Anti-War Post

The reasoning behind not hearing about these websites is because the mainstream media and news services simply do not want to portray the government's actions in a negative way. Pretty sure these news channels are obligated to not talk negatively about the wars that the United States is funding -- their only job is to talk about what is happening, not why it is happening. There is an article on a website called wagingnonviolence.org which discusses why anti-war is rarely every seen on the big screen, "And finally, since the mainstream media are owned by enormous corporations that have their own interests—which generally run contrary to the interests of those struggling for radical or progressive social change—getting positive news coverage of protests will always be an uphill, and sometimes futile, battle." This shows that contrary to popular belief, most people who work for these kinds of organizations just do not discuss these topics due to what their channel believes in, especially if the news is more conservative, but even in massive democratic dominated news organizations, that still is not the case. 

We have to seek out these websites ourselves because the government does not want ties to something. They (the government) know what they're doing is bad, however they want to cover their tracks and tie it to anything negative. Therefore, it is discussed in a space where people or society is interested in that sort of thing, and can seek it out themselves. A lot of people are unaware that the United States government funds wars because in return they can get the money if they assist another allied power, even though they have no real reason to be a part of such a thing. In conclusion, the reason why society cannot find these websites without looking something up is due to the mainstream media concising what is said about the United States government. 

Citizen Journalism Post

• Beyond a simple definition, what are the implications? What might be good, what might be bad?

This is a kind of journalism that is written and produced by the average citizen. It is an off-brand kind of journalism, where the reporting could be coming from your best friend and not a news anchor talking about the wars happening in Lebanon. The media that is used is a mix of social media and websites. The reason why this came to be was because of these few reasons, according to ivint.org: 

• Rising lack of trust in traditional media

• Greater coverage on minor issues

• Less censorship in certain areas

• Highlighting and providing a diverse range of voices and perspectives

• Enabling young people to voice more progressive viewpoints

The implications of this is that these people are typical eye witnesses of a scene. It would be as simple as someone recording a burning building, but the person recording does not have any degree in journalism and was just someone in the neighborhood. The good of this is that people on social media can see what is happening in real time, however this information is almost never accurate. This has brought journalistic companies into a swirl of disaster trying to discern. In an article on  Brittanicia, it states that, "Traditional news media, while battling declining readership and viewership, leapt into fray with their own websites and blogs by their own journalists." This further elaborates that news organizations and journalists could lose their money to the average person just posting some random video on Twitter, that gains more traction than a news organization on the TV. Another article called Tate.org.uk discusses how the internet brings a bunch of new waves of information, but we are not only the recipients of that, but now the creators. 

- How might it affect society as a whole?  

This affected society as a whole when John F Kennedy got assassinated and the moments of that happening was caught on camera, but some guy who just so happened to be recording. There is an active website that is still trying to discover what happened on this day. An article called, The JFK Files is actively recruiting citizen journalists to take what information they have and give it to them via google form. 

How might it affect different segments differently — rich/poor, old/young, male/female, gay/straight, majority/minority?

This will overall end up affecting different segments of life by letting the more poor people have access to reporting and maybe even give them the creative ability to potentially make a living out of it themselves. This goes for any kind of person no matter who they are. The common phrase is "anyone can be a reporter". The major impact this would eventually have on people is that they fall in love with reporting and eventually land a career in it, like how a few reporters, such as: Robert Macneil and Jim Lehrer. 

- How might it affect society as a whole?  

This affected society as a whole when John F Kennedy got assassinated and the moments of that happening was caught on camera, but some guy who just so happened to be recording. There is an active website that is still trying to discover what happened on this day. An article called, The JFK Files is actively recruiting citizen journalists alts to take what information they have and give it to them via google form. 

How might it affect different segments differently — rich/poor, old/young, male/female, gay/straight, majority/minority?

This will overall end up affecting different segments of life by letting the more poor people have access to reporting and maybe even give them the creative ability to potentially make a living out of it themselves. This goes for any kind of person no matter who they are. The common phrase is "anyone can be a reporter". The major impact this would eventually have on people is that they fall in love with reporting and eventually land a career in it, like how a few reporters, such as: Robert Macneil and Jim Lehrer. 

How might it affect you? Your family and friends? Your generation?

This will affect our generation of society wanting to create their now news outlets to discuss topics that the larger media companies are failing to cover. This debate has been going on for over a decade now and the rise of social media and technology makes it so much easier for anyone, no matter how old or young, to document and report on things happening around them. There is a difference between this and people who are a part of non-profit newspaper organizations, pursuing journalism at a college level degree. The main takeaway from this is that these are people around us or that we talk to on a day to day basis. My parents could be documenting on things in a local sense. One day, I feel like our generation will eventually be overtaken by some of these blogs, despite them not be 100% credible, but at the same time will be more to human interest due to their easy accessibility, no subscription and no hiding or scamming people out of knowing the truth. 

