Final Blog - My Relationship with Technology

I believe my relationship with technology is as impactful as it is with other people, but not in the same way. I remember how I was one of the last people in my high school class to get a smartphone while other people had one since middle school! I also recall me and my brother wanting to create a Facebook account around 2013, a time when social media was rapidly being integrated into society. However, my parents chose to make us wait until we were adults to see if we were dedicated or just caught up in a trend.

Looking back, I believe my parents made the right call in making us wait because of massive data breaches in 2019 and 2021. I have seen several of my peers in high school and college consistently post on Instagram and Snapchat. While there is nothing wrong with posting, especially with a news account like Pubity or an art account, it slowly builds your online footprint over time, which others can look up.

I have a Snapchat account with a Snapscore of 575 and an Instagram account with 40 followers and one post. Additionally, I rarely post anything, and I share my name with an American actor. The only way I can find one of my social media accounts is by looking up my LinkedIn account, where I am usually the fifth or sixth result. 

Social media allows people to connect with peers and other like-minded people on the internet, but it also has some negative side effects. Some include an increased risk for depression and anxiety the longer social media is used, enabling our fight or flight instinct by being on the lookout for notifications, and trying to look perfect to others.

Technology used to get in the way of me and my brother's schoolwork back in elementary school. So much so that our parents had to prevent both of us from using any technology until the weekends. I will admit I was worse at this than my brother, especially because I have focused on games like Temple Run, Angry Birds, and DragonVale more than going out and socializing. So much so that my mom was worried about me and my future.

At first, I did not understand why she was so concerned about me, but after seeing more iPad kids as I grew up, she was right to worry. Not much was known about these devices when I was growing up, but researchers refer to these devices as "electronic cocaine and digital heroin".

Even though I went through the same phase as some of these iPad kids, I never took my devices outside of my house. I was also focused on playing my games, contrary to some of these kids who were given these devices to calm them down. This has nothing to do with the technology itself, but it is concerning to see how careless some people can be.

Speaking of which, clout chasing is another unintended consequence I thought of. There have been countless examples I have seen while I was growing up like someone disrespecting a graveyard and a "prank" costing someone their life. While looking up other examples, there are recent examples of someone driving a "free candy" van and an intentional hit-and-run incident.

Technology and social media are not all bad, despite these noticeable side effects. They have helped to improve society from the development of the first smartphone to other communication technologies like the emoticon and email. Social media allows users to keep in touch with their friends and connect with new people. It is how my brother and my family keep in touch with their friends, whether it is through Facebook or Snapchat.

All these technologies and the Internet make blogs like this, our texts and Facetime calls, our emails, and our social media accounts possible. The Internet is not pulling people away from public spaces, but it may be the opposite. The Internet and technology hampered my social life when I was young, but I turned out okay by the time I graduated high school.

Technology is more of an amplifier than the sole reason we do stupid things. If we learn to be mindful of what we post and start to control our screen time, these technologies will serve to benefit us instead of trapping our attention for hours. At the same time, we need to be mindful of the depression, anxiety, and addiction these technologies can cause and frequently check for data breaches. Technology is our future, so we must use it well!

Blog #11 - A Glance at Net Neutrality

 I recalled hearing about net neutrality in the past, but it was something from an animation I watched when I was a kid, so I did not know what it was. However, I learned from one of my peers that it prevents Internet Service Providers from throttling Internet traffic, prioritizing some programs, and blocking access to others. 

A group of these providers include Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, or T-Mobile when we get a data plan for our smartphones, so this is an issue beyond our computers and laptops.

I also learned that net neutrality was around before the Internet! Telegrams and telephones were also affected by net neutrality, preventing companies from prioritizing some calls over others. I wonder how throttling or blocking calls could work, considering it was a while before emails and the internet came along. Would these companies not be sued if they tried this?

I discovered the FCC after some searching, which is a government agency that aims to regulate national and international communications along radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the US. They were created in the Communications Act of 1934 and would become involved with internet service providers once internet connections were introduced in the US.

Over time, the total amount of internet service providers would significantly decrease in 2007, leading to a lack of options for internet service providers. Alongside internet speeds being throttled, AT&T banned customers from setting up Wi-Fi routers in the early 2000s. Around the same time, Comcast was preventing users from setting up VPNs. Another provider by the name of Madison River blocked Vonage, a service used to make calls across the internet in 2005. 

