Final Blog Post

My relationship with technology is one that, for better or for worse, I have accepted with open arms. From even before the time when I got my first phone I have always had an interest in technology, specifically consumer technology. Anything from the iPhone 4s to the OnePlus 9 Pro 5G, I have always had an interest in it. The minute I had access to the internet I learned everything I could about technology and computers and I loved keeping up with the latest releases and the latest updates, whether they be hardware for software. Now, with that being said, I have always been in support of technology and all it can do for people and the positive impact it has had. One of those positive impacts being ease of access to information. With the advancements in personal computers and laptops and even phones, it has been easier than ever to get the information you need with just a couple taps or clicks. But, does all that innovation come with any drawbacks? The short answer is yes, many of them. The long answer is that even though these devices have done so much good for us, they have also done a good amount of harm. If you just look at the amount time technology, specifically our phones, are used in a day, you start to realize that we don't rely on technology, technology relies on us. Apple released in iOS 12 in 2018 this new feature that all iPhones would get called screen time. What this feature does is track your phone usage and gives you a weekly report on your phone usage and what apps you frequent, what apps you tend to use after you pick up your phone and even how many notifications you get in a day. If we use my screen time statistics from last week as an example, I averaged about 7 hours and 15 minutes on my phone per day. For anyone who doesn't want to do the math, Apple has you covered because they also calculate your total screen time for the week. If we use my data as an example again, those 7 hours and 15 minutes per day adds up to 50 hours and 46 minutes FOR THE ENTIRE WEEK! You can also make an argument for the addictability of technology, specifically smartphones. As mentioned before, your phone can also track how many times you pick it up. Using my screen time data again on average I picked up my phone 146 times per day, which adds up to 1,022 times for the entire week. Even while writing this blog post i've looked at my phone probably 10 times already. 

Now as for the upsides to technology, as I mentioned before the ease of access to information is astonishing. With search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and even YouTube among many others, you can access just about any website that is in existence. This is revolutionary for so many fields, whether your a scientist trying to cure cancer and you need to look at the latest journal entries that have come out or if you're a student trying to write their final blog post for their class, you can find information quickly and efficiently. Back in the 1960's, the thought of consumer technology and the idea of being able to look at a screen for mostly reputable information wasn't even a thought to most people. However, some people did dream of a futuristic society where we would live underwater in underwater hotels and we would have these massive rovers on the moon, which they weren't too far off with, to automated trucks using massive highways to deliver goods to cities around the country. This was all the imagination of one famous exhibit at the World's Fair in New York back in 1964, called FUTURAMA. However, if they could see us now, with flatscreen televisions that work more like computers and cordless telephones that work more like computers and computers that worked more like smartphones, they would be dumbfounded and astonished. They'd be amazed that kids these days barely even pick up books anymore and have an iPad in their hand by the age of three. 

However, with how mazing the physical and information gathering aspect of technology is, it also is doing us a good amount of harm, more specifically social media is. The concept of social media is amazing, you get to communicate with friends and family who are long distance or just at their house around the block. You get to share ideas with them and information or even just share a joke once and a while. However, social media has become way more than that. Besides social media being a massive way to market useless products and information to people, which I won't get into now, social media has become this playground of FOMO (fear of missing out) and mental health problems and emotionless engagement. Social media is a drug you don't even know you're taking and when that drug gets a hold of your life it holds on tight. I know that personally whenever I post a picture to Instagram, I love seeing all the notifications come in of all the likes I get, and I love seeing the number of likes grow too. I actually sometimes set arbitrary goals for the like count, I tell myself things like "oh lets see if I can reach 100 likes" or something stupid like that. The reason why I call that an arbitrary goal is because I set it for myself but I do absolutely nothing to influence the outcome, I just hope that the next 5 or 10 friends the come across the post like it and push me over that "goal" number. The impacts of social media doesn't stop at the pointless goals I set for myself. Sonia Bokhari wrote a article for Fast Company about how when she was 12 or 13 she joined Facebook and Twitter and realized that even though she hadn't been on social media, her face and image had been for years. Her mom was posting pictures that Bokhari found very embarrassing on Facebook for years without her even knowing. Furthermore, her sister had also been taking thing that she thought were funny things Bokhari said and was posting them to Twitter without Bokhari even knowing. But that also wasn't the only thing that happened that day, she also started to create her digital footprint. If you don't know what a digital footprint is it is basically your presence online. It is what outsiders can discover and know you by. An example of that is, especially nowadays, when you apply for a job employers will search up your name and see what they can dig up on you, sometimes even hiring outside companies to do it better than they would. They'll find all of your social media profiles and anything that has ever been said about you online and make a decision if they way you live your life outside of work is in like with the company values. If you Google your name, you'll see just how big or how small your digital footprint is and you can start being more cautious about what you post or you will be able to know exactly how it will be found and how it may affect the decisions of others. 