Diffusions of Innovations Post

 

Who were the pioneers? 

The pioneers of my invention, the emoticon or the emoji, was Scott Fahlman and the Japanese artist Shigetaka Kurita. Scott Fahlman was the one who invented the emoticon through a "Bboard" post when he was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. This caught on because of the fact that people around the world needed more than words to get their point across. 

Who were the early adopters?

The early adopters were people my age because they were anxious to get their hands on this type of technology. So people became early adopters because of the fact that they wanted messaging to be more fun, but also making posts more visually interesting while simultaneously being able to bring a smile to your friends face as you send a smiley face emoji. 

Who were the early majority?

The early majority was, at this point in time, when Apple first came out with the iPhone and emojis were all the rage. The emoticon was obviously still a viable option at this point in time, however more people were drawn to the already premade faces that you could use on a whim. There definitely weren't as many as there are now at this moment, but they were great messaging tools when it came down to it. Instead of saying "okay" you could just send a thumbs up emoji and the conversation would still have the same feel, if not better. 

Who were the laggards?

The laggards or the adopters were people who probably, still to this day, do not have an iPhone. The emotion is probably not at all used within this certain target market to begin with. I know that my grandparents personally never even knew how to access the emojis when they would send me a text. 

What are the downsides or the negative aspects of this?

The only downside is that the more negative emojis can create a much more intense discussion than of previous interest. The more broad and versatile ones may bring upon miscommunication and will therefore make them more inefficient when it comes to discussing things digitally. This was all found in an article written by CNN . 

In The Age Of AI

 

• What about privacy, pros and cons?

The pros to all things AI is that it does make the world more efficient. You are able to do things or just a robot do something else for you, however, the unfortunate aspect to that is the robot could eventually one day do your job. An example of this in the video is a guy who has lived in his hometown all his life and the video shows him driving down and explaining all of the stores and places that used to be present and active, are now either boarded up or are planned to eventually be taken down. A negative result of this is that poverty arose in that specific area significantly. Now, he is trying to give back to the community. The privacy that was concerned was that in the video in Asia, people have the option to pay with their faces or if the person does something bad they can be caught. This is good for when it is used correctly, however there always is going to be a bad apple who will use that information to potentially stalk someone. 

• What about national security?

National security runs down the same line as privacy concerns. The main reason why the government and other higher uo agencies have these kinds of things implemented is because of safety reasons. However, sometimes that information is kept secretly and tucked away or it could be used for someone who is not actually doing something against the law. 

• What about online security and identity theft?

Like I have previously mentioned before, the use of using your face or finger print as a way of security could be taken advantage of and used to track how well that content works, but that information gets put that could in turn jeopardize someone's life potentially. The face ID could make you so much more identifiable of that information gets into the wrong hands, basically. 

Presentation Blog Post

 During my time observing and watching everyone speak there were a few topics that spiked my interest. 

The first one was the printing press because that is how the invention of books and even paper and newspaper became a thing. Some interesting things to take note of here was that once the mechanism was invented, the printing press made over 200 copies of books within a span of three years, considering this was made ages ago as well, which is quite a fast turn around. The people used oil based ink instead of normal ink since it could print and read easier. Prior to this invention, the thought of curating a book would take far too long due to the fact that scribes had to sit down and hand write them. Then, the scribes would re-copy and that was just Inconvenient and super time consuming. Due to the efficiency of this invention, production sales went down in price and the printing press was a huge success for 300 years. 

The next invention I will be talking about is the invention of Twitter. Twitter was originally a side project that was originally supposed to be where texts could be sent to groups of people. The appeal of this app was that you had 140 characters to fit in what you wanted to say, which makes this app successful to this day because in a journalistic aspect you got to catch the reader right away to take them into the Tweet. This is also used for a lot of social media influencers as well businesses. However, despite the benefits, Twitter is actually banned in quite a few countries due to the fact that some countries want to limit what their people have access to. 

Lastly, the one that interested me as well was the creation of Email. The creator, Shiva, actually got a copyright of the email at only the age of 14. The creation of it was super simple at the beginning and had to overcome many challenges until reaching a point of having an inbox, an outbox and a way to send and receive items and also organize them using folders. 

Freaking Out Over Privacy

• How do these issues affect you? You friends and family?

These issues affect me by leaking personal data about my day to day activity through location sharing services, license plate tracking and no real SMS encryption that is promised with SMS messages and other messaging platforms such as WhatsApp. For my friends and family this affects them since, for example in the second Ted Talk video, it discusses how police cars and other license plate readers at intersections can be useful, but also harmful. Even if you have done no wrongdoings for the police to come after you, they store this information "just in case" something happens in the future. Unfortunately, the government does not pick and choose as to what information they hold it is within hundred of thousands of people who are not even aware that their license plates are being used in such a way. An example that was given in the video was that there was a guy who went to the station about this and there were photos of him and his daughters in the driveway of their own home. This is super dangerous because everyone knows where you are and who you are with. 

