were covering my life, where I live, who I've played for etc. and putting it on the internet. 

After watching the video clips covering how technology effects society, I personally think the dark side video covering technology is more accurate. I believe that technology has created a huge sense of FOMO in many people, especially teenagers or young adults. I believe that a lot of activity online has become toxic and created a huge disconnection between human interaction and the world around us. Being young myself, I witness so many people miss out on people around them, lacking real in-person connection with people, because we are consumed with social media and internet. With that being said there are some important positive things that come from such technology being so accessible but overall I think technology is forming bad and dangerous habits in our society. 

EOTO 2 Reflection

 Throughout the presentations I learned a lot of useful things about different different terms, names, and technology that run within our lives. Something really interesting I learned about is called Social Credit Score. 

This is primarily in China, and it is a social and moral ranking system. It was announced in 2014 as a way to reward citizens for acts that build trust in society, and punish those that would break trust in society. The keys to this system is tracking "bad actions", some things they declare as bad actions are: bad driving, smoking in non-smoking areas, posting fake news, buying too many video games, and more. Some things they rank as "good actions" are, donating blood and paying bills on time. Punishments would normally depend on bad actions and nive versa, until it has now turned into a points system and punishment are not distributed. They tracking and punishments/rewards are differentiated by city. 

I find this very demeaning, disturbing, and wrong, and would be profoundly uncomfortable if I were in a country that this was such a normal thing. 

Privacy Online & Off

    The issues affect me, my friend's, and my family in numerous ways.  With technology being so prominent in our every days lives in any society we step into, it can be hard to live our lives without hesitation and the feelings that someone is watching us 24/7. In terms of affecting me directly, my family and I all lives in different parts of the country, so our main way of communication is through the phone so we could be directly effected by being hesitant on what we text or call about, due to the fact that we know it could all be monitored. We would feel as if we needed to sensor ourselves and our private conversations on our private cell phones. 

    I believe the government should be doing something about this as it is highly immoral and illegal to be tracking individuals private conversations, whereabouts etc. without us being in the know. They should be locking down on companies that have to devices and intentions to allow people develop "internet tattoos".  As this is an invasion of privacy, the government should be more eager to resolve the issues that come about in U.S. citizens lives when our rights are constantly not being met. 

Some things we can do as the people who are being tracked to protect ourselves from invasions are limited, but possible. Although its difficult to work around high technology and such, we can be more cautious and smart about what we are putting out on the internet or choosing to post. 

EOTO 2 - Whistleblower

 The simple definition of a Whistleblower is: Someone within an organization who reveals information of another's wrong doings. Speaking more lawfully than corporately, in other words this would be someone that works within the government and releases information or evidence of an unlawful act that another employee had participated in.

What does this mean for the implications of whistleblower? This implies that someone within the system is not doing their job correctly or lawfully. As for some positive attributes in Whistleblowing begin with stopping corruption. If a whistleblower reveals a wrongdoing of the government, they are less likely to continue encouraging the corrupt act. A second positive is that it can prevent future wrongdoings within a system. When other employees know anyone around them could be a whistleblower, this could influence them to think twice before a person or persons follow through with an unlawful suggestion. A third positive that the intentions of a whistleblower is to protect a larger community with an at of selflessness. If whistleblowers were to not reveal information anymore, the government would be corrupt without us knowing and it would be easier to hide things from the citizens of the U.S. 

    Some Negative things that could come from whistleblowing is more for the individual themselves than a community. The first one being Whistleblowers put their jobs and life at risk to protect the country and our rights, when someone releases valuable information that was intended to be private, it could upset a lot of other people within the system, holding higher power. A second negative would be putting themselves in danger, as I said before a whistleblower could upset a lot of higher ups, therefore putting a large target on their back; this is when Whistleblower protection programs would come into play. 

    How does whistleblowing influence society? It creates potential to have an open and honest system, a trustful connection between the citizens and our systematic influencers. A second example of how it effects our society is that the more that lawful whistleblowing is encouraged/protected, the more it can deter instances from making us as citizens, victims of unlawful acts. 

iPhones Through the Diffusion Theory

One of the several life changing innovations that would be beneficial to take a closer look at, specifically through the Diffusion Theory, would be iPhones. In todays world, majority of people that I know/see with a mobile phone, more often than not have an Apple iPhone.

