Technology Today

As much as I would like to say that my relationship with technology has had a positive effect on my life, I believe that my use of technology has done more harm than good. I find myself constantly relying on technology to get me through the day, and yet, the messages that I get and rely on so heavily are polluting my mind and diminishing my self-worth every day.

In the “Mad World” video we watched in class, I was appalled by how true everything in the video is. People have become slaves to their phones and the technology they use on a daily basis. One part of the video that stuck out to me was when the characters had emojis coming from their phones, yet, the characters’ faces had no expression or emotion. 

Every day, I text my friends and family, and lots of times, I’ll use emojis to describe how I’m feeling. However, most times I’ll send emojis describing the emotion I wish I was feeling or the emotion I think I’m expected to feel instead of what I’m truly feeling. This just emphasizes how our phones can cause us to become shadows of who we really are, shells of what we want to be on the outside just covering up who we really are on the inside. Technology allows us to be who we want to be. With things like Photoshop, face tune, and other body altercation platforms, people are being taught that through technology, we can change to be an “ideal” version of ourselves instead of being happy in our own skin. 

Having this kind of negative power has led to issues in youths, causing low-self esteem, and body image issues including higher rates of body dysmorphia in teens and young adults. If not for the way people show themselves on social media, this issue could be far less extreme and young people might not feel the need to look like the fake people they see online. I too have fallen victim to this and from my own perspective, it’s scary how quickly seeing the perfect image of yourself online after altering it to make it look the way you want it to can make you hate the way you really look. Technology has provided this evil power. I wish I didn’t rely so heavily on the validation of social media and photo editing to determine my self-worth, and I’m sure there are lots of other people out there who feel the same.

I noticed a similar pattern to this in the “Mad World” video when one of the characters was given an injection in her behind to make herself look bigger. So many people see others who look like this online and it gives the impression that people should change who they are to be happy, which never should have been the case. 

On a similar note, I feel like I give technology far too much of my time to be healthy. Usually, I spend a few hours a day on my social media accounts, including platforms such as Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok. Most of the time, I’m watching brainless videos and entertaining myself with videos of no real substance. I wish I was using my time more wisely and using social media to do positive things like look at the news and understand what’s happening around the world, as an aspiring journalist I need to use my time on technology with a better purpose. 

Furthermore, the information that is geared toward me with technology is usually biased. Technology looks at what I typically interact with and uses that information to show me the information it thinks I want to see. Sometimes, this can even lead to things like echo chambers, causing me to only see information that reinforces my previous beliefs. This causes misinformation and leads me to believe that I’m being informed when in reality, I’m not actually finding any new information. This can be dangerous and can lead to unconscious biases caused by technology. 

In terms of my family, I think that technology can be a positive thing for them. For instance, both my mom and dad work from home. Without technology, they wouldn’t be able to communicate with clients or promote their businesses using social media and the Internet. My grandmother likes to use her iPhone to look at my siblings’ and my social media accounts and to text us when we’re away at school. I believe that technology is a positive thing for her because she uses it to connect with the people she’s closest to. Although I do this as well and so do other young adults my age, I feel like somebody like my grandmother is less negatively affected by technology because she isn’t also faced with the constant pressure to be perfect and fit in in today’s technological age like we are. 

When looking through other online articles, a story from Fast Company called “I’m 14, and I Quit Social Media” really stood out to me. Similarly to the girl who wrote this article, my parents have been posting pictures of me online for as long as I can remember. In this article, the writer shows how even though people don’t always realize it, posting other people on social media without their permission can be a huge invasion of privacy and it can cause their digital footprint to grow without them even knowing. The most dangerous part about this though is that people don’t even see the danger in posting other people online until it’s brought to their attention, just like when this girl brought it to her mother and sister’s attention. Technology can cloud our awareness and make us forget that the things we’re posting online, even of other people, stay online forever. 

Another potentially negative aspect of technology is that nowadays, employers look up potential employees online before hiring them. Although this doesn’t seem like a big deal as long as the potential employee hasn’t done anything wrong, this can be a big issue for some people. 

