My Relationship With Technology

     Throughout the past semester, I have spent my Media Law & Literacy class becoming more and more educated about the realities of technology and privacy. This course has helped open my eyes to the scary truth of our world in regards to the lack of privacy on the internet.

    

    Since the invention of the internet and the cell phone, the technology use of humans has begun to increase and even now it shows no signs of declining. The current average cell phone usage is 4.5 hours per day which was a 2.5% increase from last year. This number honestly surprised me because my daily average is 6 hours. People of my generation spend so much time consumed with their phones. This has a negative impact on our physical and mental health. Our phones affect our ability to feel motivation, our self esteem, and our attention span. It is becoming more difficult for people to be productive because our technologies are always at our fingertips begging for us to use them as a distraction. The blue light from our phones is also said to disrupt our sleep patterns and create a lower quality rest. With all the time people spend on their computers and phones, it is no surprise that health issues will arise more and more frequently.

    Although we may believe having access to all of this information at once is helpful, it may be doing more harm than good. As people, we are not designed to have access to information and entertainment so easily. It lowers our overall problem solving skills and it makes it more difficult for us to think and adapt quickly. Having a device that solves all our problems seems like a good idea, until we forget how to solve them for ourselves. 

    Going beyond wether or not technology is healthy for humans, it's time to ask is it safe? Our information is out there for anyone to grasp. The government and all these other big corporations have access to our information and half of the time we don't even realize. Our digital footprint is much bigger than we know. Every bit of information we have ever disclosed on our computers or phones is out there somewhere. Every text, every email, every status update and picture are all still available to people if they really wanted it even since its been deleted. People don't realize that what they put onto the internet exists forever and that information can be bought, sold, and used against you if somebody really wanted to do that.

    Your information is public to anyone who wants to find things out about you. If a future job employer were to look me up the first things they would find are my social medias. My instagram and tik tok are completely public which gives them access to see every single one of my posts, wether I want them to or not. Although you may not think about it at the time of a post, these exist forever. 

    It is very important to be aware of what you are actually agreeing to when you are using different social medias, websites, and search engines. Classes like this should be required for students all across the country so internet safety is known all over the world. Although my generation and those younger will be tech savvy and understand the risks and rewards of using the internet, it is important that we don't lose sight of what our privacy and online safety should really look like. Without this class I would be unaware of so many important communication and privacy flaws within our world. It is so important to be educated and make sure the people around you do the same. As the technology continues to advance it is going to become more and more prevalent in our lives and it is important to know how to protect ourselves when it violates our rights. Although the internet has an endless list of pros and it has absolutely helped our society, it is still important to be aware of the negatives that are being snuck by us.

What I Learned About News Deserts

     Newspapers seemed like a thing of the past to me. With all the information and news you need at the tip of your fingers with the internet, what's the point of old fashioned news papers? It didn't seem as though there were any downsides to getting rid of them and just prioritizing online news. These were my thoughts until I learned about news deserts.

    A news desert is defined as "a community where residents have significantly diminished access to important local news and information that feeds grassroots democracy". Newspapers provide communities with essential information, whether the information is on a national or local scale. With the world of digital news constantly becoming more popular, these newspapers are diminishing at a rapid rate. 

    As digital news becomes more and more popular and newspapers start to disappear, these journalists are losing their jobs. Not only does this harm the journalists themselves, but it harms the people looking for information. With the easy access to online news, fake news is much more easily created. These websites are also not always concerned with their accuracy, but getting as much traffic as possible to generate revenue. When you are searching for a news story on the internet, you can usually find what feels like endless sources. However, have you ever thought to think about how reliable these sources really are? Yes, there are some sources that are credible and you can trust as a reader, but there are even more that you can't. Newspapers never struggled with either of these issues. It is extremely rare to find fake news within a newspaper and although it doesn't feel more convenient to have to use a physical paper to find information, it actually eliminates the searching through sources. 

    With all of that being said, it is actually very concerning to see the rapid decline in newspapers over the years. There are many people who don't realize what types of issues this can cause. The news we consume is extremely important, so it's even more important that we can trust our sources.

