Blog Post #11

 The Consequences of Social Media

My opinions on social media:

I believe that my relationship with social media is extremely healthy. For starters, I do not use Snapchat, TikTok, or Facebook. I use Twitter to keep up with only game development-specific news and to keep up with a Game Development brand that I am running. I used to be incredibly addicted to twitter and I had a very sizable follower count but I realized that I cared too much about likes so I deactivated my account in September of last year. Instagram is something I rarely post on but I still will from time to time as well as occasionally scroll but not for too long. I believe that social media can be a life-improving or life-ruining device so I always keep it at arms length away. It is fun to stay in touch with friends but I have to focus on my own life and what I need to do. If I become too absorbed in what other people are doing I start to overthink and get anxious about my own life so I know that I need to focus on me. I do not villainize anyone for using it. I think social media is a really fun thing I just think leading such a public life has the potential to cause a problem later in life so I just choose to not even deal with that if other people want to make a lot of posts I have no problem with that. That is why the only online footprint you will find is my LinkedIn and my very pg Instagram. I am just too scared of the bad consequences.

(The facebook is not me)

Good Consequences: 

The ability to know what someone is doing with their lives from across the country is something that the people of the 1800s would not be able to believe. Back then they had to wait month long gaps for the postal system to hear what their friend is up to. Now I can just see that my friend from Chicago is celebrating his 21st birthday today at the drop of a dime. Getting to keep up with friends who are hundreds of miles away makes the pain of leaving them almost non-existent. Emotionally social media can be very uplifting some times. Jobs are created as well without ever having to step foot in an office.

Bad Consequences:

Posting something of you that paints you in a light that a potential employer would not like is unbelievable to think of. Something you may find funny has now completely ruined your chance of getting a job or even stopping a career as a whole. You also could end up losing a job you currently have, lose friends, and a lot of other life-ruining problems all from the push of a "Post" button. Being so public can also make you too dependent on the "likes" that you receive. As I mentioned earlier I found that I would just be trying to make posts to get likes. The dopamine you get is addicting and some people cannot break it.

What I use Social Media For:

Link to presentation: 

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1gt4pINljpQTgxI8eOgLkkkgWOOaHuwQIWPEK-L8CM3s/edit?usp=sharing

Blog Post #10

 Whistleblowers

I was most impressed by the whistleblower presentation. Whistleblowers are really interested to learn about because of how they would go against their own country and it is very baffling to think about what the country could have done to make someone do that.

I got to learn about the original whistleblowers in 1777. There were 10 navy officers who revealed that their commodore, Esek Hopkins, was committing war crimes. Hopkins was dismissed but he sued the blowers back and 2 of them were arrested in return. This lead to laws that help whistleblowers that will blow on their own companies. However, the government is not too friendly on government secret leakers.

The most well-known whistleblower was Edward Snowden. He was a technical assistant for the CIA who leaked how immoral the CIA surveillance measures were by releasing thousands of NSA documents. He had to do this from a hotel in Hong Kong. Now he lives in Russia because the U.S government would put him jail or execute him if he was ever caught. I wanted to talk about Snowden because of how even the mention of his name will get websites or blogs (like this one or Luke's) a content warning even if it is just the mention of a guys name.

Pictured here is what is going to get my post probably censored (A picture of Edward Snowden)

Why are they so interesting:

Whistleblowers let us see another side of the U.S government. Everyone knows the government does shady stuff but when someone is actually willing to expose that to the public what they are doing it is very new and exciting to see. The government very obviously does not want these people running free and it is exciting to hear about an "enemy of the U.S Government" and how they are hiding out in Hong Kong or Russia.

Blog Post #9

 

The Age of AI

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

Ai is a very popular buzzword nowadays for good and for bad. Ai is being used in more and more work forces as time goes on. It makes work a lot more productive and a lot more efficient. However, there are a lot of downsides that come with these upsides. A lot of jobs that can be done by a human are going to be taken over by a machine. I worry a lot about the game design industry. I was talking with some professionals and they said that using an Ai to generate sketch art or to check code. These kinds of things would normally be done by interns or low-level job havers. As time goes on, the Ai can only improve and get better.

