Final exam post

 My relationship with technology is very healthy. I do not use it too much and I do not use it too little. I give credit to my parents as they raised my sister and I in a way that only gave us specific times to watch television and be on our phones. All of our chores had to be done, homework, and we had to read at least thirty minutes a day. I learned very early how to prioritize my time and what was actually important. My dad calls it, “ do what you have to do before you do what you want to do.” I did not get a phone until the age of 14 or 15 I think. Nowadays kids have their own iPads coming out of the womb. As I take a look at my average screen time per day on my iPhone it is only fifty four mins. I am proud of that,  spending an average of sixteen minutes on tik- tok, twelve on Instagram, eleven on both messages and Snapchat, and only a couple of mins on both Linkedin and Twitter. It is good to stay updated on current events, news, and find humor, but you do not want to become trapped in it. As the wise words of Dave Chappell, “ Social media is not a real place.” This is not me saying I haven't sat there and spent an hour straight on my phone but you have to know when to put things down. Taking a look in the mirror I would say my social footprint is little to none. I have five posts on instagram. Three on twitter, zero on tik tok and rarely post on snapchat. Linkedin is a different story because I use it for business and to update people on accomplishments in my personal journey.  If you google me my linkedin profile will show up, old basketball stats and pictures, and a picture of me as a child when I won a fishing tournament. 

Technology and social media does have its flaws. I believe society as a whole has become less social as far as face to face communication, especially in our younger generations. With kids getting phones / ipads as early as grade school they do not really have the chance to develop those social skills. One of my professors even said it the other day that also teaches at a local middle school. “Those kids are best friends with their phones. If someone took it away they wouldn't know what to do.” Rather than talk in those situations where we are in new environments we are all prone to getting lost on our phone to pass the time rather than having a face to face conversation and developing new relationships. As technology emerged we also saw problems such as bullying on social media arise. This in my opinion is worse than your old school in person bullying. Once a person posts a nasty comment, picture, or video to intentionally embarrass another, you have no idea who will see it, how far it will spread, or how many people it will affect. You now have kids hearing a million voices repeating that same negative thing only making it worse and worse psychologically. I've seen this a lot with athletes as well. Up and coming stars having to deal with the added pressure and haters, it's to the point where I have heard of athletes refusing to even get on social media or have a whole nother person handle their accounts.  Another big flaw would be misinformation. Anything and everything can be posted on the internet. It's up to you to decipher what is true and what is fake. This can be flawed from an educational standpoint, social in terms of catfishing on dating apps, and much much more.

 

Let's discuss the good now.  All the information you need and could ever want to find is right at your fingertips. Technology has made it simple to where you have a handheld computer sitting in your pocket. Communicating with each other is easier, you mentioned the story in your class of sending your first email to someone in France I believe. Before email it would take weeks to get what you needed to get from one conversation in a letter. Now it’s a matter of minutes according to response times.  Technology has also allowed the accessibility for mass communication to anyone. If you are trying to spread a message, sell something, or just get a laugh anyone and everyone can see it in a matter of a couple of hours. In one of the prompted questions it mentions how this would change the equality movement of Martin Luther King Jr.? Personally and to be brutally honest, yes more people would have seen and heard his message but it would have done absolutely nothing. We have made progress but for Kyle Rittenhouse to get acquitted post a picture with recent president Donald Trump after killing protesters we haven't made much progress at all, and we see this with the continued acts of police brutality, and minorities getting handed the short end of the stick. But back to technology it has plenty of upsides and I believe it will continue to shape the world for the better. We have to remember to put a cap on the time we invest and how we go about using it though. Once the world is able to find the correct balance then we will succeed. 