Due to worries about internet service providers threatening to throttle speeds, Barack Obama pledged support for net neutrality during his 2008 campaign, stating that the servers and networks we get our information from being "gatekeepers and charging different rates destroys one of the best things about the internet-which is that there is incredible equality there."

Under the Obama Administration, the FCC introduced the Open Internet Order in 2010, preventing Internet service providers from blocking websites or imposing limits on consumers. Because internet service providers could not impose limits, they had no way to reduce streaming data, costing them more money. Verizon would file a lawsuit weeks after the FCC adopted these rules, leading to their rules being struck down on January 14, 2014.

Despite this, the FCC released another Open Internet Order in 2015, preventing blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization. Once again, internet service providers petitioned to strike down this order, but a federal court upheld this decision on June 14, 2016, allowing this rule to be applied to wired and wireless networks.

Upholding this decision was a victory for Obama's presidency, but he was close to finishing his second term. Because of this, he could not participate in the 2016 election, which was between Clinton and Trump. Safe to say, we all know who won, since he has not left the media since he was elected.

Because Trump was a Republican, he was destined to change some things since Obama left, and change things he did! He appointed Ajit Pai to be the chairman of the FCC, leading to the Restoring Internet Freedom Order being issued in 2017. The order undid the Open Internet Order, allowing internet service providers to block and throttle their internet traffic again.

After learning all of this, I believe net neutrality is a good thing for the country. I do not know the negatives too well, but both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney emphasized equal opportunity during their campaigns for the 2012 election. If internet service providers can make a website's internet speed faster if they pay and can block or slow others, is that equal opportunity? I do not believe it is, and we should give it another try. If we do not, we will end up with something like this:

Blog #10 - The Age of AI

In the Age of AI is a documentary from Frontline discussing AI and the implications it can have on society. It also showed me a Go match between South Korean champion Lee Sedol go against Google's AI named AlphaGo in 2016. Sedol would beat the AI in a game of Go, while it beat him four times.

Ever since this match was displayed to the world, AI has advanced to the point where it can automate jobs. On paper, this seems fantastic! We could live in a society where AI can take over the repetitive jobs and we can pursue jobs and hobbies we are interested in. However, this has not been the case. The documentary claims around 50% of jobs will be threatened by automation within fifteen years.

I previously believed that creative fields like art and writing would be safe since AI can not replicate human creativity. While it is true that AI can not be as creative as humanity, it does not mean these fields are safe. The introduction of ChatGPT in late 2022 allowed users to chat with an AI and make it write whatever they wanted to, threatening the jobs of thousands of writers across the world. 

Not too long ago, they went on strike to protest companies wanting to use AI instead of hiring writers to write their scripts, all to make more money. The Writers Guild of America ended the strike once it negotiated with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers in late September. However, actors in Hollywood are also on strike due to low pay and AI's ability to replicate their bodies, allowing companies to use them without giving the actors a dime!

AI is also capable of creating fantastic art and can even replicate celebrities voices, even if they have passed away! The image below was created with an AI art generator, and it looks ridiculously good!

 

Because AI can replicate voices, voice actors in the video game industry are also preparing to go on strike because AI is becoming dominant in the voice acting industry. This has also led to deepfakes with political figures and other people. With some of the authority these figures have, things have the potential to go bad really quickly, especially with mounting tensions.

Some jobs AI can automate include jobs like cashiers, factory workers, truck drivers, fast-food workers, jobs in financing, insurance, human resources, law firms, Wall Street, and possibly secretaries. Once all of these jobs have been automated, the owners of a company will not have any workers to pay. The workers who have lost their jobs will have no source of income, diminishing the middle class and worsening income inequality.

The rise of AI has also seen the rise of two AI superpowers, those being the US and China. I discussed the US's surveillance in Blog #8, but there are some other surveillance systems in place like search engines using our digital footprints for profit and social media invading our privacy. China is no better since it had 600 million cameras installed in 2020 and aims to survey every part of China with its 'Sharp Eyes' program.

Alongside these cameras being able to recognize citizens' faces and license plates, it works in tandem with China's social credit score, determining which citizens may cause "political upheaval" and send them to "reeducation camps". They also force citizens to install software that listens in to their phone calls and text messages. There are also barcodes on the doors of their homes or apartments, meaning anyone can scan their barcode and learn everything about them!

