Final Blog Post - My Relationship With Technology

How Technology Benefits My Life 

One of the biggest benefits of technology in my life is using it for school. Specifically, the internet is an amazing tool that has helped me throughout my education. For example, there have been many times that I do not understand a topic in class, and I will turn to the internet – I can usually find a youtube video or website explaining the subject. 

Another major benefit is my ability to connect and stay in touch with anyone through apps such as FaceTime, or messages. I am able to contact family members both close and far, hear their voice, and chat with them about our lives. This is only made possible because of how developed technology is today. 

Outside of the family, social media and news outlets make it possible for me to communicate with and listen to almost anyone. Through social media on my iPhone, I can watch a video of the president speaking, sees a celebrities post, or listen to the opinions of other online individuals. While this access to easy communication has been normalized in my life, I have to remember that these technological developments are relatively new, and not something that my parents or grandparents grew up with. 

One interesting way technology has recently benefited my life is by helping me find scholarships for college. School is expensive, and to help with the cost I have been working to find scholarships. However, for a while I felt overwhelmed. I did not know where to start, what to search, or how to write a winning essay. I ended up finding some influencers on TikTok who post about finding college scholarships and writing winning essays. Through their posts, I have already been able to create a list of scholarships that I plan on applying for. I also now understand where I should go look on to find scholarships, as well as how to construct my essays. The ability of technology to connect us to others and create a way to easily spread ideas is an example of one of the benefits that technology provides.  

Negative impacts of Technology in my life 

While technology has positively impacted my life, specifically through helping me in my education, it also has downsides. One of these main negative aspects to technology is addiction. I will admit that I find myself scrolling through social media more often than I would like. 

According to the GoodRx Health website, people get addicted to social media for a couple reasons. First, social media is rewarding - it brings pleasure and enjoyment, causing users to want to continue scrolling. FOMO – or fear of missing out – also plays a role, and causes users to fear that they are missing out on something that everyone else is a part of. I can admit that these are both reasons that I like to use social media, and even what causes me to use social media too much. According to this source, social media use becomes an addiction when it starts to interfere with our daily lives. Personally, I do think social media has at times negatively interfered in my life. For instance, there have been times that I have scrolled through social media instead of getting school work done. 

 

Ways to mitigate the negative impacts of technology 

For me, one of the first steps I will take to better my relationship with technology is reducing the number of hours I spend on social media. According to this article by Forbes, limiting time on your phone allows you to have a better balance in terms of technology consumption in your life. For instance, the article suggests only using your phone between 10am and 6pm, and taking one day a week completely off your phone. Another great tip from the Forbes website is to turn on "do not disturb" when completing important tasks, such as studying. It is also good to turn on this feature when sleeping. 

Yet another useful idea for creating a healthy relationship with technology is to unplug from screens when relaxing or unwinding. Personally, I often find that when I am tired, I will get on my phone as a way to take a break from school work. However, according to the source linked, unplugging from technology is a much better way to recharge yourself. For instance, it is more relaxing to get off your phone and do something like taking a walk, working out, or napping.

Conclusion

Technology is here to stay. Every day, the world of tech becomes more advanced, and continues to become an increasing part of our every day lives. There are benefits to technology, such as its ability to keep us connected and allow us to access tons of resources with a simple click. However, there are also negative impacts, such as addiction to social media. As a result, in my opinion it is best to understand how to create a healthy relationship with technology.

What I Learned from EOTO Presentations – #2

From listening to my classmates EOTO presentations, one thing I found interesting to learn about was deep fakes. A deep fake is where a person's face or entire body is altered to appear as someone else. The person creating the deep fake can then take a video, and they will look like the whoever they are impersonating.  

In the presentation, I learned that the scary thing about deep fakes is how realistic they look. Deep fake videos can easily convince people they are real, are it is even hard for technology to detect if a video is fake. Despite this, there is several signs that a video is a deep fake. One sign is that the lighting is mismatch, where one section of the video seems to have different lighting quality than another. Another sign is unnatural eye movement – such as if the person in a video never blinks or blinks very often. Along with this, unnatural or awkward body movements is another sign a video is a deep fake. 

