Final Technology Post

     Though out this semester our class has spoke a lot about technology and the positive and negative affects of it. I never really thought much about my relationship to technology until this class. It has really sparked my thinking and made me consider some things. Overall I think I have a good relationship with technology. I have always considered myself very proficient with technology. Since I was young I could always fix my devices and my family now calls me the IT. I think because I understand technology so well I have been able to use it in moderation and for good. I have and IPad, iPhone, and a Mac. I use these things for artistry, note taking, organizing etc. I find it very helpful and I absolutely love how I use my technology. I definitely think part of my love for technology could be because I am good at using it so I can imagine for people who don't understand it why it would be frustrating living in todays society. For someone like me I use it more for daily life and artistry reasons as opposed to using the internet. I should use technology to inform me on current news but I find myself not using it for that as much. Im very interested in the media and music side of things. As an artist and en employee of a record label, I like to stay up to date on all things music related.

    However, in recent years I have started to truly believe the "don't always believe what you see on the internet" saying. I have started to realize that a lot of the things we see or read online are not true and are fabricated. Although this is a big issue it's not something I worry about on the day to day. I definitly think it is negatively affecting our society but its not so much a personal problem. I am concerned for this societies future however.  The continuess flow of false information online for billions of people to access can be very dangerous. It's contributing to the divide in society and America right now and if we continue on this path it can be detrimental to the country. I think a lot of people are worried about this issue however we have come to accept that it is an issue. People understand the consequences of this but no one knows what to do. It's come to the point where it might just be out of our hands and in the hands of the tech companies and the government. The attached picture is just one example of the many instances where false news is spread online. 

    For a negative example of social media: the Facebook like button. If you've ever seen The Social Dilemma you would know how crazy it is to hear from the people who created these technologies. In the film, the guy who created the Facebook like button explains how he had good intention but it has quickly turned into a negative thing. It's unfortunate because I think most if not all technologies were created with good intention and the ability to advance society for the better but society took it and used it negatively unintentionally. There is always going to be those people who ruin it for the rest of us. This article from The Atlantic talks about Facebook and how most Facebook users don't even know that Facebook takes their information. It's concerning that some people really have no idea what these platforms do. 

    For my own family, I know they can't appreciate technology as much as I do. A lot of them are technologically challenged so some very simple tasks are very difficult for them and it becomes more work to get things done. I will say I love the ability to be able to communicate with my friends and family while I am away so I think in that aspect we're all very grateful for technology. The technological advancements in communication especially from iPhone to iPhone is very impressive. FaceTime has made communication a lot easier and close to the real thing. 

   

    In terms of social media I think almost the whole world has a very negative relationship with it. This has messed with young peoples' mental and physical health. Almost every single person I know has had at least one experience with social media where they felt left out, bullied, or compared themself to something and it in turn created a negative affect. This article does a great job talking about this after a young girl felt victimized by social media. In this class we talked a lot about more complicated technologies but I think the whole industry gets a bad rap because of social media. I truly think that without social media we wouldn't see technology as such a bad thing. Don't get me wrong there are definitely other things wrong with technology but social media is the one thing we see come up every single day that almost every person in the world has access to. 

    When looking into my online footprint I was pleasantly surprised to see what comes up when searching my name. The first thing is my LinkedIn and it reads "Alexa Ondrush president of HPU petal points." The next link is my personal website. Following that is my Facebook which I only use for my photography business. The one after that is my YouTube for my singing videos. Then lastly the podcast I created last year. Im sure if I did some deeper digging I would find more but I pride myself on a clean online presence. My music career is very important to me so I like to post things that would help me move forward so LinkedIn and my websites are the most important to me. Overall, I would like to consider myself a positive technology user. Here is a short article on how to create a positive digital footprint to get ready for your future. I use it to get ahead in my career, to keep myself on track and organized everyday and to communicate with people and make connections. 

AI In Society

    This documentary was very alarming to watch. It's scary yet interesting to see how AI is going to change our society and already is. In the first story, they discussed how China is changing the world of facial recognition. The new technologies have these systems recognizing people at lightning speeds. China is putting these facial recognition systems on the streets to catch people for jaywalking. Fines for jaywalking aren't cheap either. It can recognize a person from far away even if the image is slightly blurry. They're also putting these systems in food establishments to pay for your meals. Soon, face recognition will be used everywhere. In a way this is very helpful to our society. It's convenient in some ways incase you forget your wallet or for safety reasons. It's easier to keep things more secure and can keep others from viewing bank accounts, passwords, your phone etc. The negative side of this can be the lack of privacy. Knowing that at any point while you're out in public a camera can access your face and your identity can be scary. This gives tech companies and the government the ability to know a lot about us just by scanning our face on a camera. In terms of security, I think this is revolutionary. With all these advancements security is a lot more secure.

    Another strong negative of the new AI advancements is the job displacement. Because these systems are so smart and are able to do most things humans can, a lot of jobs are being replaced by AI. This is becoming a problem for white collar jobs. Although this is not a white collar job we're seeing this problem especially in the truck driving industry. Embark is a company created by a young CEO engineer who created a self driving truck. This has become an issue for the truck drivers because they will soon loose their jobs due to the advancements of this industry. 

    The pros of AI other than the security is in the health industry. Doctors are working to create AI systems that can detect early signs of breast cancer. This is huge for the breast cancer community because they can catch the cancer before it spreads while it is still in the treatable stages. 