In conclusion, I love technology. It has been a big part of my teens and early adulthood. However, technology has its drawbacks. From the idea that your phone controls you instead of you controlling it to the idea that social media is a wasteland of every bad idea humans have come up with. Does technology have its upsides, yes. Technology makes it easier to find possibly critical information fast and with ease. Technology is also perfect for entertainment with the creation of YouTube back in 2005 to all of the streaming services available, which are now well over 200. Technology can be a vital aspect of everyday life for humans. It can make our quality of life better too and allow us to do even simple tasks with ease. However, that can only be achievable if we get control on technology and the way it is quickly consuming our lives. We need to remember that technology is a tool and it needs to be treated as such, not just an extension of our life. 

Awareness

Awareness. It could mean many different things. You could have awareness about your surroundings or be aware about a assignment thats due. However in this post, we are going to be talking about many different kinds of awareness from propaganda to the Five Eyes theory. Starting off with propaganda, it is usually used to spread ideas,  information and rumors with the idea of either helping or harming a cause or idea. The popularity of propaganda rose around the time of WWI with it being used to sometimes spread false information about the enemy or promote the joining of the military. Propaganda works by manipulating words and pictures to make a idea seem favorable. Propaganda also makes it seem like everyone is doing it or being in support of it by using words like "we" and "must". Now, if propaganda sounds bad thats because it is. Propaganda forces ideas on to society and almost forces the public to believe this one particular idea. Propaganda is a perfect example of the Illusory Truth Effect in the way that propaganda repeats the same messages over and over again until the person looking at is believes it. The next topic to be covered is Disinformation. Disinformation is basically a parent idea to the idea of propaganda. Disinformation's main purpose is to spread false information with the intent to mislead. Disinformation can be categorized in many different ways, whether that be fabricated content, imposter content, misleading content, and manipulated content. This basically means that if the public sees this throughout the media they will end up having a profound distrust of it. It also promotes advertising through clickbait. If the advertisement says something that grabs peoples attention bu leads them down a rabbit hole of false information then they will quickly be consumed by false information. The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 was created to help with the spread of misinformation. Its purpose is to disseminate abroad information about the US. Basically the act's main purpose is to help promote a better understanding of the US to people of the world. The way it does this is through radio and television broadcasting, face to face communication and through other forms of media. The fourth topic is a False Flag. The purpose of a False Flag is to disguise the actual source of responsibility of the operation and pin the blame on another party, whether that be a political party, government party or private party. This method is usually pretty popular among conspiracy theorists when they try to promote their ideas. This idea can be applied to current events being the Capitol riots. The Capitol riots were considered a False Flag since the group of republicans responsible for the attack tried to pin the blame on the democratic party by saying the 2020 election was rigged. The 5th topic breaks the mold a little bit. The topic is the Five Eyes. There isn't too much information on this but what is known is it is comprised of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, The UK and the US and it is primarily all of their intelligence agencies. More information that is known is that all of the information that is shared is top secret and that the information that is usually shared is information on surveillance and intelligence. We also know that the intelligence sharing has expanded since the Five Eyes was formed in 1946. Furthermore, since there is no domestic legislation on intelligence sharing, Five Eyes is being governed by no-one. What is also known is that there are some growth packages that can be roped into the 5 eyes, that being the 9 eyes, 14 eyes, and 41 eyes which at that point includes most of the world. 

