My Relationship with Technology

When the discussion of technology starts there are two ways it can go. People talk about the positives or negatives of whatever technology piece they are debating. These discussions about the positives and negatives could probably go on forever because there is so much technology and it is constantly changing. Technology is everywhere and it affects everyone’s lives. 

Everyone has their own experience growing up with technology. My personal experience I think

was different in some ways but also the same in other ways. I think my younger self had a healthy relationship with technology. When growing up I always had technology around me like a Playstation and a Wii but I never really overused them. Growing up I lived in a rural area but was close to my friends so I would go play with them outside instead of sitting inside. I think I was lucky for this because I had a childhood that I would want my kids to have where they are always outside playing games with other kids. I did play videogames but it never got to the point of affecting me negatively or developing into an addiction. Addictions to video game can be bad and causes people to not want to interact with others or can cause physical harm from not being healthy. For me this was never a problem because I always had a lifestyle where videogames were only used when I had nothing going on and just wanted to relax. 

My relationship with technology now is very different than it was when I was younger. Technology has gotten so popular that it is a part of everything I do. I feel the role has flipped from when I was younger to now. In college, I am on technology for everything. For example, when I do schoolwork, when I tutor, use my phone, or play videogames all of these involve me using technology. So now I feel like when I work out or go out with friends I escape from technology. When I was younger, I get on technology to relax or escape from doing what I was doing. 

There are some positives to technology being everywhere. Since technology is everywhere I get to stay connected to my family and friends since I go to college eight hours away from them. If I was not able to stay connected to them, then I do not know if would have went to college at High Point University because it would have really hard for me.

 Another positive is online learning. I have a hard time learning with my accounting classes that are for upper classmen. With the ability to look up YouTube videos I can be taught by someone else that may teach it in another way.  These two positive points really help me with college, and I do not know if I would be able to do it with them. 

Even though the positives are helpful there are some negatives to technology. The first negative I have with technology is the increase in screen time I have with it. Increasing screen time can negatively affect people because this can cause social anxiety and depression. Even though I do not have these things I have seen other people I know have a lot of screen time and get anxiety when they cannot be on their phone. Another problem people have is self-image. People who scroll or post constantly on social media can develop self-image issues to the point where they need other people’s approval. Even though I do not have these negative affects myself I am still conscious of them because I do not want to develop them.  

Technology can be a blessing or a curse. People need to become aware of what can happen if they get too involved with technology. The world today has too many people that are caught up in technology. The video called Mad World Remix of Moby Video

 does a good job of painting a picture of our world and how people are getting to caught up in technology. It does a good job also showing how the negatives of technology are very easy to see when taking a step back and seeing the world. The part of the video that hit me the most was that there was always so much going on in the background that was easy to miss if just looking at the people with the phones. I feel like that depicts how the world is today. People are always looking at the person taking a picture or taking pictures themselves but are not seeing what is going on. 

Talking about the positives and negatives could be an endless discussion but the effect of technology is important to understand. Technology has helped a lot of people, from modern medicine to helping me see my family when I miss them. People need to stop to see the negatives that can come out of overuse of technology if they get consumed by it. 

AI in Today World

When thinking about automation today it is amazing to see the progress that it has made from when it started. That being said, the progress that it has made can be scary to think about. AI has made such an improvement that it can come up with ideas and things that people have not even thought about. Another thing that worries a lot of people when they think about automation is how many jobs that it is going to take away and has already taken away. Lastly, it is scary to think about the amount of information that companies get from people. All of these reasons are major causes that make people scared of AI.  

AI has come so far, it is amazing to see it play games that people play. An example of this is from the video called In The Age of AI. It talks about how AI beat the professional Go player, Lee Segol. In the video, it talks about how AI made a move no one in thousands of years have thought about. It is scary to think that AI can think of things that not even the best player in the world would think of. 

Lee Segol losing to AI is something that comes to my mind when thinking about how AI is doing things better than humans. The result of this is people losing their jobs because of technology. Why would companies hire people to do a job when AI does it better? We can see this in the middle class a lot because in the video it talks about how a factory worker said at one point there was around 7,500 worker at the factory and now there is 700. That is outrageous to think about. This has a lot of impact on people in the middle class because now almost 7,000 people lost their jobs and now can not afford everyday life. 

The last thing about AI that scares me is the information that it collects on people. In the video, it talks

about how AI can make predictions on what people are going to do when they go on Google. For example, it makes a prediction what they are going to search up based on what they have done in the past. That is crazy for me to think about. The reason is that AI must already have so much information about me to make that prediction so it makes me wonder how much do these companies know about me. 

AI is going to do amazing things for people, but at what cost. The world may have been better off back  before the use of AI. It would allow people to get their jobs back that they lost. It would make it harder for companies to use the information that they collect on us. As a society, we need to decide if it is better to use AI and lose the things that come with it, or is it better to just go without it. 