Kai-Fu Lee and the rich:

If you look earlier in the linked video you will see Kai-Fu Lee make a scary prediction. He believes that over 50% of jobs will be taken over. A lot of the really rich people who are benefitting from Ai are not brave enough to talk about Ai’s implications on the job market because of how rich it is making them. Lee being courageous enough to stand up and bring some of these problems to life is important to note. He believes that Ai is coming whether we like it or not so we need to be ready for it.

Last bit of the video:

The last bit of this video is called "supermarket robots". This section is focused on the political implications of AI. It starts by showing us this chart. The red shows how much percent of the country's wealth the top 1% has. While the blue shows how much percent of the country's wealth the middle and lower class make up. Ai is a tool that is empowering the rich because of how it takes away lower-level jobs.

My Opinion:

I am terrified of Ai's implications in how its going to get more involved in our homes. Alexa's and Google Home are already in our homes and they use Ai plus their microphone functions. Ai will only get more and more involved in our lives. National security is scary because of foreign owned companies using Ai algorithms to get data on us. As a game designer I do not have time to really get into the "nitty gritty" of the political values of Ai. I would much rather worry about getting a job. And when I am reliant on entry level jobs which are the same things Ai is being made to do. I do not like having to compete with machines. Unfortunately to make myself better in the industry I will have to learn how to utilize it in a way that make me hirable. I am not happy with this but I will do it.

Blog Post #8

 

Introduction:

The Spiral of silence is a very powerful phenomenon. We are seeing it on a massive scale in today's society. I know for a fact it is affecting me personally and I have seen it affect all of my classmates in this class. The spiral of silence is when a person or group of people are too afraid to speak their opinion. This is problematic because it eliminates the opportunity for dissent. Dissent is important because you need to be able to go against the status quo and what is popular in order for real change in society.

Background:

The theory for the spiral was created in 1965 by Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann. It was theorized during the German Federal Election. Neumann and her staff at the Allensbach Institute for for Public Opinion research launched several surveys with the purpose of tracking what the general publics opinion was on the 2 major parties, the Christian democratic union and the Social Democratic Party of Germany. The surveys said that it was dead close between the 2 parties at almost 50% each. However, towards the end of the campaign the survey's started to swing towards the Christian Democratic Union for no reason. At the end of the election the Christian Democratic Union won with 48% of the votes and 39% to the Social Democratic Party. It was believed that a visit from Queen Elizabeth before the end of the election caused the Social Democratic Party caused the Social Democratic Party to be afraid of deviating from her popularity. 

Personal Experience:

In today's society, especially in public discussion settings like classrooms, whenever a teacher asks for the class's input on a political topic, I would notice firsthand that nobody would want to speak up. This is because everyone is terrified of saying what they believed for fear of being judged by their classmates. I know that I always keep quiet whenever it is brought up. I am terrified of what people will think of me. I believe that the spiral only gets magnified with things like cancel culture and social media. Why would I want thousands of people who I do not know forming an opinion on me based on things that I believe. That is terrifying when I am a college kid trying to farm a job. It is way safer for me to just not say anything. I noticed that the people who do have money and power are way more ok with saying their opinions than the people dependent on them.

Conclusion:

This is a really scary to think about phenomenon. Being afraid to speak out because of what is popular is really terrifying. This form of political "blasé" is really bad for the good of our society. If Martin Luther King Jr. had been affected by the spiral we would not have the Civil Rights movement. If Susan B. Anthony was being affected by it we would not have had the Seneca Falls convention.

Links Used:

https://www.britannica.com/topic/spiral-of-silence

I used this link to find the historical background of the spiral. A lot of the conclusions I came to are real life experiences that I live through. 