As if all of this was not enough, China is working on something it calls the "Belt and Road Initiative". The goal of this initiative is to spread its influence to third-world countries by funding infrastructure projects in exchange for installing Chinese cameras in the country, giving China a backdoor to their surveillance. The United States and China are competing in an AI race and trying to get third-world countries to join their tech sectors instead of the opposition.

Speaking of America, its search engines collect data from our digital footprints to predict our interests and give the data to advertising companies, removing the uncertainty of showing someone an advertisement they would never be interested in. Google did not do this in the past, but they needed to find a source of income when the .com bubble burst in the 2000s. Once Google chose to collect user data, they saw their revenue increase by 3590% from 2000 to 2004!

Social media apps like Facebook and Instagram require their users to sign a contract of adhesion, which gives the company all of the negotiating power and allows them to install tracking malware, save every post we make, and send spiders to look for keywords. Products such as Google Home and Alexa always listen to you, since they use voice activation to answer questions someone can have. They also notice your tone of voice, which can be used to determine your mood and what you are thinking about.

We hoped AI would improve our lives in the future, but it does not look like it will be the case. AI is either automating our jobs or does it better than a human, it is being used to sell our data to advertising companies and used in surveillance systems, and has us locked in a race with China to see who can keep their global influence, and upending entire industries and our education system. The Go match in 2016 has opened Pandora's box, and I doubt we will ever be able to close it.

Blog #9 - Overton Window

The Overton Window is a communication theory initiated by Joseph Overton in 1990 but was formalized by a colleague of his in 2003 after Overton had died. This idea was an attempt by Overton to explain the role think tanks have in society. He claimed that at any given point in time, there were politically acceptable and unacceptable ideas in society. 

According to Joshua Trevino, the window can move in a series of steps, which are policy, popular, sensible, acceptable, radical, and unthinkable. Ideas seen as radical or unthinkable will face debates and can not be immediately accepted. However, it is suggested to jump to radical or unthinkable ideas to move the window. 

The top and bottom represent the amount of regulation the government can have on any idea. Joshua Trevino uses education to demonstrate the Overton Window, listing both extremes of the topic, which are "no government involvement in education" and "children are taken from their parents and raised as soldiers."

The position of the Overton Window can be changed by groups that can change public perception. These include think tanks, the media, entertainment, and a historical event or crisis. 

Because the Overton Window is not shifted by the government, social movements like women's suffrage, same-sex marriage, and animal rights. However, this leaves the Overton Window prone to tactics of information warfare like disinformation, propaganda, and manipulation. 

Even though the Overton Window has been named in 2003, it has influenced our society for hundreds of years. Let us use prohibition as an example:

It started as a movement aiming to avoid the destruction of families and marriages. It eventually grew to Massachusetts and Maine passing temperance laws, societies like the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League started to appear and persuaded people with speeches, advertisements, and public demonstrations, claiming temperance would get rid of poverty, immoral behavior, and physical violence. 

These demonstrations would go on to influence the public and the US government would pass the 18th amendment in 1919, banning the distribution of alcohol in the United States. Prohibition would eventually backfire due to the lack of enforcement, the rise of the mafia in America, and the increase in gambling and prostitution, but these show how a crisis can change public opinion. 

Another example of a crisis comes from mass shootings in the United States, which has been on the rise. These kinds of crises were uncommon a few decades ago, but we see them in the news almost every month. Accompanying these shootings are debates over strict gun laws in the US, which increases per mass shooting.

Politicians had to be mindful of the ideas they proposed and keep the public opinion in mind. If they do not, they risk having their ideas dismissed, losing political support, and losing the next election. I recall a series of questions being asked to Donald Trump and Joe Biden during the presidential debate, with one of them being about what both of them plan to do about the wildfires in California. 

The Overton Window has also moved when we look at issues like climate change and the looming student debt crisis. A few years ago, these issues did not cross our minds, I know it did not cross mine! With the Biden Administration, we have seen politicians staying in this window by introducing the New Green Deal and providing student loan relief for people attending college. He recently announced the SAVE Plan!

Some people may be trying to narrow this window and only allow narratives supporting the status quo to be released to the public. Any other sources going against the status quo would be written off as "fake news" and other accusations. Closing the Overton Window means the loss of a Marketplace of Ideas and no chance of new ideas or innovations coming to light. Even if we are prone to propaganda and misinformation, we need the Overton Window to have politicians work for society, not the other way around.