Privacy On and Offline

     Although I was always aware of our technologies accessing our information, I didn't realize how much of it I was truly unaware of. After watching Andy Yen's Ted Talk, I was able to fully grasp how websites are taking advantage of us. Yen spoke specifically about how easily our emails can be accessed. Emails contain extremely private information and knowing how easily it can be accessed by anyone is scary. There is also no simple solution to this problem. Although privacy seems pretty easy in principle, with the business of these companies it is nearly impossible to achieve. These websites make as much as $137 billion dollars in advertising in a single year. These are profits that these companies are not going to be willing to give up for their users privacy. With all of that being said, your privacy being violated by companies seems to be inevitable as long as you are using these technologies to communicate.

    This is something that affects almost everyone. The information that is taken from you is done as a means of building a business rather than caring for consumers. An even sadder fact is that companies intentionally hide this information from you. Although it is almost always stated in user agreement policies, those policies contain pages upon pages of useless information that nobody bothers to read. When technologies that take our information like this were first invented advertised what data of ours they would have access to and what they would use it for, significantly less people would have joined in the first place. This information is gradually becoming more accessible to people but so many people are still unaware of exactly what their digital footprint really contains.

When using the internet, if you want to protect your privacy it is important to take measures to do so. Using secure passwords, signing out of the browsers you are using, and keeping your devices locked are a few ways to do so. Until there are more regulations and ways for users to securely use the internet without a breach of information, it is up to users to figure out for themselves how to keep their privacy protected.

The Spiral of Silence Theory

 One of the commonalities that almost all humans share is the desire to fit in. Whether that be to wear the right clothes or have the right hobbies, as human beings we are constantly attempting to fit more adequately into society. The Spiral of Silence theory helps solidify the belief that humans are doing what they can to fit into society however possible.

    So what is The Spiral of Silence theory? The Spiral of Silence theory is a theory developed by German survey and communication researcher Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann in the 1970s. This theory basically states that people’s willingness to express their opinions on controversial public issues is affected by their largely unconscious perception of those opinions as being either popular or unpopular. Specifically, the perception that one’s opinion is unpopular tends to inhibit or discourage one’s expression of it, while the perception that it is popular tends to have the opposite effect. 

    So now that we understand what the Spiral of Silence theory is, what are its pros and what are its cons? So the main pro that I was able to find is that people become more confident in their beliefs when around like minded people or when their opinion is considered popular amongst society. However, there are significantly more cons to this theory when it comes down to how it impacts society. The cons include people hiding their opinions due to fear of being isolated from society. This can negatively affect people personally. When you are hiding your true feelings it can make you feel isolated even when you are still around people and cause harm to your mental health and self image. Another con is how much public opinion influences people. When the public opinion has this much power over people, that leads to the people of society being manipulated and not feeling that they are capable of doing anything about it. Finally, people are less likely to stand up for what is right when it is not the popular belief. There was a time when racist and sexist beliefs were the majority and if nobody ever stood up against those, our society would never have begun to evolve and stop the abuses we put different groups through. The only way the world ever improves is if we are continuously bettering it and if nobody is willing to speak up about what is wrong with it then nothing will ever change.

    Now that we have identified what is good and what is bad in this theory, we can discuss how it affects our society. This theory is something all groups have to face. No person will constantly be surrounded by people who share the same viewpoint for the entirety of their life, and now with the internet it is nearly impossible to avoid seeing opposing opinions. This entire theory is based on majority vs minority, however this doesn’t just apply to the conventional popular and unpopular beliefs within our society as United States citizens. This applies to all the groups that we may find ourselves in throughout our lives. Our beliefs may be reciprocated and popular within a certain group of people that we spend our time with, but it may be unpopular and frowned upon within another. People unknowingly become more or less likely to express how they feel as they alternate between these different groups of people. One thing that has had a large impact on the relevancy of this theory is the invention of social media. Social media has opened up gateways for everyone to find someone out there who has the same opinions and beliefs as them. It matters less now being isolated from the people in your daily circle because you can find other people who will support you through the internet. Although this may sound like a good thing, there are some negative repercussions. With people able to find solidarity for any belief, this opens up gateways for people with racist, sexist, homophobic, and other offensive beliefs to become more vocal and expressive on the internet. A study of Facebook users’ comments and posts designed to see how the Spiral of Silence theory held up with modern day users led researchers to the conclusion that people with minority beliefs felt quite comfortable publicly expressing racist opinions on the internet. They found through a manual coding of 1,161 comments that 18% included some form of othering and 25% included some form of racist discourse.