I learned that anyone is able to create a deep fake video. Originally, I thought that deep fakes were hard to make and required a certain level of expertise. However, through the EOTO presentation, I learned that anyone can easily make these videos on sites like FaceMe, FaceApp, or Wombo.  

I also discovered there are a few benefits of deep fakes. For instance, online beauty or clothing companies can use this technology to better demonstrate to customers how a product will look on them. Deep fakes can also be used by politicians to lower the cost of video campaigns, and filmmakers can use this technology when making movies. 

In contrast, there are also negative uses to this technology. One example is using deep fakes to impersonate well-known celebrities or politicians – this can potentially become dangerous if many people believe the deep fake is real. 

I find it very interesting to think about how this technology will progress and develop over the coming years. I expect the deepfake technology will only continue to get more advanced and realistic, but I also think we will develop technology to more quickly and easily tell if a video is a deep fake or not. 

Living In the Age of AI

One thing I learned from the "In the Age of AI" documentary was how much AI will negatively impact job and financial security. This is because when industries become automated, less workers are needed. As a result, as the use of automation and AI increases, workers will either loose their job or be moved to easier jobs where they will also receive less pay. Job loss also has a large scale impact. One individual in the documentary said he believes 50% of jobs now performed by humans could potentially be replaced with AI in the next fifteen years.  

One specific example of how AI negatively impacts job and financial security is in the food service industry. Molly Kinder, who was featured in the documentary, said that being a cashier is the number one occupation in D.C., with millions of people working in this position. She also said that automated, self-ordering systems are already beginning to be used in the food service industry. This automation means that many cashiers will loose their job. Related to this, Kinder said that women are more commonly work jobs as cashiers. As a result, AI's introduction into automating the food service industry will disproportionately affect women.

The increased use of AI also increases inequality. From the documentary, I learned that AI allows you to replace capital with labor. The result of this is that people with capital – those who are already rich – become even more wealthy, and the individuals performing the labor lose their job or get decreased pay. This increases inequality between the rich and the poor. 

Apart from jobs and inequality concerns, AI also creates questions about our privacy. Mactaggart, a California real-estate developer who was featured in the documentary, said that big businesses – such as Google or Facebook – use AI to learn everything possible about you. He said this includes your opinions, desires, friends, and even your private thoughts. This immense data gathering creates great predictive value about an individual's personality and how they will behave in the real world. It allows companies to know everything about us, from out political views, religion, how we live our lives, likes and dislikes, and everything in between. 

This surveillance does not only exist online, however. For instance, smart appliances such as the Google Home system "Alexa" puts surveillance directly into peoples' homes. On top of this, smart speakers like Alexa are taught to take a baseline of what an individual normally sound like, and then recognize changes in that person over time. This means that by simply asking Alexa, "What is the weather today?" Alexa can detect if, for instance, you sound sick or depressed. The scariest part about this all is that all this data collection is done in a way that bypasses the users awareness. 

EOTO - Overton Window

 

Overton Window - What is it?    
The Overton Window is a political theory model for understanding the range of ideas or policies that the general public is willing to accept. 

Essentially, (as this source explains) there are a wide range of political ideas that exist. However, depending on current public values and opinions, politicians know that there is only a limited number of policies that the public is willing to consider and accept. These ideas - ones that the public is willing to support – are politically safe and fall inside the Overton Window. In contrast, ideas that are too radical for the public, and that most citizens will reject with fall outside the Overton Window.

In other words, think of the Overton Window as a window of public opinion. Public opinion can shift or change, and in order for a political leader to be successful, their opinions and policies must be backed by public support (their policies must fall inside the Overton Window).

