Posts

Showing posts from April, 2022

Blog 11: Negatives of Social Media

Image
               Social media is often glorified as a necessity in the 21st century with an estimated 3.96 billion users. By 2025 this number is estimated to increase to over half the human population. This comes as no surprise since more and more children are being introduced to social media and other technological advancements at earlier ages. On the outside this may not seem like a problem to many people because as it is a norm to have social media, however kids who're given access to social media at earlier ages are unable to separate it from their lives. This creates a problem with many finding themselves hurt by cyberbullying . Personally, I think idea of cyberbullying is laughable to some extent not only due to all the options you have to prevent it but also the fact that you shouldn't take most people on the internet serious is the first place. However, as I said before many social media users especially younger ones fall victim to cyberbullying due to the fact that they

Blog 10: Awareness, Mediashare, Theories, and Polices

Image
          While listening to the different presentations I learned about the concept of False flags. These are defined as h ostile attack that is designed to look like it was perpetrated by someone other than the person or group. One example of this can be seen by the Muken Incident of 1931. During this incident the Japanese blew up their own railroad to use as an excuse to target the Chinese. Furthermore by blaming the Chinese for the destruction of their railroad they used it as an incentive to invade Manchuria. Another example of this can seen by the Gleiwitz incident . This took place in 1939 in which the Nazis organized a plan to invade Poland. Since Hitler wanted to justify the invasion on Poland, German media outlets claimed that Germans living in Poland were being tortured. This sparked small interest however attention eventually began to elevate during a series of false flag operations that revolved around border incidents. Gleiwitz was a German town located on the border bes

Blog 9: Whistleblowers

Image
      Whistle blowers are defined as people who leak government corruption out to the public. The term was coined in the 19th century by Ralph Nader who used the word whistle to define drawing attention to something.  The first whistle blower I will address is John Marks  who was a foreign service officer who exposed the government project MK Ultra. This was a project took place during the cold war in which the government wanted to test the possibility of mind control, brain washing, and creating human puppets through the use of LSD. One form of study was called acid test which was a series of parties held by Ken Kesey who volunteered to take part in government drug research in which he observed the effects of LSD through movement and sound. This marked the beginning of not just Hippie culture but a multitude of different psychedelic movements. Another series of test was called operation Midnight climax which was directed by a man named George White, a federal narcotics agent. White w

Blog 8: Privacy

Image
      After watching a few TED talks on privacy it reinforced many ideas about keeping your identity safe on the internet. These privacy issues that affect me, my family  and all internet user stem from contracts of adhesion. Furthermore, these are defined as legally binding contracts that prevent the customer from having little to no power in the agreement. This is done through the terms and conditions of every major social media app. Since they are created for the sake of data mining information from their users it's no surprise that this agreement gives them the power to do so. Data mining can be done through multiple methods whether that be user generated info, tracking malware, or deep packet inspection. All of these will effect us through the advertisements, google searches, and video recommendations we see. However due to how my me and my family reserved outlook on social media its safe to say that is the most that would effect us. Many people live their lives as if social m

Blog #7: Diffusion of Innovations - Hip Hop

Image
       Cassette tapes played a big role in the emergence of rap music in the 1960s. As soon as cassette tapes were released rap music followed after through originating in New York city within the black community. When looking at Rogers Diffusion of Innovations theory the pioneers and early adopters where identified as black emcees who performed in block parties and other events. When rap was initially discussed many people were opposed to it because gangster rap acted as the face for rap, thus drawing eyes away from lyricism. However, in the 1980s this negative view greatly changed due to early majority such as Tupac, Nas, Rakim, Wu Tang, and many more who valued creativity, messages, and cleaver wordplay within their songs. This was known as the golden age  of rap due to the cultural influence it had on expanding the genre through addressing social issues and experimenting with  new  instrumentals. This uptake of rap within the mainstream made it reach its tipping point in the 1990s

Blog #6: Historical Technological Communication

Image
           When it comes to technologies throughout history some interesting things that I have learned are about drones. I found their political use to interesting because its in a morally grey area in terms of if the government should use them or not. Some people a in support of drones because they're cheaper than sending humans and provide surveillance in extremely dangerous areas.  Others believe that the drones should not be used by the government because they're not always accurate and very secretive. A good example of this is the incident where the government mistook someone else for a  facilitator for the Islamic state.  This caused the death of the targeted Zemari Ahmadi and 7 children all apart of his family. I learned the main difference between drones and unnamed aerial vehicles is that drones do not have a operator and UAVs do.       Another technology that I learned about was the telegraph. This was created in 1837 by Samuel Morse who wanted to provide a more effe

Blog #5: AI, New Technologies and Privacy

Image
      With the emergence of automation within the workforce many people have begun to fear the new age of technology. This fear stems from the idea of mass job loss with many people believing that  over the next decade over 20 million jobs will be absorbed by automation. Automation has also been seen to impact people differently depending on gender and ethnicity. Lower class Black and Latino people are more likely to suffer from the effects of automation since the main target for automation is entree level jobs. This became apparent when the pandemic was still at large because many jobs like cashiers, cooks, waiters, etc took a huge loss due to them being manual. On the other hand, robot manufactures view automation as a good thing because it they believe that the making of robotic parts will either lead to more jobs or have no negative effects on it . Even if it wont restore all the jobs lost they think of it as something evolutionary that needs to be accomplished for the sake of pr