    

    With all of that being said, the Spiral of Silence still has a big impact on our likelihood to speak out about our beliefs. The Spiral of Silence theory remains accurate to some extent despite the expansion of technology.

The Age of AI

     

  

  Many people hear the words "artificial intelligence" and think of a scary robot movie where all technology comes to life and takes over the world. However, the AI that is around today looks a lot different. The voice recognition used with Siri, the technologies in self driving cars, the Alexa in your living room. All of this is considered artificial intelligence technologies.

    After watching the documentary In the Age of AI, I was able to understand so much more about how AI development will actually affect our society. One of the biggest things I came to realize is how AI technology will affect the job market. With AI, so many people will lose their jobs and careers that once could only be done by humans will now be able to be fulfilled by technology. This is extremely concerning for a country with an already struggling job market. The AI technology will eventually become advanced enough to do these jobs faster, more efficiently, and most importantly cheaper than humans. Companies will prioritize having these technologies rather than humans working for them.

    

    AI technologies can also be scary because in time, they will become more advanced than humans. Not only will they be more advanced but they will have access to every single person's information as well. As these technologies become more advanced and become more prevalent in the world, a new fear is introduced as to what these technologies are able to do with that information. Privacy laws and regulations regarding our technology have already been violated numerous times so what is to say it wouldn't happen again with AI.

    With all of that being said AI still has its positives. AI technology is able to do what people cannot. It can work nonstop and overall provide ease to the life of humans. Although it has its numerous negatives, people tend to overlook the positives. Nobody wants to live in a world that AI is in charge of, but we all should become more comfortable with it because it is only going to become more and more a part of our lives.

The Diffusion Theory: The Telephone

 

    Diffusion theory is a theory helps us better understand how innovations spread and how we measure their success. This curve describes the rate that people join in to using whatever new innovations have come about. This theory allows for us as consumers and for innovators themselves to grasp a better understanding of the rate of which society adapts to using newer technologies.

    One technology that was extremely influential is the telephone. The telephone was extremely innovative and was unmatched in its abilities compared to the older methods of communication that people were using at that point. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876 as a means of creating a "talking telegraph". The telephone was designed as a way to reach people instantly no matter the distance. This immediately sped up communication and created an entirely new system of communication.

    

   

 This invention spread quickly due to the benefits this device offered to its users. This device solved a communication problem that people were constantly struggling with which resulted in it having a larger amount of early adopters. Before the telephone, the primary means of communication was the telegraph. The telegraph was slow and it was often long periods of time before your message was even received. The telephone removed this problem by offering direct communication at any period of time. Many people found this technology to be significantly more efficient than the other means of communication that they had been using.

    Some of the biggest reasons people came to own telephones later on is that there was still confusion as to how this technology could impact people. People had questions that couldn't be answered about the telephone such as its health risks. These are concerns people still have today when it comes to purchasing a phone. People were hesitant to use a technology that they knew nothing about.

    Telephones have still become a raging success due to how easy and fast they make communicating. Although even now people are still hesitant to give in to the world of the telephone, it is still common amongst the majority of the population. Despite its negatives, the telephone is still widely popular amongst all places and people.

    

Antiwar

    When I initially opened up Antiwar.com and The American Conservative I felt overwhelmed by their websites. These websites were unlike the news websites I have been so familiar with. The content that they posted was also significantly different. After doing more research about these websites and about the antiwar narrative in the United States, I was better able to understand why these type of websites are so difficult to locate. 

    The main reason websites like this are hard to find is because the government does not want you to find them. Antiwar values go against exactly what the government wants this country to support. Antiwar goes against American beliefs and the nationalism that this country seems to exude. The United States is also pro war because it makes the country more money. With this being said, the government goes out of its way to prevent the antiwar narrative being presented in main stream media to avoid the public supporting this view. If more American citizens supported antiwar views, it would create significantly more difficulty the next time the U.S. wanted to declare or enter a war.

    The government has the control over the mainstream media and what they speak out about. Since the government does not want the antiwar agenda being spoken about to the public, they ensure that is never discussed within mainstream media. They have the ability to influence what information is put out into the world. They use this power to control what information the public does and doesn't see. This is why websites like these are hidden from the public and it requires you to do some deep diving to find this information.