Final Post

     "It would take the average American 40 minutes a day to read every private policy they encountered, at a cost of 5038 dollars a year in loss of productivity.  So why do companies make their policies so confusing and time consuming to read and interoperate? Companies are using "manipulative design tricks" to get consumers to spend more money than necessary or provide an amount of data that can be invasive. Companies then blame people for their own faults in privacy knowing they manipulated the situation from the beginning. To be honest when signing up for online accounts I never read the policies. I try to keep the information I input to a bare minimum but as far as I know Instagram, Twitter, Tik Tok, could do anything with the content I produce and I could not have a say on it even if I did not agree after the fact. Facebook is a big example of this with their tracking systems. In the article, " Our Collective Privacy Problem is not our Fault",  it mentioned social media companies being able to monitor peoples location whenever and whoever they wanted. A guy visiting a hospital every day in his wife final moments, a women picking up her child from school. Now why do these companies need to know where we are at all times? Companies like Facebook, Instagram, snapchat, Tik- Tok all uses a method of gathering data to compile things you like to put ads and request in-front of your face. It is to the point where social media companies can know your income, political party affiliation , the car you drive, and even the type of beer you drink. It even drove a man to leave his job at one of these data collecting agencies because he felt uncomfortable knowing so much about a person he never even met. A lot of users still are not informed on this and we can associate that to clear and concise privacy policies, education, and the lack there of. This system is only making big brand social media companies and there partnerships more and more money.  Keeping the user in a cycle of privacy breaches and social media addiction. 

    When I first read the article of how the 14 year old girl went cold turkey on social media I thought she was over reacting.  I slightly still think she did but I have a better understanding on why. Her mother and sister had posted pictures and more of her without her consent or knowledge for the first 13 years of her life. She was embarrassed and almost angered by her mother and sister when she found out. Although all her friends had been on social media since the age of ten she found no need or gravitation towards it after she had experienced it for a couple of months in her life. After the listing the possible repercussions of what social media can bring I understood why a young women would not want to be apart of the ongoing phenomena. 

    Personally my social media intake is not that bad. As I am a busy guy I usually do not have the time to just sit there and scroll on my phone. When signing up for accounts I put the bare minimum and keep at that. I only have three post on Instagram, like five on twitter, and zero on tik Tok. I simply use it as entertainment, updates, and a quick laugh. I do see how these platforms can cause depression. Where people only post the highlights of their life causing feelings of FOMO and like there not good enough, pretty enough, or rich enough. A lot of the post are fake being edited or set up to make it look like these people are living a life style they are not even living. Simply keeping up a fake image behind a screen. 

Eoto presentation learnings

 The one that interested me the most and was touched on twice in the presentations was the facial pasting of influencers, famous people, or anyone else to be able to get them to say anything you want. I forget the name but it was very impressive to the lengths people can go to to manipulate society. A fake video of Obama was even released calling recent President Trump vulgar names and people actually believed it was real because the technology is so advanced. It was explained that anyone can do it now a days it depends on the time and money that you invest to make it believable or not. One funny video that was showed was the Nido video where the presenters boyfriend used the technology to take Nido's face and make him say whatever he wanted.  I wonder where people in the future will take this technology. Corruption to comedy or anything in between. The need for actors and actresses in the movie industry may die out as well. As technology is becoming so advance they are able to use people's faces without actually having them in person to film instead using stand-ins for a body paying them at a much cheaper rate. It was even said that we will even be able to bring actors, actresses, and major influencers back from the dead to use there likeness in certain portrayals whether that be movie, commercials, and much more. In the future I believe this will become a commonality and I wonder if they will even be able to use random strangers faces to do things. 