Many people have common names, and should a potential employer look up an employee’s name and find a criminal record, an inappropriate photo, a case of cyberbullying, etc. that potential employee could lose a job opportunity even if they weren’t the culprit of the online misbehavior that the employer came across. Personally, I’ve looked my name up online many times because I’m afraid that one day this could happen to me, however, I’m fortunate enough to be in the clear as of now. 

It’s impossible to look past the immense power of technology and how even though it has been an enormous development for humanity, there are great dangers and negative aspects that come along with it. Personally, I don’t know how much longer I can keep up my relationship with technology, but in this generation, it would also be nearly impossible to give it up.

Terms and Conditions EOTO Reflection

From watching everyone's presentations, I've learned a lot about awareness, the media sphere, theories, and policy. 

One presentation that stood out to me was on the echo chamber.

In this presentation, I learned that an echo chamber is an environment where a person only receives information or opinions that reflect their own. 

Sometimes you’re in an echo chamber without even realizing you are in an echo chamber. This is because people are constantly using their phones and phones are constantly analyzing their user's activity to market things to that user that it believes they're interested in. 

Your phone is only rooting stories toward you that it thinks you want to see, and not necessarily the latest news that pertains to other important issues. Some people say this is convenient because it gives you the information you want, but you can be missing other important news. Therefore, it’s important to diversify our news.

Some of the pros of echo chambers are that you get some information on a topic and it boosts people’s confidence. However, some of the cons are that it can cause misinformation, limit people’s problem-solving, and people can stop thinking for themselves.

People start to depend on echo chambers and they don’t seek out other information, causing them to limit themselves in terms of news. People also stop thinking outside the box in terms of other people’s opinions and become very closed-minded. 

Something else that stood out to me in this presentation is that it seemed very closely related to my presentation on confirmation bias. Confirmation bias, similar to echo chambers, causes people to be limited by their own views and opinions and keeps them from branching out and seeking new information that opposes their preconceived views. This was an interesting connection to me and it made me realize how interconnected all of these concepts are.

Another presentation that stood out to me was chord cutting. 

Chord-cutting refers to the practice of canceling cable or satellite TV subscriptions in favor of streaming services or other forms of content delivery. These programs are canceled in order to save money on streamlined services

Some of the pros of chord cutting are that people no longer have long-term contracts, there's more flexibility, people save on costs, and there's access to a wider range of content.

However, some of the cons of chord cutting are that people become dependent on internet access, there's content fragmentation, limited access to live programming, and a lack of local programming. I find these last two points to be the most important. 

As a result of chord cutting, people are no longer getting news because all of these streaming services offer shows on entertainment and not mainstream news. As a result, people are entertaining themselves to death, and aren't informing themselves at all. 

In addition to this, chord cutting has caused cable companies to lose millions of people and their business, it makes me think that maybe these cable companies won’t be around much longer and we’ll be completely overrun by streaming services. 

This was an interesting presentation to see because I feel like this generation is being completely taken over by streaming services. In my everyday life, I use streaming services all the time, but I don’t think I’ve accessed typical cable news in months since I’ve been in college. This is incredibly weird to think about because when I was little, everything was cable news. Now, kids are growing up in this generation with streaming services being the new normal, in enough time, kids won’t even know what cable TV is.

Confirmation Bias: Prisoners of Assumption

Confirmation bias is a common issue that is seen very often in everyday life. According to the online Google definition, “confirmation bias is the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one’s existing theories or beliefs.” There are many factors to confirmation bias, especially in journalism. However, some of the most important things to understand about confirmation bias are its effects, what causes it, and how to minimize it. 

The effects of confirmation bias are broad, however, there are certain effects of confirmation bias that we see in the newsroom. Confirmation bias can influence a reporter’s assessment of whether a story is worth pitching to an editor as well as the editor’s decision to release the story being pitched. Not only this, but confirmation bias can affect an editor’s decision to assign certain stories to one reporter as opposed to another. This becomes problematic as biases end up laced in news articles, hindering journalists from doing their number one job, telling the truth.

