Final Post

 My Relationship With Technology

The little devices that we use everyday hold so much power over us. Instead of being in the present we are often in another world on our phones. We are no longer as aware of our surroundings and always have our faces in our phones, looking at what other people are doing, watching mindless videos, or catching up on what is going on in our world (which is usually misleading information.) 

These little devices hold our whole life in them, from our cherished photos to text message conversations that we would never want to get out. On average, we as Americans spend about 7 hours and 4 minutes on their phones each day.  This is about 107 days a year that we spend on our phones. This average of daily screen time has increased by 50 minutes a day since 2013. 

As much as I would love to say that I don't fall under these statistics, that is simply not true. Looking at my screen time statistics as of December 13, 2022 I spend an average of 6 hours on my phone each day. For me, the majority of this time is spent on TikTok, text messages, and Netflix. 

Just like most American teenagers, I too am addicted to my phone. When I am bored I will spend countless hours on TikTok, instead of going to bed I will spend hours scrolling through social media, when I want to communicate with someone I will text them. This makes my relationship with technology unhealthy since I depend on it to keep me entertained instead of occupying my time with something healthy like exercise. 

I give too much of my time to technology instead of giving that time to my family, friends, pets, and even academics. Something that I find myself doing too often is getting distracted while completing a schoolwork assignment. I will often pick up my phone and mindlessly get distracted by scrolling through social media when I should be completing my assignment. Using social media or texting, makes it more difficult to learn and retain the information, increases the time it takes to complete homework, and may ultimately result in lower test scores.

The biggest problem with how much time Americans spend on their phone is how much misleading information we read and think is true. Since anyone can put anything on the internet and social media a lot of this information is false. A study found that 64% of adults believe fake news stories. How much of the internet is fake? Studies generally suggest that, year after year, less than 60 percent of web traffic is human; some years, according to some researchers, a healthy majority of it is bot. 

This means that in most cases these hours that we spend on our technology is not making us smarter and informing us, but rather informing us with fake information. I often worry that what I read and see is false so I will almost always try to find other websites and opinions to weed out what is true and what is misleading information. I do this most often when I see a cool product on the internet that I am interested in buying. After reading other websites and reviews I often find that the product is a scam. However most people do not worry that the information they get from the internet is fake and just believe whatever they see. 

In the majority of cases technology has an unhealthy hold on everyone. It is now very common to see a family out at a restaurant and everyone is on their phones instead of engaging with each other in real time. This often hurts our relationships with our friends and families. However, if you do not live very close to your family, technology helps us to keep in touch with our loved ones. We can pick up our phones and call or text them at any time since we are unable to see them in person a lot. Before cell phones it was very hard to keep in touch with loved ones that live far away. 

After googling "Lacy Nicole Waggoner" these images of myself came up. All came from newspaper articles. The first photo is of me competing in the regional tennis tournament in high school. The second photo is my friends and I's photos in the newspaper when we won all county scholar. The third photo of me is when I was legion queen for the veterans day parade in my hometown. Although these are all photos that I would not mind an employer seeing, what also comes up is links to my TikTok account, Instagram account, Twitter account and so on. Although there is nothing inappropriate on any of my social media accounts, I would not necessarily want an employer scrolling through these accounts. 

In conclusion, we should all be more aware of how much of our information can be accessed through the internet and should keep this in mind when posting something. We should also always check other websites after reading something on the internet since there is so much misleading information out there. Most importantly, we should spend more of our time with our friends and families in the present. 

EOTO: What I learned

 Five Eyes

After listening to Maddie Berl's presentation on five eyes (something I had never heard of before) I was very intrigued to learn more. Five Eyes is an intelligence alliance with 5 countries including The United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. "It is alleged that each party to the Agreement spies on other parties’ citizens and therefore is shared amongst at least the collective."

Five eyes is the highest level of secret alliance, every piece of information, all operations, conversations, and accomplishments have been kept between these 5 countries. Five Eyes was first formed between the United States and the United Kingdom in 1946 after World War II first called UKUSA. In 1955 Canada, Australia, and New Zealand were added to the alliance. 

What I found most intriguing is that the Five Eyes violates the 4th and 5th amendment. The fourth amendment states "The rights of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated." However the Five Eyes alliance does not abide by this amendment and searches and seizures are permissible under the Five Eyes since they were conducted on behalf of the United States Government somehow. 

The 5th amendment guarantees that an individual cannot be compelled by the government to provide incriminating information about him or herself. However under Five Eyes citizens were not able to plead the 5th. 

Five Eyes has been violating our fourth and fifth amendment rights since 1946. The American government uses other countries like Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom to gather information on American citizens.