Illusory Truth Effect

The Illusory Truth Effect is by definition when we hear the same false information repeatedly and on such a constant basis that we end up believing the information as fact and not as fiction. Many would argue that if they knew the information was false to begin with that, they wouldn’t believe it. Well according to Forbes author Marshall Shepard, even if a person knows the information is false, if they hear the repeated false information enough times, they start to believe that the information. They start to question what they know and start to think that the information they believed to be true is actually false and the false information is actually true. You may be asking how this is possible and the simple answer is our brains do too much. An adult makes about 35,000 decisions a day on average and that takes a toll on our mental energy. The brain is a muscle, and it gets tired too just like your legs or your arms. Another reason is that we are cognitively lazy. According to behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman, as described by The Decision Lab, we have two different decision-making systems in our brains. The first is the one that makes easy, automatic decisions for us without us even knowing. The second system, however, is the system that handles and deals with the deeper thinking that we do consciously. The second system, as you can imagine, also requires more energy and causes more strain on us cognitively. So, in turn, we tend to rely more on system one, even if we don’t realize we are. This allows us to not have to analyze every little bit of information we come across in everyday life and just come up with quick, easy, sometimes barely rationalized decisions that come with the consequences associated with that, in this case believing false information. 

 

One reason why this is such a big topic now is because of the rise of misinformation on social media. One big example of this is the current COVID-19 pandemic. The amount of social media posts giving out false information on COVID is astonishing. Toward the beginning of the pandemic there were a lot of people who didn’t believe half the stuff the scientists were saying due to the fact that there was so much misinformation out on social media that was being repeated through social media post after social media post. The misinformation doesn’t even stop at global pandemic related topics, Shepard states that while he was doing research for his article he realized that there was a lot of misinformation out on social media about “heat lightning”. The thing is that “heat lightning” is actually just a thunderstorm that is too far away for the sound to travel but the light from the lightning bolt does. 

 

You might be asking yourself, what can I do to avoid falling victim to the Illusory Truth Effect? Well, it’s simple but requires some conscious thought. We, as a society, need to learn to think about what we read. We need to learn not to take things at face value and to dig a little deeper, even if it takes five minutes out of our day, we can drastically improve the quality of the information we consume. We also need to learn how to quickly verify the sources we get our news from or stumble across while trying to figure out something. It is usually pretty easy to find the differences between a reputable source and one whose soul purpose is to spread false information. However, since were in the world of social media and almost anyone can create a website now, it takes a little more careful looking than just a glance over.

Diffusion of Innovations

The first television was an invention that changed America for ever. The television was also one of the many early inventions that follows the diffusion of Innovations model beautifully. The television caught on and spread because people realized that it was a lot more interesting to watch a play be acted out on television than listen to it over the radio and imagine what the scene might look like. The television also allowed news to be broadcasted a lot easier and the television also allowed the news to be seen rather than just heard. The start of television news is rarely recent with CBS introducing the first television news segment in 1944 in the way of a 15 minute evening news segment, with NBC jumping in the mix with their own Sunday evening newscast in 1945. The television was a growing necessity for most people in the early 1940's. The fascination of the television started during the World's Fair in 1939 when the then president of RCA showed off the first commercially accessible television broadcast and that broadcast consisted of FDR who also became the first televised president. This event coupled with the introduction of televised news just 4 - 5 years later allowed for there to be a big amount of early adopters. By the mid 1950's, television had reached its tipping point. This was the hight of the televisions popularity with programing being made more specifically for television and away from the traditional radio format. The first notable of these programs was an idea by NBC president Sylvester Weaver which was Peter Pan in 1955 and that program attracted 60 million views alone. He also developed the idea of programing such as Today (1952) and The Late Show (1953). Many late adopters at this point started to consider the idea of buying a television since they hadn't purchased one recently for whatever reason whether it be that they couldn't afford it at the time or that they thought it was a pointless invention just to name a few examples. This popularity was steady for many, many decades with there even being a spike in popularity around the introduction of the color television in 1954. However, in recent years the popularity of the television has declined and according to New York Times authors Sapana Maheshwari and John Koblin it is believed that the increase in streaming services and the decline of advertising on major networks is the cause of this. Earlier on in the televisions life, there were plenty of downsides. One main one was the impact the TV had on the radio industry. It caused people to stop listening to the radio and they just watched TV instead. However, nowadays there aren't really that many downsides to television. From the ease of access to information such as news and educational materials as well as the entertainment aspect to it, there aren't really that many ill effects of the television being in existence. 