Confirmation bias can lead to poor decisions because it distorts our reality and causes people to gather limited evidence. A negative aspect of this is that when people draw conclusions from pre-confirmed notions that information is more likely to be false compared to evidence gained objectively. Confirmation bias can also lead to social divides and stalled-policy making as we favor information that confirms our beliefs and ignores the critical information that sees things from a different angle.

The cause of confirmation bias usually comes from subconscious prejudice in our minds. However, there has been an ongoing debate that confirmation bias could also be the result of heuristics. A heuristic is a cognitive shortcut. This has been an ongoing debate because a heuristic is used intentionally rather than subconsciously. 

Confirmation bias is motivated by wishful thinking and is also common in cases of anxiety. Anxious individuals see the world as dangerous. A good example of this is when people with low-self esteem look for constant signs that a person doesn’t like them while having a conversation with that person. This is biased as the anxious individual is only paying attention to negative information about the other person’s behavior as opposed to neutral actions they could be missing. 

A common instance of confirmation bias is during presidential elections. During elections, people tend to seek out information that makes the candidate they support seem like the better option while ignoring all negative information they might come across. 

To give a recent example, people believe that the latest election between President Joe Biden and Donald Trump was rigged in terms of votes. Although since this election, there has been information to come out providing evidence against a rigged election, many people in support of Donald Trump still believe that the election was rigged. 

On the other side of this debate, people who support Biden refuse to believe that the voting system could have been corrupted although there has also been information released suggesting that foul play might have been present during the voting process. Either way, this debate is still heavily discussed and although everyone has their own beliefs as to what they think happened, it’s especially difficult to put political views to the side and look at an instance like this objectively and without confirmation bias.

Now, one of the most important things to take away from confirmation bias is that even though it would be impossible to eliminate bias completely, there are ways to minimize it. The three steps to minimizing confirmation bias are to establish a process, become aware of your biases, and pay attention to how you feel. 

In terms of establishing a process, to do this you must first identify the problem you’re trying to solve. Then, you must establish the criteria that will be important in solving this problem and whether you are fit or not to make a judgment on this issue given the potential biases that could arise. 

Next, you must weigh the criteria objectively and decide what information is the most important in terms of relevance, not pre-existing prejudice and opinions. 

Following this step, it’s important to become aware of your biases. To do this, you must know that despite the biases you already have, you’ll never be able to completely get rid of bias. The important thing to do is to look at the information you’ve gathered in terms of validity and truth. 

In journalism, journalists must go through this process constantly.

Journalists have to put out stories that are geared towards the public in a way that publishes the truth and only vital information aside from personal opinion. This step is not unlike the job of a journalist, to be aware of bias, people must think in terms of the people rather than just in terms of what they think as an individual. To do this, people must be able to not only see the things they already believe but also play Devil’s advocate for themselves to report on both sides of the issue. 

In the final step of this process, a person must pay attention to how they feel. Oftentimes, people think that their emotions cloud their judgment and get in the way of proper thinking, however, this is not entirely true. Experiencing emotions while making a decision can prompt attention, memory, and creativity. However, in order for your emotions to help rather than harm your decision-making, you must not only monitor your emotions but also recognize when they could be causing the intrusion of biases.

Diffusion of Innovaions: The Lightbulb

With how many people were involved in creating the lightbulb, each of them falls at different levels of the "diffusion of innovation" bell curve. 

Humphrey Davy

At the beginning of the lightbulb's emergence, British chemist, Humphrey Davy falls in the pioneer category. This is because he created the first lightbulb in 1809, however, this version of the lightbulb had imperfect beginnings, which led to Edison’s improvement on the lightbulb later on. At this point on the lightbulb timeline, Davy was among a small group of people who considered the lightbulb to be "experimental," as his version barely worked and it wasn't yet popularized.