In this way, politicians are limited to only supporting policies that lie inside the Overton Window. This is because if they try to support an idea that is outside the window, they risk losing public support – which may mean failing to keep office, or not winning their next election – because they are pushing an idea that the majority of voters disagree with.  

How does the Overton Window grow, shrink, move, or shift?
The Overton Window can shift and change over time, mainly through the evolution of social values or norms. The window is also always moving, usually slowly but sometimes quickly depending on social events taking place. In most cases, the window is shifted by a crisis or a social movement. However, anything that alters the public's perception of a policy or idea can shift the Overton Window. For instance, media and entertainment, a think tank, or historical events are other cause that could change the Overton Window. Essentially, anything that gets an idea out in the air and up for debate has the ability to shape the Overton Window. 

Outside the Overton Window, there are some ideas that fall right outside its edge, while other political ideas may be far away from the window. Ideas that are near the edge of the Overton Window may soon be accepted by the general public in the near future, because all it takes is a small shift in public opinion to cause these ideas to fall inside the window. 

One important point is that political figures generally do not try to move the Overton Window. Instead, they will detect where the Overton Window is and move their policies or opinions to align with how the window currently exists.  

Historical examples
Abolishing slavery, giving women the right to vote, or same sex marriage are all examples of the Overton Window shifting. Originally there was strong public opposition to each of these examples. However, through social movements and activism, social crisis (such as the Civil War), and media support (such as in the case of gay marriage) the window drastically shifted from what it once was.

The Overton Window in Current Times  
A current example is gun rights. Through advocacy, the National Rifle Association has helped shift public opinion to support gun rights, which has shifted the Overton Window. Black Lives Matter is another current example, with protests and demonstrations drastically shaping the Overton Window and the policies that legislators will support.  

Conclusion
The Overton Window does not tell you whether a policy is "good" or "bad." Instead, it functions as a way to describe the narrow range of ideas that the public is willing to consider or accept, which is important for politicians to know so they can understand which policies voters will back. It also allows individuals to see how this window of public acceptance can grow, develop, and change over time.

 

Diffusion of Innovations - TikTok

The new innovation I decided to write about is the social media app TikTok. I picked this social media app because it is a new app that is incredibly popular and successful.

Innovators: 
The first part of the Diffusion Theory is the Innovators. Zhang Yiming is the CEO of a giant tech company called ByteDance, which is the company that created TikTok.

Early Adapters:
The early adapters of TikTok were teenagers, and those who are in the Gen. Z category. This is the apps largest user base, but according to the previously linked source, TikTok's user base is slowly starting to increase in age.  

Why did it catch in and spread? What the reason so many people became early adopters?
TikTok was first launched in 2016 as an app that allowed users to make and share short videos. It was originally a Chinese app, but in 2017, it expanded to users outside of China.  

An important reason why TikTok caught on was because the app was able to acquire Musical.ly in 2017. Musical.ly was another app that had similar features as TikTok – it allowed users to create and share lip-syncing videos to popular songs. Musical.ly had already been established in the United states, both with a corporate office based in California, and also with a large teenager U.S. user base.

When TikTok bought Musical.ly and overtook the established app, it allowed TikTok to immediately absorb Musical.ly's large U.S. user base, gaining them around 80 million users. This immediate growth caused TikTok to quickly catch on and spread within the Gen. Z population. 

In 2019 and 2020, TikTok reached the tipping point in terms of market saturation. Through 2019-2020, TikTok became the most popular app, being downloaded 693 million times in 2019 and 850 million times in 2020. 

Why are some people late adopters or not adopters at all? (The negative aspects of TikTok)
One main reason people may be late adapters or not adapters at is because of security concerns. TikTok was created by a Chinese organization, and there have been concerns regarding the information that the app is collecting on users and giving to the Chinese government.

This was concerning enough that the director of the FBI, Christopher Wary said that it was a security risk, as the Chinese government could be collecting inappropriate amounts personal information on users. As a result of these concerns, TikTok made a deal to by partly-owned by a U.S. subsidiary called TikTok Global. The problem is that it is still unclear who actually has control of the data collection of TikTok users. 