The First iPhone

The First iPhone was surrounded by so much excitement but also a good amount of skepticism and doubters. Now, the concept of a handheld cellular telephone wasn't a new concept by any means when the 1st Gen. iPhone came out. By that point the arguably historical Motorola Razr V3 was one of the most widely used phones in the US. It was released in 2005, 2 years before the iPhone, and was in the hands of over 50 million men, women and children. By the end of the Razr V3's life span there were close to 130 million units sold and earning the title of being the best selling clamshell (also known as flip phones) phone. During its lifespan, Motorola even released a version called the V3i where they partnered with Apple to include iTunes on the phones. However, Apple had a different idea of what phones should look like. At the MacWorld convention in 2007, Steve Jobs, who was the former CEO of Apple, unveiled what Time Magazine would eventually call the invention of the year. It was the first of its kind with a touch screen, built-in camera, and the ability to browse the web as well as an iPod. considering most of the phones around 2007 are the clamshell phones as mentioned previously and if there was a phone with a "touch screen" you had to use an included stylus similar to the ones included with the early Nintendo DS's.  The first iPhone, also known as the iPhone 2G, was revolutionary for its time and the public knew it. The iPhone was announced in January of 2007 and by November of the same year Apple had sold more than 1.4 million iPhone units between the standard 4GB and 8GB models for $499 or $599 respectively. Over a year later Apple released the App Store and the iPhone evolved into what we know it to be today. 

The First Amendment and Social Media

The six freedoms of the First Amendment. We all take advantage of these everyday but most of us don’t realize what they are. Most people don’t even know what the six freedoms are protecting and what they don’t. The first amendment condones your right to free speech, the freedom to practice religion without government interference, the freedom from a government established religion, the right to freedom of the press, the right to assemble peacefully and the right to petition the government. The First Amendment, however, is not a shield against laws of general applicability. Obviously, the First Amendment was passed in 1791, so how does the First Amendment relate to today’s world? In some aspects, the First Amendment still applies today just as it did back in 1791. You are still able to practice any religion you please; Christian, Jewish, Islam, Atheist, it doesn’t matter, the government has no control over it. Same goes for the government established religion. The United States is one of several developed countries that does not have a government established religion. But, when it comes to free speech and this age of social media, does the first amendment still protect your right to free speech the same way it did in 1791? Well, Social media is not the government. Social media companies like Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook just to name a few all have these documents that we all see but never pay attention to that we must agree to when we create an account. These documents are a part of the companies “Terms and Conditions” and these Terms and Conditions are basically the companies rules that you agree too and have to abide by in order to keep using their services. NBC Connecticut wrote a story shortly after former president Donald Trump was banned off Twitter and the idea arose that that was in violation of the First Amendment and, in my opinion, summed the argument up perfectly; “It’s not a violation of your constitutional rights to free speech, but you may not be following the guidelines you agreed to in those terms and conditions to use private social media platforms. The First Amendment is meant to keep the government from restricting free speech, not private companies.”

The Supreme Court

 

iStock

The Supreme Court is the highest court in the US government. Surprisingly enough not too many people know how the Supreme Court operates and what goes on inside the Supreme Court. One thing that I learned from watching the Supreme Court video was that all nine Supreme Court Justices sit on the stand and listen to proceedings. I previously thought they only reviewed cases and only one would step foot in the court room if needed. One key part of the Supreme Court is that most of their day is spent reviewing written petitions from anyone from councilmen trying to prove that a lower courts ruling is false or a prisoner writing out that he has been wrongfully accused and is innocent. One surprising thing I learned was that after the nine justices are done deliberating they write an opinion. What really surprised me was that the first draft can take up to four weeks to be finished and that it can take many months while each justice tries to convince the other that their opinion is correct. The video made me realize that the Supreme Court actually does a whole lot more than I originally thought. The justices are working day in and day out constantly and they have a substantial work load.