Warren De La Rue, Henry Woodward, Matthew Evans, and Joseph Wilson Swan can be considered the early adopters of the lightbulb because, between the years of 1840 and 1879, these men started using and improving upon the version of the lightbulb created by Davy, however, they weren't able to come up with the commercial model of the lightbulb that our society uses today. De La Rue created a long-lasting lightbulb that was too expensive, Woodward and Evans patented the lightbulb but didn't move forward, and Swan created a glass lightbulb but it didn't last long enough. These men jumped on the uptake of the lightbulb as it started growing in popularity and more and more people attempted to perfect it. This leads us to the early majority.

Thomas Edison can be considered the main figure in the early majority of the lightbulb. in 1880, Thomas Edison bought Woodward and Evan’s patent, changed the lightbulb's filament, and created the first real commercial model. This makes him a part of the early majority because Edison's version of the lightbulb was the final step in its uptake before it reached its tipping point and started to decrease in popularity.

Thomas Edison

Following Edison's commercial version of the lightbulb, Irving Langmuir created neon lights in 1913. In terms of the bell curve, Langmuir and his first-time buyers fall within the "late adopters" category. At this point, everyone was using Edison's version of the lightbulb, and people who were just now jumping on the bandwagon when neon lights were created were slow to start using this invention. This simple fact makes them late adopters because they joined the fad later than the vast majority of people. In addition to this, at this time the commercial model of the lightbulb was being built upon and changed, causing a maturation to occur in the popularity of the lightbulb as other inventors attempted to faze out Edison's version and replace it with their own improved version. Langmuir is a prime example of this.

Then, closing the final few stages of the bell curve, Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano, and Shuji Nakamura created the first LED lamp in 1997. This makes them the laggard components of the "diffusion of innovation" bell curve. At this point, saturation is starting to occur and fewer people are using the improved versions of the lightbulb. Although, it's important to note that LED lights have grown in popularity slightly throughout the years, showing how the bell curve will never actually reach zero. The bell curve has a long tail, which in terms of the lightbulb, I see as being LEDs, as most people have already gotten the commercial model of the lightbulb.

As time goes on, the penetration of the lightbulb will never truly reach zero because there will always be people buying the newer versions of it despite how long it's been since the creation of the initial model.

The Age of AI

After watching this documentary, I was shocked by how much power artificial intelligence has in this day and age. It's both incredible and terrifying how much AI can do and how much information it can gather without us even knowing it.

At the beginning of the documentary, it addressed the game AlphaGo, a complex strategy game that people have spent years growing their skills at. It surprised me that an AI program was able to not only beat these well-experienced professionals but also that it made a move in the game that the professionals hadn’t even fathomed of making. It's not surprising that this is remembered as the pivotal moment when AI became mature and everyone jumped on the bandwagon. 

What struck me the most from watching this documentary was how many people have lost their jobs due to AI systems that can do their jobs better than they do. To make things worse, plants are getting torn down because these robots are taking peoples' jobs.

This is concerning because people are losing money and losing work as a result of technology that doesn’t need the money that comes from these jobs to do things like pay taxes, support a family, pay for groceries, etc. It's a very sad reality.

Another thing mentioned in the documentary is that our productivity gets better over time, and before, our pay and income rates would also increase with these productivity rates. However, now the income rates aren’t matching the productivity rates. People are losing work and losing income, yet, due to AI productivity is still increasing. This change is scary how quickly things can switch places.

Another chilling aspect is that one robot can now do the jobs of ten people.

I was also surprised to hear that children with parents who have lost their jobs to automation are more likely to repeat a grade, fail out of school, drop out of school, etc. It’s frightening to know that AI is not only affecting people in the workforce, but children as well who haven’t gotten a chance to establish themselves and are already being put in a bad spot.

A question raised by one of the interviewees that resonated with me was, "If we continue to go in an automated system, what do we do from there?" He also said that there are only people at the top (above AI) but nobody in the middle or at the bottom to support a family. Therefore, even if we crash in the future, the automated system will still be there to take over. It’s concerning that the future is so uncertain as a result of AI.