Smith-Mundt Act

When thinking about how many different cites there are where people get information, it is amazing to see how much they can learn from theses cites. There are news cites, social media apps, and even television channels that give information to millions of people everyday. The reason this is important is because people need to be aware if all the information is true. The world we live in passes along a lot of disinformation and propaganda that can affect the way we learn new information. 

The way the American Government tried to stop propaganda about America in other countries was with the Smith-Mundt Act, also called the US Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948. The main purpose of this act was "the creation of an information service to disseminate abroad information about the United States, its people, and policies." This means that America was going to spread information about itself to other countries to get rid of the propaganda about the country. This act was created in 1948 and was first introduced by congressman Karl Mundt in 1945. 

This may not have been the case. An article from NBC News talks about how The Smith Mundt act was being challenged because it was just spreading propaganda. There were many programs being funded by the United States based on the Smith Mundt Act. There are two sides to these programs. Some people were angry that taxes were going to these programs and believed it was propaganda while others believed they held good and accurate news. 

The Smith Mundt act has changed over the years a couple times. The latest change that has the most effect on the people today is called the Smith Mundt Modernization Act of 2013. This change to the act allowed the people of the United States to hear and be apart of the programs and broadcasts that they were not allowed to be apart of before. Many people did not like this because they said it was allowing propaganda into the United States and did not want to be apart of it. While others liked to see what these programs had to say so they could make their own opinions about the programs. This was seen up above when I talking about how people had two different reactions to this act.  Every time they change the act, there are always going to be people who like it and there are going to be people who do not like it. 

When looking at all the information it is hard to see if the Smith Mundt Act is actually doing what it was meant to be used for. When looking at the definition of the act it was stated that it was in place "to promote the better understanding of the United States among the people of the world and to strengthen cooperative international relations." seeing this definition it is easy to look back up and see how the United States has been mistreating this act. The reason is because it was meant to help people better understand the United States but instead it was used for propaganda and to mislead people.  

Why People Adopt

When looking back at inventions in the past it easy to see why people started to use them. These inventions were ground breaking and had a lot of impact on how people went about their daily lives. In the other hand when looking at these inventions it is also notable that not everyone got on board right at the start. Why is this? Well when look at the Diffusion Theory it noticeable that their were some early adopters, some late adopters, and some people that never used it. 

An example of a invention that went through people deciding if they should take part of it or not is the USB Flash Drive. When people were deciding if they should use the product. They were thinking about the positives and negatives of switching from the old technology of the floppy disc or switch to the flash drive. The flash drive first come to the market in 2000 and began more popular around 2004. 

The reason people became early adopters of the flash drive is because they saw the potential of the flash drive. When they saw it first come out they saw it was smaller, easier, more storage, and was going to be popular soon. For the people that we called early adopters for the flash drive they saw the positives the flash drive had and wanted to be apart of it. For the late adopters they came around in 2004 when it was really popular. The reason they came around is because, the flash drive design started to become more and more creative. For example companies started to put their logos on the flash drive and they could get basically any amount of storage they wanted. Then lastly for the people that never adopted were people that never really got involved in technology in general. For example my gram would be a person that never used the flash drive. She never got into technology so the negatives of getting involved in all the technologies and the flash drive would never be less the positives. 

 In the end the flash drive had a lot of people that did use it, but in the end their will be always people that never adopt a new invention. This does not take anything away from the flash drive it just every person has a scale on the cost and benefit and some will never see the benefit to adopting a new invention. 

Antiwar in media

When watching the news channels or visiting their websites, people do not normally see antiwar on these channels. The news sources like CNN, FOX, and BBC have a lot of power in the sense of the people they reach when they air a certain story on their platforms. Whenever they put out a story, they can reach at least a million people. Since they have a big platform like this, why do they not put both antiwar and prowar stories on their platform? When looking for information on antiwar, it is crazy that people need to go to uncommon websites like antiwar.com to find information on antiwar instead of a big news source. 

When going into the website antiwar.com, people can see many articles that they would have

normally not have seen if they just got the news off big news sources. One of the reasons that antiwar is not as seen today is because of the way Vietnam Veterans were treated when they arrived home from the war. I know, for me personally, when my grandfather came home, he told me stories how people would do outlandish things to him just because he fought in the war. This has a lot of impact on this generation today because I know this happened to a lot of veterans and I would not want to be part of a cause that did something to my grandfather and that could be said for a lot of people. 

Another reason is people do not feel the wars like they used to. What that means is people currently living in the United States are not the ones people killed a lot. In previous wars, they would send so many people over seas and many would not come back. In today world, yes many soldiers do die, but not on the scale it was back then. In an article from NPR, it talks about the new technology that the military uses, such as drones and other forms of technology to fight wars. This means less people feel the affects of the war. 