This is scary because this affects citizens of all 5 countries. The alliance had been formed for 66 years before American citizens found out about Five Eyes through Edward Snowden who risked his life to share the truths of the NSA including shedding light on Five Eyes.It has also been reported that Japan is proposed to become the sixth alliance of Five Eyes. 

Sources

Maddie's presentation 

https://maddieberl23.blogspot.com 

 Privacy: Online and Off

After watching the Ted talks I have further realized that our government has made it impossible for us as citizens to have any privacy at all. Not only does social media keep taps on us and only show us what we are interested in, but so does security cameras, automatic license plate trackers, and telephones. 

In the first Ted Talk, tattoos were referred to as what the internet knows about us. Tattoos on a person's body can tell us what they have been through, what they care about, and even the date that a loved one of theirs died. Facebook, twitter, Google, LinkedIn, cell phones, GPS, yelp, security cameras, etc are electronic tattoos that provide us with as much information about you as any tattoo would. 

Something that I learned that I found especially alarming is that now with how accurate face recognition is, you can take a picture of a random person, the Internet will tell you who they are and provide you with all their social medias in all records of them. Surveillance equipment is another very alarming device that allows for a mince amounts of information to be gathered on us, such as where we go, what our routines are, and so on. 

Automatic license plate trackers also allow for a mass amount of information to be collected on who you are, where are you go, and who you are with. License plate trackers are everywhere on police cars and stationed on poles on the roads. An innocent civilian who has never been convicted of a crime, who often drives in American, can go to their local police station and find that there are multiple pictures of you driving in your car, (that states the date and time) and even shows who is in the car with you. 

Another scary fact is that our cellphones and the networks that carry our calls were wired for surveillance first and foremost, along with cell phone towers can track where you are at any time you are making a phone call. 

Not only do these issues stated in these Ted Talks affect me, my friends, and my family, but they affect everyone in the United States of America. We should all be more knowledgeable about these issues and understand that we are all studied and tracked. 

The government should not allow for this much of our information to be out there for anyone to see and should set laws that help protect our privacy. 

To protect ourselves from these invasions of our privacy we should often use third party apps to communicate such as WhatsApp. We should also use FaceTime to talk on the phone instead of a regular phone call since FaceTime can not be intercepted.

 Living in the Age of AI

The creation of AI or artificial intelligence dates back to 1956 when classical philosophers attempted to describe human thinking as a symbolic system. Over time the creation of artificial intelligence has evolved and can now preform human like tasks (such as self driving cars) and makes it possible for machines to learn from experience. 

Some positives in the evolution of AI is that now computers are able to personalize everything to you. This means if you often search things about dogs, dog advertisements are now going to pop up when scrolling through websites and social media. A good example of this is how personalized our TikTok feeds are to us. TikTok personalizes your feed what you like to see so say if you are a republican, no videos that share democratic views pop up on your feed. 

Some negatives of the invention of AI is everything that you do produces data. We thought that we are users of social media but really social media uses us. We thought that we search google but really google searches us. This also creates the danger of identity theft since all of this information is kept on us.   Something I learned in the video that is most frightening to me is that Alexa now tracks if we are sad by the tone of our voice when we ask her a question. 

AI knows everything about us including what are interests are, if we are male or female, if we are gullible, if you are racist, etc. Though it can be helpful for the internet to know all these things to help personalize things to us, it is scary that this information can be found and kept. 

The bigger issue is most of us don't really care if AI is tracking us and keeping all this information on us. Although some care a lot and a citizen in California got a law passed that states that anyone can go to any company and ask what information have you gathered on me and the company has to tell you. They call this the right to know. They also created the law that on any website there has to be a checkbox that the user can click that says "do not sell my information." It also created a third party opt-out that after you check this "do not sell my information" box it tells all the websites that you browse on to not sell your information. 

This video opened my eyes on how evolutionary artificial intelligence really is, how we don't have any privacy, and informed me on how much us as citizens are tracked and how much information is kept on us. 

 EOTO: Online Influencing 

When people think of the word “influencers” they think of their favorite Tiktoker or youtuber. Many people think that influencers are a new thing but influencers have been around for as long as we’ve had advertisements and television. The only difference now is that we have online influencers that use social media platforms like instagram, TikTok, snapchat, and facebook to influence opposed to someone's face on a McDonalds poster that is plastered on their windows.

Influencers are well known people that brands will partner with to encourage their fans to buy their products. In return the influencer will get paid for making a post about their products and/or promoting fans to use a code that is linked to the influencer and the influencer will make commission off of that purchase. 

Influencers also make their money from their posts on social media such as Charli D’Amelio is reported to make around $50,000 for each tiktok post unsponsored and $100,000 for each sponsored post. This means that if Charli posts a 20 second video on Tiktok of her dancing to the new Tiktok trend, she makes $50,000. Social media platforms pay influencers to post on their platforms because these influencers are promoting their platform by posting on it.