Blog #8 - Privacy

I will not lie, I am a bit more paranoid about my privacy after watching a few TED Talks from Juan Enriquez, Catherine Crump, Christopher Soghoian, and Dariath Chisolm. I have also seen a few companies either breach user's privacy or struggle with maintaining it, such as Google getting sued for tracking users in incognito mode and Facebooks never-ending privacy issues.

Juan's TED Talk made an interesting connection between tattoos and our digital footprints, even calling them "electronic tattoos" in his speech. Once we get them, they will hang around until we decide to remove them, which takes two and a half years on average. Much like the data social media apps, websites, devices, credit scores, and credit cards collect, which can theoretically immortalize us.

Juan also mentions that facial recognition on phones is concerningly good, around 84% to 94% accurate in finding someone. In an era where everyone has a phone with a camera, this is downright terrifying to think about. Imagine if someone could learn everything about you by secretly taking a picture of your face, scary!

Speaking of facial recognition, Catherine brought up some technology law enforcement has used, such as automatic license plate readers from local police departments, cell tower dumps from the FBI, and technology like StingRay listening in to phone calls anywhere, even in your own house. Catherine has even said police have used StingRay while driving around entire neighborhoods, listening in on several phone calls from people in their own houses. 

These license plate readers are what concern me the most because they not only record your license plate, but the time the picture was taken, the date, and the location. In other words, your daily routine can be recorded by your local police department or government. Another concern I have is both of these parties hanging on to the data of innocent people, just in case they need it.

The New York Police Department has used drones to monitor Labor Day gatherings, which the citizens of New York did not consent to. Autonomous drones have been developed by a company called  Skydio to provide more surveillance to the public body.  A separate company by the name of Axon thought to equip these autonomous drones with tasers.

All of this data has to go to a database of some kind, which can be breached by different governments and unknown people. For example, Christopher mentions an unknown group of people wiretapping the phones of officials in the Greek government in 2004. None of these people have ever been caught or identified nearly twenty years later.

If these people have never been identified, how would we know a similar situation could not happen to us? These databases can be breached by unknown parties, showing them the routines of millions of people, and they can get away with it. It does not help that the databases of governments can be a target to foreign hackers and tech-savvy criminals. As if the risk of this data getting leaked was not enough, history has shown cops abusing the data they collect on people like fabricating evidence and using the pictures for voyeurism!

The reason the government wants to collect this much data about us was a response to 9/11, which gives them a reason to monitor citizens and potentially catch terrorists before they can act. The government should be focused on protecting its civilians online, like the ENOUGH Act being proposed by Kamala Harris.

There are steps to regain our privacy, and one of them is using technology with strong encryption like iPhone's text messaging and Facetime features as well as WhatsApp, but WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, and it is not completely safe. The people can start a movement to get city councils to pass laws which can force local police departments to dispose of the data collected on innocent people. 

I noticed a large amount of apps that use my location like Google Maps, Snapchat's Snap Map, SmartNews, Weather radars, and even some games on my phone. We should also look at the permissions an app requests to access; like recording our phone calls, getting our location data, and accessing our contact list.

Blog #7 - Diffusion Theory

To measure the impact a technology or idea has on society, the Diffusion Theory is used. I previously reflected on Google's search engine, but another communication technology I was interested in was the emoticon. I use emoticons when texting some friends because I find it to help me communicate my tone more effectively than only sending a text message. After all, it can lead to misunderstandings and unintentional fights.

The emoticon was first created by Scott Fahlman at Carnegie Mellon University in 1982. He aimed to resolve an issue with posts being misunderstood in the computer science community's bulletin board, leading to drawn-out flame wars.

His solution? Figure out a way to send a smiley face with the limitations of ASCII characters, because no videos or photos could be sent to the bulletin board. He suggested using :-) to signal a message as a joke and to use :-( to signal posts as serious. Fahlman said it might get a few laughs, but might not grow outside of CMU.

Since Fahlman's post on the bulletin board, the smiley and frowny faces spread among the computer science community within a week because they could communicate phrases like "I'm happy" or "I'm sad" more efficiently. Emoticons also spread to other universities on the ARPAnet within a couple of months, even to CMU alumni like James Morrison, who was working for Xerox!

The emoticon would spread to all the universities, labs, and companies on the ARPAnet. Since the ARPAnet was originally made to link universities and government computers in America, its growth was limited. However, when the military created MILnet in 1983 and the World Wide Web became accessible in 1992, the emoticon had the chance to spread to the American public alongside the internet and email.