In a study, it was found that the United States has a very large number of iPhone users, "with 60% of all cellphone users, using an iPhone". Why could this be? Well when you look at it through the lens of the diffusion theory, you can begin to understand why iPhone began to catch on and spread in the first place. The first category in the Diffusion Theory is known as pioneers, these are people that want to be the first to try something, they find new releases, like the iPhone new and exciting, and they aren't afraid to takes risks. This very well could have jump started the large expansion of the iPhone due to the fact that when they iPhone/iPod was first released, we had never seen a handheld form of communication that was touchscreen, in which also held so many different purposes. 

In the eye of the Diffusion Theory, you normally see the uptake of products/companies in the Early Adopters and Early Majority sections of this theory. In terms of the iPhone, it is likely that the people who would classify as Early Adopters played a huge role in the sales of the iPhone. There were probably so many Early Adopters for the iPhone due to the fact that these people really like to embrace change opportunities, and a new appealing technology like the iPod and iPhone spark a lot of interest in society when there isn't anything like it, so it is probable that these individuals were itching to get their hands on this new device. 

Of course with new technology, not everything can be perfect. There were and still are a large number of people that don't use iPhones, or were pretty late to hopping on the bandwagon; In the Diffusion Theory, these people would be known as Late Adopters or Laggards. It is to be expected that this has a lot to do with money. When the iPhone was first made and still to this day, the prices to own or buy an iPhone are incredibly high, so this sends a lot of people in another direction. 

Some negatives I see to the iPhone is that it has become extremely addicting for many people, and ultimately ends up consuming or controlling their lives. Although this can be true for other brands of mobile devices, the iPhone has much of society wrapped around their finger, with all of the utilities and thing they can access, via their iPhone. 

In my opinion, I do think that the positives do outweigh the negatives in this situation, mostly for the fact that extensive development of the iPhone have allowed us to spread culture all around the world, made contact with people that mean a lot to individuals much easier and quicker, and when used in the correct way can be an amazing learning tool. 

Something I learned from Tech. Presentations

One of the technologies that I learned a lot about in the day of EOTO presentations was the progression and history of radio. 

Learned that the idea began all the way back in 1890, and with a lot of work G. Marconi sent the first wireless morse code message in 1895. This was a huge step in the right direction because before this, WWI scientist from large companies were trying to figure out a way to get messages across long distances in ways other than morse code. 

As the presentation continues I also learned that in December of 1906 a Canadian inventor produced and hour long radio talk which was a major progression in the development of radio. 

Unfortunately there was a step back in all this work to make the radio more resourceful; During WWI the government forced radio transmitters off of the air which stalled advancements. As transmitters came back on and the radio became a more mainstream way of communication, it became and household staple, and in 1930-1955 about 60% of Americans had a radio in their house. 

As it was said in the presentations, the radio revolutionized communication, it allowed a faster communication of news, for example world leaders like presidents, MLK, Churchhill, important events and WWII battles were broadcasted so people could stay in the loop. 

Not just that but for entertainment purposes, music became extremely popular, sports broadcasting became more prominent, people would broadcast book readings and even plays. 

The Progressive Era

In terms of the Progressive Era, in this time society was fired up by WWI, and the First Amendment played a role in the expression of opinion about WWI. Now we reflect on todays, while the United States is carrying on military operations all around the world. 

As we all know, we have to right to our own opinion, and to express that opinion; but if many of you haven't noticed, it's getting more and more difficult to find media sources that share any and all opinions. For example, these two websites antiwar.com and The American Conservative, both display very strong and opinionated anti-war voices/opinions; but we don't see these shared on big news stations such as ABC or CNN. I believe that this is because the way society has handled controversy and 'touchy' subjects in the past, has shied people away from expressing their true thoughts. 

To continue, although everyone has a right to free expression and free speech, you don't see these bold personalities and charismatic people who have opinions different from the majority, as often as you see people who have the common opinion as the rest of the public due to the fact that people like the authors on the provided websites above, have received a lot of negative feedback and reactions for sharing such strong opinions on controversial topics, like war/anti-war.