One thing to keep in mind as a result of this is that with how advanced AI has become, it will always be there. The best way to improve our society with automation still being around is to implement it in positive ways that won't take people out of jobs or invade their privacy.

On the topic of privacy, it’s scary to know that Google is trying to learn everything that it can about us. In the documentary, one of the interviewees said that an employee at Google told him he’d be horrified at how much they knew about him. This is an insane invasion of privacy and what makes it even scarier is that people don’t even know it’s happening. It’s one thing to gather information from someone through a survey or some other form of information gathering but to take it from people when they’re unaware and think that they’re the ones in control, is absolutely terrifying. 

Another issue we're facing right now is that because technology made things better in the past, we've started to trust it thinking it would always make things better. This belief is just now starting to shift and in my opinion, this is definitely for the better. 

In terms of social media, there's a lot more information gathering happening behind than scenes than we're aware of. It’s chilling to think that on social media, it doesn’t matter what we’re posting, just that we’re posting. It’s because of our use of social media that it has predictive abilities to tell us what it thinks we would like. It’s unsettling to think of all the gathering social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram are doing every time we log on and post. 

Furthermore, products like Alexa and Google Home are being trained to not only recognize who you are but the things that you do to understand more about you in real-time to make inferences. This way, the AI can target ads and other information to you that it thinks you’ll benefit from. This micro-behavioral targeting is directed towards individuals based on an intimate understanding of their personalities. This is unsettling because technology isn’t supposed to have that intimate understanding of who we are as people. To me, this seems like a step too far in terms of privacy.

One of the biggest social media platforms guilty of taking peoples' data is Facebook. In the documentary, Zuckerberg claims that Facebook is going to make privacy protection a priority and I personally don’t believe this. Facebook has already taken so much data from people, how can it be that easy to just erase all of that technology? What happens to all the data that’s already been collected?

Another thing that scared me in this documentary was the high-tech surveillance and AI in China that allegedly allows them to identify who would be a terrorist and who needs re-education. How can an AI system possibly know this and what happens to a person’s reputation if the AI is wrong? That could ruin someone’s life forever. Although I can see the idea behind this technology and how it could be a positive advancement for national security, it seems highly unethical and targeted toward certain ethnic groups.

What I liked about this documentary was that even though it brings up a lot of issues with AI, it also proposed future solutions on how to avoid privacy invasion at its extent. In the next 12 months, we’ll be able to go to any company and ask them what information they have on us and they’ll have to give us an answer as a part of our “right to know.” It’s also incredible that at some point in the future, with the click of a button, we’ll be able to go online and say “Don’t sell my information,” then, this will be spread to all different companies to prevent them from selling our information as well. I think that this is a step in the right direction toward eliminating future privacy invasions.

The Progressive Era

After learning about the Progressive Era and how anti-war voices were silenced during WWI as a result of the Sedition Act, it's interesting to know that even in the modern day, anti-war voices are pushed to the side and hidden in an attempt to silence them without actually silencing them. 

In my opinion, I see the U.S. keeping anti-war voices out of mainstream media as a reflection of their intolerance and repression. This is almost insane to be thinking about because I can't imagine why people would want to repress anti-war voices. 

War breaks the peace and causes drastic amounts of damage through violence, if I had lived during the time of WWI, I absolutely would have wanted to be an anti-war voice just because those are my beliefs.

It's incredibly strange for me to imagine that people would want to muffle those who are trying to keep peace in the U.S. only to cause more violence and loss. 

However, the more interesting fact at hand is that this is still an issue today. I had never seen websites like ANTIWAR and The American Conservative. After scrolling through these sites and seeing how much content they have, I was amazed that I'd never even heard word that there were websites like these. 

The fact that sites like these are still being kept out of mainstream media despite how far we've come as a country since WWI, it just shows that no matter how much we advance in society, there are still some things that will never change. One key difference, however, is that at least now people are able to post this type of content without immediate fear of being executed or thrown in jail. 