• What should the government be doing about these issues?

The Government should be using the these technologies only in a case of wrongdoing or absolute necessity not just withholding information to make their lives easier. There was an example given in the third Ted Talk video where using SMS and location tracking to make sure that terrorists, stalkers and other bad people do not commit the crimes they do, but government still keeps this just in case someone becomes a bad apple. They should be picking one choosing instead of having literal databases of citizens casually traveling to the grocery everyday. 

• What can we do to protect ourselves from invasions of our privacy? 
  

What we can do is turn off location services, cookies, any tracking or super personal information. Make fake email accounts with a name for spam and a photo that isn't you. Make sure to secure your social media with second hand authentication, so that hackers cannot access your account and then more information. Always report suspicious activity as well, despot the police being against us to an extent, it is important reach out when an actual threat is in place. Lastly, cover your computer camera as having it open and in access can let hackers put a face to a name, for a not so good answer. 

Research On A Not-So-New Technology

 Who invented your technology? What were the circumstances? What problem were they trying to solve with their invention? 

First off, how did the emoticon come to be? Where did the word even come from? According to, Academy Publication, the word is a combination of emoji and icon which equals emoticon. The reason was to add more a "human touch" to the digital world we were slowing moving towards in 1982. Computer Scientist, Scott Fahlman, was a young professor at Carnegie Mellon University at this time, when one morning, he decided to take his AI research to a whole another level. It was 11:44am on a Tuesday and posted a combination of a hyphen, a colon and a parenthetical. This was posted on CMU's "bboard". The after affects of this was that Fahlman was placed into the Guissiness World Records as the inventor of the "emoticon" which overall leaded into the well known emojis we all use in instant-messaging today. However, it took years to recover the "bboard" post due to the fact that during the 80's there was no real way to save this profound discovery. "This was retrieved from the spice vax oct-82 backup tape by Jeff Baird on September 10, 2002.  The period covered is 16 September 1982 through 21 October 1982." Stated an original thread that was found 20 years later. 

I found an article that Scott Fahlman wrote about the history of the emoticon and how it came be. He elaborates how his discovery was simple, yet record breaking. This later on affected (not until the late 1990's) the now famous "emoji" and lots of other emoticons that you can discover today which is used by over a billion people on a daily basis. Overall, Dr. Fahler walked, so that other people such as Japanese artist Shigetaka Kurita could run into creating the emoji. In another article from CNN Business, he discusses his reasoning behind even using that smiley "emoticon" to begin with. “When you’re on a text-only internet medium, people can’t tell if you’re kidding or not. There’s no body language, no facial expressions.” This explains that his plan was to get sarcasm across, no matter how you felt and so that it could deescalate feelings of hurt that would often occur in email threads or chatrooms. 

How did the invention change our world? What problems did it solve? How did it change communication? Did it have any negative effects?

Overall, this changed the world so much that now when you type the original "smiley" combo into popular platforms such as Microsoft Word it automatically changes into some form of an emoji -- really showing the passing through time. How we went from :-) to 😁. This invention changed our world because people now were to dissern what kind of okay was it. Just like how you interact with your friends on a day to day basis, you have their eye contact, body language and tone of voice. The emotions and the emojis give you that outlet that you would not get otherwise. From adding a laughing emoji, to a thumbs up or a smile, you now can tell how your best friend feels rather than just reading words on a screen. Or, as Dr. Fahlman would put it -- "giving our words a deeper sense of embodiment". 

It solved the well known problem of -- is my boss mad at me, am I crazy or can I just not discern facial and expressive emotions through an email at 7am. From the same CNN article from earlier which explains the history of the emotion puts this perfectly, "...now a global effort to expand our digital forms of expression, spanning staff at tech companies and Unicode as well as input from users"

It overall changed communication with fast forward to the 1999 with the discovery of an emoji, which was used mainly in Japan for awhile before transgressing over to the United States. A group called "Unicode" was interested in making digital hearts on a computer screen, but it was not until years later they're started to shift gears a bit. They are based as an international technology company who was posed with the job to make a language barrier -- not so much of a barrier anymore. Apple and Google were the ones who asked this group to come up with something unique to add to their list. Unlike today with censorship, Unicode even pitched an idea back then with a middle finger emoji where rules, especially in Japan, were less strict. Today, there’s a lot of rules, and they’re fairly well documented and new emojis do go through quite a rigorous process.”

Today, there are over 3,000 emojis, but that does not stop Apple for demanding even more. Every September alongside the annual iPhone release and update, there are a bunch of new emojis that Unicode is constantly developing. Now, everyone has these little faces and icons at the tip of their fingers. Despite having a bunch of options, Fahlman still defaults to the thing he started. “I prefer the little text ones, partly because they’re my babies.”