Ken Llgunas Talk

Today I got the experience of getting to hear your friend Ken Llgunas talk about his journey walk across America. First he gave us a little brief history about himself discussing his graduation from Yale and the daunting task of paying off his student debt. Apparently to make things cheaper he lived in a van as he attended grand school and was able to get a book deal signed off of this. But he then directs back to where he got the idea to do the walk across the major pipeline that took him months. In my mind this is insane. He was living in Antartica or somewhere very cold as a young man washing dishes with one of his close friends talking as they usually do. This was a low point in his life and as said in his speech low points are where the best ideas are made. His friend stated they should walk across America following a major pipeline along the way to study the various opinions, climate, and more. Mr. Llgunas decided it was possible and he was going to do it. Unfortunately a couple of days before the trip he broke his pinkie toe but this did not affect or push back his schedule. Also his friend had promised to go with him but was soon reminded he was banned from Canada due to some trouble with the law in his younger years. So this was going to be a solo journey. He prepared by doing as much research and studying how to hike, what needs to be packed, and how it should be approached. He decided to have his friend ship food supplies to near by mail centers along his journey. He packed as light as possible bringing money, an iPad, and a tarp as his shelter. I would not be doing that as I get sick way to easy. He mapped out his journey and was set to follow the pipeline across America.The pipeline runs what is called crude kind of a lumpy substance mixed with a lot of things but oil can be extracted from it.  At first he hopped on a small plane to take an arial look at the area to find where he needed to begin during this he saw a number of damaging things done to the environment. A crude plant where there was a man made lake that could be harmful to animals if they drank. Yellow pyramids made of what I want to say sulfate ( I do not remember the materials exactly) which were really cool . The only reason they where there is the simple fact there was no where else to store it. After he caught his grounds he went through a series of different lands. From temporal forrest where bears, beavers, and a bunch of animals could be found. Clear praises where roaming cows where eating grass. He was very much frightened by them at first but learned they were just giant scary cats. During his journey he was able to talk with a lot of people asking owners of the land he walked through how they felt about the pipeline. Some where okay with it being compensated at a great rate others felt like they were bullied into accepting it was going to be built. He even inspired one guy to join his journey but only lasted two days and turned around and went home. This walk did not come with out challenge. He experienced agonizing pain from exaushatan, major damage to his feet, the weather, and shinsplints. I have major respect for him has he completed this walk and was able to make a story out of it. He says he felt like it was his purpose at that time he was exactly where he needed to be and this is what motivated him to keep going. 

News Deserts

 A news desert is a community either rural or urban, with limited access to the sort of credible and comprehensive news and information that feeds democracy at a grassroots level. In other words certain areas that do not have a constant pipeline for a metro newspaper to keep them up to date whether that be in politics, economics, education, ext..  This is usually caused by financial constraints where towns do not meet income levels to support  this and the government doest even lift a finger to try and help. Local newspapers can be produced but quality and reliability are questionable.  Today a little bit over 200 counties nation wide are considered news desserts and in the state of North Carolina we have six. I did a little research on News Deserts concerning the average family income, poverty rate, and education level. In these areas poverty rate ranged from 12- 28 percent out of ten towns considered deserts. College education ranged all the way down from only 10 percent to 30 percent of people . The average income level ranged from 33,000 a year to barely scraping 60,000 a year.  The average income in America for 2020 was around 67,000 a year. These people are worried about paying for their families, food, doctors appointments, debt, bills, and have no concern in investing into a metro newspaper putting them at an even more disadvantage, again keeping the poor poor. 

 

As probably assumed a lot of disadvantages come along with living in a food desert. These include less engagement in democracy. People simply do not know what is going on in the government  and no one is helping, so why should they care? In turn means less people voting taking away from their voice and the  amended right. Second being petty and grand corruption. Societies in these areas can easily be manipulated and taken advantage of by the rich. Things can easily be done under the table for people sitting in power like governors and senators looking to do what is best for them. Another issue includes political polarization, people  just go along with which ever party they affiliate with whether the party is making good decesions based on their moral compass. They have no idea if the party based on a particular issue is looking in their best intrest. 

In my opinion food deserts are a cry for help in the American Society and will slowly but surely spread as time goes on. Sure people can easily access sources of news via internet. The question is, are they? Or are they to concerned how are they going to pay for there kids doctors appointment.  To not even have the option of picking up a metro newspaper is crippling for the people living under these conditions. Like said in class all that money spent on unnecessary wars could easily be budgeted in to get these counties out of this situation. I am sure how but, some how some way a lot of the population in these areas are probably  being taken advantage of. Lack of knowledge is a disadvantage and its the ammo used in fire for corruption. Whether that be, like said before, governors and senators acting in ways for their best intrest or even money being mishandled and used in ways that are unethical. Overall, we need to find a way to put a cease to news desserts before they spread so our society is not controlled by a bunch of rich people. Not saying it already is not , but having a say is what matters and we need knowledge to be able to have a say. 