Blog Post #7

 The Diffusion of Innovations or New Ideas Theory is a process for describing how new people react to a new invention or idea in society. There are several classes of people at play when you talk about it. Your pioneers and early adopters are people who are not afraid of new things. The pioneers are the ones who think up the idea and the early adopters want to try it. Usually, they are younger people who are not afraid of new things. When it is starting to get popular you see a large influx of people called the early majority and when people see a popular thing being popular you will see the late adopters. The late adopters are usually showing up because they want to keep up with the newest trends. And finally way after the laggards will show up. Laggards show up to a trend way too late and are usually exploring it just to see what the trend was about.

Take social media sites like Facebook. The pioneers and innovators are Mark Zuckerburg. The early adopters are the first users which were young people interested in exploring a new form of communication. The early majority were the massive amounts of young people getting into it because it was getting popular. The late adopters and the laggards are really present nowadays. We see that Facebook is not as used by the younger generations and is getting more and more filled with the older generations.

I believe that this trend can be dangerous when you get technology involved. Older people are not as aware of what kinds of technology are dangerous and can be more easily. You can see AI deep fakes and Facebook market scams becoming extremely prevalent trying to trick these laggards.

I believe that there are a few reasons that people do not want to hop on trends. There are people who intentionally do not like things that are popular, there are people that are just set in there ways and do not feel the need to try new things, there are also people who are just inherently scared of the unknown.

I believe that it is best to have an early adopter mentality. Leaving yourself open to trying new trends or ideas or technologies or just anything in general is good for keeping yourself an open person.

Blog Post #6

 These digital privacy issues affect me a lot. There are 4.8 billion users of social media and what you post does not go away. I am very conscious about what I post. I do not want something that is super reputation-ruining to ever go up because it is very hard to remove. Like how Juan Enriquez refers to them as digital tattoos. They are interesting but they are very serious mistakes. This affects my friends and family the same way and I do my best to try and make sure they do not post anything that could be used against them as well. We can protect ourselves from these issues by thinking twice about what we post.

License plate readers are important because I do a lot of driving. Because of the fact that I do a lot of driving my license plate has probably been scanned dozens of times and patterns of what I do in my day-to-day life are being stored in some police database. All for the purpose of "it could be useful later". I do not feel comfortable knowing that there are hundreds or thousands of pictures of me just lying in some database when I have never broken a law. 

Sidenote: While looking for pictures of a reader I saw that you can just buy them if you wanted to and thought of someone just deciding to buy a license plate reader is scary to me.

Our phones were wired for surveillance first. These words were a very shocking thing to hear from the Ted Talk. I do not like having a lot of eyes on me and I like having my privacy. However, the talk is mainly about how encryption processes have gotten a lot better on our phones. Backdoors into our devices are harder to get into for both our government and for any 3rd parties looking to listen in to our conversations. The government is understandably not happy about it because of the dangerous age we live in. They need to keep the nation safe. As stated earlier I quite enjoy having less on me but I also do not like the less eyes on people who need to be surveyed.

 

Blog Post #5

The History of Smartphones

Nowadays, it is extremely unlikely that you will meet someone who does not have a smartphone. The amount of power at your fingertips while using one can not be understated. You can keep up with your friends, check on sports, check on finances, banking, shopping, the list goes on and on.

The road to where we are today was not an easy one. Some of the earliest high-quality mobile phones was the Blackberry. These had phone call abilities and a built-in mini keyboard to text people. There were games like breakout on them as well. They were very compact and not that powerful but their ease of use was extremely valued.

Blackberries would be the status quo until June 28th, 2007, when The iPhone would be introduced. Apple would go on stage at their Macworld event and talk about how they are making a phone, an iPod, and an internet communications device. People thought that they were going to unveil 3 different products. However, Apple merged all 3 into one device called the iPhone and the world would never be the same.

A year later the first Android phone would be conceived. Android being the operating device that is inside the phone itself. The market for these "handheld" computers was something both companies were realizing at the same time. So on September 23 2008 the Tmobile G1 was unveiled and it was released on October 22nd that same year.

The competition between Apple and Android has been a heated battle for almost 2 decades now. Apple is extremely popular in the US. Around 50% of all US citizens own a smartphone of some kind and 60% of those are iPhone users. In places like India and China, however, you see a lot more Android usage. This is because of their affordability.