The Japanese would be connected to the internet around 1984 thanks to the work of Murai Jun and get their hands on the :-) emoticon. However, they made some adjustments to it and chose to focus on the eyes over the mouth, leading to the first kaomoji being made in 1986. A Japanese artist by the name of Shigetaka Kurita would mutate these even further by creating the first emojis in 1999!

When looking through the Diffusion Theory, I believe my generation are the laggards because emoticons/emojis became what they are now while we grew up. Most of us may have used flip phones and family computers to communicate with one another if we were able to communicate at all!

Emojis would not be mainstream until 2010, which was when emojis became a part of Unicode and could be attached to keyboards. Apple would make a dedicated keyboard for emojis in 2011, with Android doing the same two years later. Emojis with flags and different foods would be added to Unicode thanks to the Great Emoji Politicization in 2014. 

Emojis would innovate even further with Apple introducing the animoji in 2017. To me, this six-year-old feature confirms my generation's place as the laggards alongside the rise of emojis when I was around seven or eight years old.

When conducting a cost-benefit analysis with communication technologies, I say we focus on the simplicity, efficiency, and accessibility of new communication technologies more than the negatives they introduce, unless the negatives greatly outweigh the positives.

Emojis benefit a casual environment more than a professional one. Some people may prefer texting their friends instead of calling them and they benefit from emojis and emoticons. 

People who know a different language also benefit from emoticons because they are not dependent on learning a new language to understand others. Sending an emoji is also a lot easier than typing out an emoticon or a kaomoji.

Although the emoticon has seen a surprising amount of mutations, there are still some downsides to using them. 

Sending emoticons may not be appropriate in a professional or corporate environment because technologies like emails may be exclusively used to communicate information. Emoticons can also be used to express emotions and tone to long-distance friends, but should not be used as a substitute for face-to-face interaction.

Emoticons and emojis are heavily dependent on the environment someone is in and the distance between them and a friend. 

If two individuals are having a casual conversation and are hundreds if not thousands of miles away from each other, then the positives of emoticons outweigh the negatives, especially if one individual prefers texting over calling.

Blog #6 - Anti-War Voices

 I have recently learned about two anti-war websites, specifically antiwar.com and The American Conservative. To be honest with myself, I have not heard of these websites before or have known any anti-war movements. 

I find this to be strange because there have been several anti-war movements throughout history, yet I only saw support for the war in Ukraine. What about the billions of dollars in funding and the corruption in Ukraine's Ministry of Defense?

The Military-Industrial Complex may have something to do with the lack of anti-war voices. Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the US of its influence in his farewell address. He stated that the military-industrial complex was necessary to protect the United States from the Soviet Union, but encouraged his successors to "compose differences not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose."

Once the Cold War ended, the complex kept its influence and power due to terrorist attacks like 9/11 and terrorist attacks from ISIS. It still has some power to this day, seen by a defense executive telling Reuters that "war is good for business." 

The war in Ukraine could also prove to be profitable since the Biden Administration continues to show support for Ukraine. What I find interesting was the possibility of ending the war back in April of 2022, which could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. 

The glorification of violence in the United States could also contribute to a lack of anti-war voices, which may lead some people to be afraid of speaking against militarism due to the fear of being seen as unpatriotic. The United States spent the most amount of money on its military in 2022 and was the leading exporter of weapons between 2018-2022. 

I recall a show me and my dad used to watch, called The Rifleman. It was a Western-themed TV show that chose to teach lessons and promote morals, contrary to other Westerns with brutal violence. I found a list of the most violent westerns ever made, some coming out after The Rifleman finished its last season! This tells me that violence continues to be present in our shows despite non-violent alternatives being released.

We also have a sense of superiority to other nations, which is called American Exceptionalism. It has been a part of our history ever since John Winthrop claimed the United States should be "a city upon a hill" in 1630. 

Ronald Reagan referred to the quote in his farewell address. If America is seen as a "city upon a hill" and is the good guy for defending Ukraine, anti-war messages begin to seem unpatriotic and pushed aside.

Alongside the glorification of violence in TV shows and games as well as the military-industrial complex influencing our economy, anti-war voices do not have a prominent voice, which is a shame.

The anti-war protests during the Vietnam War helped get Richard Nixon into office in 1968 and led to American troops coming home through the process of Vietnamization. Anti-war voices do have the power to cause change, but they are being pushed to corners of the internet people do not search.