https://www.usnewsdeserts.com

https://www.cjr.org/special_report/life-in-a-news-desert.php

In the Age of AI

 In this film we see a glimpse of what the future holds for society. To touch on national security and crime, it will be a lot harder to pull off anything with the facial recognition tools they have now. In some places in China all you have to do is smile at a machine and you can pay for your food that way. They are even able to charge people with jay walking through facial recognition. I hate to say this but I can not wait to see the lengths criminals will go to to rob a bank or something in the future. Yes everything will be faster from paying, getting loans, receiving packages ext.. but if you think about it, with that comes more governmental access to your privacy.  Honestly, sit there and think about this. Do you want the government knowing your every move. In todays world they almost do with social media, how far will they be able to take it with the advancements that are being developed?  Kind of feels like I'm on some type of watchlist for no reason to me. This video also talks about the advancements of self automated cars and trucks. I was highly impressed with the person pioneering the main company pushing this industry. In his early 20's he is the CEO of a Fortune 500 company designing automated driving 18- wheelers. This is really turning that entire industry upside down.  He says this will reduce the number of crashes per year making the roads safer. I agree with this but I believe we should take our time. This is also cutting cost for trucking companies. Eventually there will be no need for truck drivers completely erasing this job off the market. We see how this effects one family imparticuly barely scraping by to pay for a yearly doctors appointment. We then see it on a larger scale where a small town was basically built on a factory. These jobs were taken by A.I machines and people were thrusted into poverty; not able to even afford to send their kids to college.  As this technology becomes more developed I know more and more jobs will become obsolete. Will this create new jobs or more poverty? A question people are struggling to answer and the creators of these giant corporations like the Jeff Bezos's are saying don't worry about it just let it happen. They are only saying this because they will only get richer. A play on how America is honestly built today where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Are we ever going to fix that? 

The Progressive Era

 Like said in the original prompt I had never heard of either of the linked websites. The renowned phrase, "history repeats itself" is executed perfectly by the American government here.  The Sedition Act of 1918,  where the government literally opposed its original law of freedom of speech, banning the right to speak out against the government concerning war. In my opinion this is where government becomes too powerful and kind of manipulative towards society acting in the colors of a monarchy rather than a democracy. We see this in a more subtle way today with these websites airing out Americas dirty laundry with topics dealing with the President, Iran, Palestine, and many other touchy subjects. The websites are kind of hidden and tucked off in the corner. If these subjects were reported on national news, I think we would have a lot more "peaceful" protest going on at our capital.  

America's government has even locked up a man running for president at the time for speaking out against what has been done behind the curtain. Imagine if this candidate would have won. I wonder what would have been exposed .  A recent viral video was shown in class where a war veteran outwardly expressed himself in which he had every right to do during a press conference in which the president at the time was in attendance.  Saying, "APOLOGIZE" "Tell the truth.", referring to war crimes done by the government to innocent people.  He was forcefully removed from the room. As a society we do not know everything that is done by our government or even the why ( most of the time money). If we did in my opinion any one with a conscience would no longer be proud to call themselves an American citizen. We would very well soon fall into the blame game on our political parties. (yes I believe America is that childish) I believe a lot of the things done to get to where we are today have been shady. I mean our country was built on unrightfully taking land from Native American's and then was turned into a holiday like nothing ever happened. Not to even mention slavery, from previous blogs you already know my opinion on that. Taking a look at problems now a days and how the government will do anything for a dollar. War Dogs,  these dudes make a fortune illegelly selling weapons and I know our government has had a play in this. The only reason I even have knowledge of this is because of the movie " War Dogs" with Jonna Hill and Miles Teller, a must see film if you have not watched. The world runs on money and we will continue to see these shady things going on until the curtain is finally pulled back. My mom always tells me this old church quote that I believe will happen if America doesn't straighten up. " Everything that is done in the dark will always come to the light." - Momma Brown 

Sources :https://www.antiwar.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0he_OScdFec

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/web-categories/realism-restraint/