Another concern is the addicting nature of TikTok's algorithms. TikTok is able to look at what videos a user has watched in the past, as well as what videos similar users have watched, and be able to predict with good accuracy what type of content an individual will enjoy watching. The apps videos are also short, with most videos being about a minute or shorter, which decreases the attention spans of users. Both these factors can cause the social media app to become addicting.

Benefit of TikTok 
One of the greatest benefits of the app is the ability for individuals to use it as a tool to create financial success. Users can build their brand through posting videos about their product. TikTok is a unique platform where consumers can communicate directly with business owners and vice versa, creating a place where brand can quickly gain followers and get feedback about their product. TikTok users can also build financial sucess through signing brand deals and making sponsored videos – if they have a large following. This can be a great way for individuals to earn money outside of the typical 9-5 job. 

Conclusion
Overall, the decision to use social media is a personal one. There are benefits, such as social media providing and effective and unique way for a business owner to promote their product. However, there are also negative aspects such as privacy violations or addiction to the app. Whether the positives of TikTok outweigh the negatives is a matter of personal opinion that each user must decide for themself. 

Things I Learned from EOTO Presentations

Watching the EOTO presentations, one topic I found interesting to learn about was carrier pigeons. I learned that the use of these birds to spread new and information dates all the way back to the Ancient Egyptians. This surprised me, as I did not realize this practice started so long ago.  

One question I had before the presentation was how people train carrier pigeons. In the presentation, I discovered that carrier pigeons get taught that a certain place is their home. These pigeons can then be brought hundreds of miles away, and when let go they will fly back to their home.  Essentially, each pigeon will only fly back to one specific location, and in this way they were used to deliver messages.

In the EOTO presentation, I discovered that carrier pigeons greatly helped increase the speed of communication. This was not something I found surprising, as I understand that birds were faster than the mail system back then. However, I did find it interesting that that carrier pigeons greatly helped increase the development of the written word, as well as spread intellectual ideas. This is because as these birds increased the speed at which letters and information were delivered, more people found it necessary to know how to read and write. I thought this was a positive but interesting effect of the use of carrier pigeons that I did not know about before. 

Lastly, although I thought the use of carrier pigeons was extinct, I learned that they are actually used today to traffic drugs. Originally this use surprised me. However, I realized it does make sense, as carrier pigeons provide an easy was to get substances across country boarders without detection. 

Overall, I found it both fun and interesting to learn about carrier pigeons, including the history of their use, how they are trained, how they helped the development of the world, and their current use today.  

The Progressive Era: Anti-War Post

        Personally, I have not seen either Antiwar.com or The American Conservative sources before. After looking at both websites, I found that I liked The American Conservative better because it was ascetically neater and easier to view.   

        I think the main reason we have to go to obscure websites to hear strong anti-war voices is because our government is not anti-war, and as a result does not want us to hear these voices. The reason I believe our government is not anti-war is because they are currently involved in the war in Ukraine. For instance, according to this U.S. Department of State website, since January 2021 the United States has given more than 30 billion in security assistance to help Ukraine in its war with Russia! The website also said that since 2014, the United States has given Ukraine more than 32 billion in security assistance. According to the pervious U.S. Department of State website, "security assistance" is essentially the American government giving Ukraine a long list of supplies. This includes tanks, ammunition, fighting vehicles, rockets, missiles, radars, body armor, and helicopters, among other things. Financial support also went to training, as well as equipment to help Ukraine "preserve its territorial integrity" and keep its boarders secure. 

        When it comes to the question of why it is hard to find and hear antiwar voices in today's media, the It makes sense that if the U.S. is spending billions of dollars in supporting Ukraine it its war against Russia, they do not want to American people to be against war, as they want us to agree with their actions. As a result, they will block or shadow-ban anti-war websites online to help insure the general public is not against war. This explains why you and I must go to obscure websites to hear strong antiwar voices.