The pros of having the job of online influencing is it is a job that you can do from home. Some cons are that this is probably not a career for most, your whole life is put on blast, and you may not have a steady income since if your views drop you will get paid less. The pros of online influencing is that this created more jobs. Online influencing is especially beneficial to businesses and brands because they can now pay an influencer to promote their brand and millions of people will see this post which increases the sales of that brand or business. 

Some cons of online influencing include influencers often post unrealistic lifestyles and since these influencers are getting paid to promote these brands they don’t care if these are good brands or not which their fans will not know and still buy the products. This is often referred to as “deceptive advertising.”

For example Kim Kardashian faced a lawsuit against the SEC. The investors claimed that celebrity endorsements had misled them into buying cryptocurrency EthereumMax at “inflated prices.” Last month, the SEC fined Kardashian for failing to disclose the payment she received for promoting the crypto asset. Kardashian settled the charges by paying $1.26 million. This included a $1 million, in addition to the $250,000 she received for the promotion, plus additional interest.

Online influencing affects different segments differently. Online influencers are typically young, attractive, female, have a higher wealth status, are straight, and fit the norms of society. The percentage of female influencers to male influencers is 77% female to 23% male. Although there are definitely lots of popular influencers that don't meet this criteria, the most popular and majority do fit this criteria. 

Online influencing affects my generation more than any other generation because it was created in my generation and we are more easily influenced. My generation is more susceptible to buy the products that influencers promote and follow these influencers which further promotes the platforms and the businesses. 

Diffusion of Innovations

 The Telephone 

The telephone is one invention that changed the world and opened a wide world of communication. Before the invention of telephones, we used the postal service, carrier pigeons, newspapers, and telegraphs to communicate and get our information. In 1876 the first telephone was invented by alexander graham bell although he was not the first inventor to come up with the idea of a talking telegraph. The telephone was invented to improve the capabilities of the telegraph.

The invention of the telephone caught on and spread so quickly because the telephone allowed for faster and more efficient communication. Before the invention, mostly used telegraphs to communicate which took a lot longer to get the message to the receiver unlike how the telephone is instant. There were early adopters for these reasons as well. 

The invention of the telephone shocked the world because now anyone could talk to anyone instantly no matter the distance. Another reason people adopted the invention so quickly is because it was expensive to send a short telegraph somewhere that wouldn't reach the intended receiver for weeks or even months. The telephone was a single larger that expense that allowed consumers to talk as much as they want with no additional cost. 

After the telephone was invented, there was a huge debate on whether the technology could cause harmful health effects which is still an on going debate today. For this reason many people were late adopters. 

Even though about 90% of the world owns a cell phone today, some are still concerned for their health so they won't use a telephone. Another reason that some people won't adopt the telephone is because they value face to face conversation and not digital conversations. 

Some negative impacts of the telephone include the telephone allows for someone to get in touch with you anytime they want which some don't like, the later invention of cellphones caused wrecks from distracted driving, face to face communication was declined, and the telephone can interrupt your focus of what is going on right in front of you. 

The benefits of the telephone outweigh the negatives of the invention because the telephone allowed for quicker and more communication throughout the world. The invention also allowed businesses to grow and network by they could now quickly talk to other businesses. 

Antiwar Voices

Antiwar Voices

After exploring antiwar.com and The American Conservative, I found that I have never heard these positions and opinions before in the news. On these websites I found articles such as "More Fog, More War", "US Told Ukraine to Tread Carefully After Missile Hit Poland", "Is 'Our Democracy' Failing Our Country" etc. These articles share information and ideas that are never shared on mainstream news outlets. 

I feel that we never hear anti-war voices because our government doesn't want us to hear them. Our government doesn't want citizens to disagree on what they are doing so they try to suppress every voice that goes against what they think and do. Another reason for our government not letting anti war voices be heard in the news is because they don't want other countries to know that some Americans are advocating anti war. If other countries knew this,  it may would make the United States look weak and other countries may think that they could take the United States over and even attack us. 

Censoring anything that goes against what the government is doing especially anti war voices is not new to other countries such as China removing articles off the internet that spread anti war ideas and even posts that share anti war protest eyewitness accounts which you can read more about here. 

In the U.S. citizens are supposed to be able to say whatever they want to say, post whatever they want to post, have and share their own opinions, and be able to criticize the government under the 1st amendment but obviously that is not totally the case when anti war voices are being suppressed by our government.

For these reasons, it is very important to do your own research on ideas that goes against what the government thinks and try to find websites like antiwar.com and The American Conservative because there is an unlimited list of voices that the government tries to keep out of the media and suppress for their own benefits.