Another thing I noticed on these websites, specifically ANTIWAR, was how many contributions they had listed. In the time of the Progressive Era, people never would have had their names listed with anti-war propaganda as a safety measure to keep themselves from being jailed. 

I find it inspiring that now, not only are people able to put their names towards a movement they believe in, but so many people have been able to do so. With how many people that contributed on just these two sites, it makes me wonder how many people were secretly involved in anti-war propaganda during WWI or if this number has just grown since the imminent threat of death for being a part of anti-war voices have subsided. 

I think that the reason we have to seek out strong anti-war voices outside of the mainstream media is that people are still hesitant to let this type of speech be seen everywhere and maybe they think it could cause arguments that lead to larger issues. 

However, to relate back to the eight values of free expression, I think this is untrue. 

The third value, Stable Change, talks about allowing people to "vent" so that the government can better monitor potentially dangerous groups. If the government thought that having anti-war voices was really that dangerous, the best option would be to let them speak in mainstream media in order to keep tabs on them and what they're speaking for.

In other words, we should not have to scour the internet just to find strong anti-war voices and they should be more prominent for everyone to hear, even if they aren't looking for them. 

Technology EOTO Reflection

After watching today's EOTO presentations, I learned a lot about how technology has shaped our society today and how we communicate with each other. I also learned a lot about how certain types of technology have shifted and grown to create other kinds of technology. 

One of my favorite presentations of the day was about the history of CDs. In this presentation, she talked about the history of CDs and how they have been fazed out of society in a way and that people today rarely use CDs as often as they did in the 1980s. 

I found it interesting from this presentation that no actual creator is credited with the invention of the CD because so many people and inventions played a part in its creation. This stuck out to me because it reminded me of the lightbulb and how Thomas Edison is technically credited with its creation, but so many other people played a role in it that it's not completely correct to give all of the credit to Edison. 

Another thing from this presentation that stuck out to me is that CDs impacted their own death, causing the MP3 to skyrocket, resulting in 20% of CD experiential losses since 2003. This was something that intrigued me because I didn't realize how much of a stepping stone CDs were for the next generation of technology following in their footsteps, Without CDs, the implementation of the MP3 and other similar technology after that wouldn't have been possible, and that's an incredible thing to think about. 

My second favorite presentation from the day focused on the creation of Facebook and its impact on society. From this presentation, I saw that Facebook was launched in 2004 by Harvard student, Marc Zuckerberg, for students on campus to connect with each other. Creating such a complex social media platform was possible for Zuckerberg as a result of his gift for coding which he used to his advantage. 

Zuckerberg's idea for Facebook was originally sparked by the first app he made called FaceMash. In this app, the faces of two female Harvard students would pop up on the screen, and other students would have to choose one based on which girl was more attractive. This didn't sit well with me because obviously, as a female, a site like this is very insulting and demeaning. 

Hearing this during the presentation, reminded me of a film I'd recently watched (on another technology platform that was presented during today's presentations, Netflix) and it talks about Zuckerber's rise to fame and how he created Facebook. More specifically, this movie focused a little bit on FaceMash and how it didn't go over well with the female students at Harvard because they felt like they were being targeted and attacked by this site. The movie is called The Social Network. Having seen this move before seeing this presentation helped me to understand more of what was being referenced and it made the presentation much more interesting. 

On the topic of movies, I also enjoyed the presentation about Netflix and the impact that it had. Netflix was originally founded by Reed Hasting and Marc Randolph (one of our innovators here at HPU! Which is pretty neat to think about). 

Furthermore, Netflix started off as a DVD service through a subscription where people could rent movies or shows and have the physical DVDs delivered to them to watch. This just shows how far Netflix has come and how much it has developed to become the mega streaming service that it is today. 

Some impressive statistics that I noted were: From 2002-2005, Netflix gained over 4.5 million members of subscriptions as it grew in popularity. Now, Netflix has grown even further and has over 3,600 movies and over 1,800 TV shows to choose from. 

Netflix has become such a broad platform that it's even been able to pave the way for other streaming services such as HBO Max, Hulu, Prime Video, and more.