Even though the reasons I stated before are true and why many people do not either post or want to be apart of the antiwar cause, people still need to get the news about it. When people get one side of a story, like prowar, then they are more likely to go along with it and just be okay with that one side. In today society, we need both sides of whatever cause. Also, news sources need to be unbiased and not just have prowar guest come on shows, they need to have both so people can see both sides and choose which one they want to be apart of. 

USB Flash Drive

When people think about storage they think about the cloud where they have everything stored in. But before people could do that they needed to have a USB flash drive. The USB flash drive really took over the use of storing and transferring data between devices. The Flash drive has evolved over the years and now can hold any where from two gigabits to two terabits. As technology has expanded and people have more and more data online. The more and more storage they need to store. The USB Flash drive is not used as often today because of new technology and the negatives that it has but never the less, it was a stepping stone in our technology on how we store data and transfer data.  

When the USB flash drive first came out their was a debate on who first invented it. The reason being there were a couple companies coming up with the idea and their was a race to come out with it first. Stated in the article from Britannica talks about how a company call M-Systems got the patent for the USB flash drive but IBM sent in an document that was over ten years old saying they already invented the flash drive.  Even though the flash drive invention was up in the air on who actually invented it first. It still was a high used invention. It was developed very quickly and many people started using them. 

When going to the time the flash drive were invented the only way people could store things was on a floppy discs. According to an article from FlashStore at the time people needed a new way to store saved information without a power source. Which solved the problem people ran into of having to store information into a storage  place with a power source. This allowed people to store and transfer data or information more easily. 

This invention changed everyone life. When I was growing up my parents used them for everything. They would use them for keeping old photos of family members. People could them basically anyway they wanted to. For example, it changed the business world because it allowed people to upload their resume and have it with them instead of having print outs of the paper version. This was very useful because, instead of taking the time to print the resume out or not even have it with you. It allowed people to just give them the flash drive. 

Even though that the flash drive was used very often when it came out. People do not use it very often today. The reason being is that the flash drive does have some negative affects to it. according to the article from Pocketnow talks about how the disadvantages in today world and the technology we have today out weights the advantages the flash drive has. One of the major disadvantages the flash drive has is that most of the them are not encrypted. Keeping information safe is most people main priority. If they have a better option to keep the information safe then they are going to use the other option. Another disadvantage is the lifespan on the flash drive. It does have a good lifespan but in today society other technology has better. 

The flash drive has been used by many people and some people still use it today. Most people just use the online cloud to keep information but that being said who knows if the online cloud would have been invented if the flash drive was not invented. Since it has been invented for so long people have found the negative aspects of it but, it is still used today and it works great.

Are Our Lives Really Private?

It can be scary thinking about how public the world actually is. Watching these four TED talks made me think how it is affecting me, my family and, friends. The first two were the ones that stood out to me about how my life and others peoples' lives are not really that private. The first video by Juan Enriquez called Your Online Life, Permanent as a Tattoo talks about how everything you post is collected and permanent. He uses the express electronic tattoos. The reason is because everything people look up on Google or post on Facebook is going to stay with them forever. This goes along with the second video by Catherine Crump. In her video, she talks about how the police have data on every person. They can track where people go and even who they were with. To me, this is crazy. The police are taking pictures and collecting data every where I go even when I have not committed a crime. This issue makes me feel as if I am always being watched. 

The scariest one out of the three videos is Darieth Chisolm's video. In this video she told her story about how her ex boyfriend shared sensitive images of Darieth. This in the end hurt her reputation and harmed her mentally and physically. One of the sad parts in the video is that there is barely any laws in place for a situation like this. In the video, she also talks about how hard it is to get justice for being subjected to a crime like this. Our government should pass laws on these type of situations. The government could also have laws that hold the company accountable for what was posted on these various websites. People that have gone through something like this should not have to go through the same process she did. 

Then the final video from Christopher Soghoian talks about what we can do to help make our lives more private. In this video, he talks about what app we should use to make sure people can not hack our texts. Watching this video made me relieved after the other videos because it showed that some of the apps are still protecting us from people who see what I text to others. The thing that did bother me the most throughout the video was that he only had three examples. Out of all the ways I can communicate with my friends and family, only three made it on the list he talked about. 

After watching these videos, it makes me wonder how much of my life is collected and stored in data. It is crazy to me that the police has tracked me to every location and could tell me who I was with. Our government should look into this matter and see is this an invasion of privacy. Finally, as people who use the internet, we should make sure our apps are encrypted to make sure no on gets our information. Also, if you do decide to use an app without an encryption, then watch what you do on that app.