    Overall, I think AI is something we need to look out for and as a society keep it under control. We also need to appreciate the technology advancements thus far because there are a lot of positive things that AI is doing for the world that we cant look past. 

EOTO #2 Reflection- Influencers

After watching todays presentations, I wanted to reflect on the "online influencers" slides. This is a topic I find very interesting so when I saw someone was presenting on it I had to talk about it. I have always been baffled by the fact that some people can actually make millions from posting videos online. I think it's very unfair and an unreasonable industry that we put way too much focus on. Today I learned that it's actually a 13.8 billion dollar industry. This is so unreasonable to me because you have other industries that are actually so important to society that aren't even worth this much. Another interesting fact is that moms were the start of the influencer craze. I almost wish thats still all it was because now its so out of hand. 49% of people actually depend on influencers for recommendation on products. This is interesting to me because half of the time when an influencer is promoting a product they don't even use it. Its a brand deal and they're making a lot of money off of so most the time they don't care if it works or not. 

I think this has had such a negative effect on our society for a few reasons. Fist being that you now have kids growing up thinking they can do this as their profession which is very hard to do. It's led young people to do stupid things online just so they can get noticed. This is concerning because people are going too far and doing things that can potentially be dangerous all for the likes. The second reason influencers are negative is because of the comparisons young people (specifically girls) make to these influencers. What people including myself fail to realize sometimes is that these people spend their whole day focusing on their health, working out, making videos and for some getting surgery even. Society cannot compare themselves to these influencers because most of us don't have the time or money to do what they do. This can be detrimental for a young persons mental health. 

Agenda setting is one of the media theories that dictates how we view the media. The theory was developed by Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw in 1972. They came up with this theory from looking at voters and their behavior based off of the media.This is more about how the media can tell us what to talk about and what they present to us but not how we feel about it. How we feel is what we come up with based off of what we see.

 

Framing is another aspect of agenda setting. it was founded in 1988 and it's when the media can have the audience think a certain way to get to a conclusion. This works by the media giving certain facts and describing in a specific way so that you get to that conclusion but it feels natural. It feels like you came to that conclusion yourself when really it was based off the facts presented to you. You can learn more about framing and more details of agenda setting here.

In a video I watched on agenda setting, the presenter described the example of Obama Care vs The Affordable Care Act. Basically, both of them were presented to a group of people and the individuals felt differently about Obama Care because some people did not like Obama at the time. Obama Care and The Affordable Care Act are the same thing but because of the name and the way it was presented had people drawing conclusions without even knowing much about the topic. 

Agenda setting can be looked at in a visual format. First off you have reality which is the things happening in the world that we see. Then you have your gatekeepers who are basically the reporters of the world and the people bringing you this information. The next step is the media agenda which is the step at which the facts are put into the media and its decided what conclusion they want you to feel and how their going to get you to it. Public agenda is the viewing portion where people discuss the media that then turns into policy agenda. This is when the government comes in and politicians becomes important. This is when politicians can decide how they want the public to view them. They can see what voters want and they will please them by putting certain laws and policies in place. 

The policy agenda and the media agenda become a cycle because what happens in the policy agenda then becomes media for the media agenda so those go back and forth. The media agenda will decide how they cover stories based on how the policy agenda reacts. The audience is below all of this because we are influenced by all of it. 

Now that we understand the theory and what it is, we can decide, do we think this theory is correct? This is an opinions based question but I think yes. I think this can actually be seen as a really bad thing and we are seeing it a lot today. With politics being so prevalent and dividing our country more than ever, I think we're seeing this a little too much. Agenda setting is being seen lot on the political news companies which is contributing to the divide in the country. These companies are only showing certain sides to the story which in turn is turning the country on itself. It's causing fights between the left and right because people are not getting the same news. If we continue down this road it could lead to some serious implications with fighting in our country and we'll continue to go backwards as a society. While I do understand the reason for doing this is not to harm the country it could still be dangerous. News companies and politicians are trying to please the people so they're seeing more of what they're interested in which in turn creates more revenue for these companies. 

This generation is growing up in the age of "fake news" and a lot of this is coming from the theory of agenda setting. Giving the media too much control and allowing them to change stories or only share what they want you to hear should not be allowed. There should be a portion of the government that regulates this and ensures that all sides are represented equally and fairly. 

I like the propaganda pictures above and to the right because it does a great job representing what agenda setting really is. It's interesting because it makes you think you are viewing media on your own when it's really completely controlled by the gatekeepers. 

Blog 5 Sensorship

As class we know exactly why we have never heard of these websites or heard these voices. That is because of the Sedition Act of 1861 which made it a crime to criticize the government. This was the same year the Civil War started and journalists began to speak out against the war. The government didn't like this so they passed the act. Even though this was created in 1861 we still see this today especially with the websites linked here. The government will purposely make it difficult for you to find people with these opinions online. The government pairing up with technology companies such as Apple, Google, etc. can cause this making the internet unfair. This country claims to not have sensor-ship but its very ironic that some things are easier to find than others. Part of our Democracy is to have your own opinion and to be allowed to express your thoughts but we aren't always allowed to do that according to this issue. 

Blog 5 Pivacy Issues

After watching the TED talks I am now more concerned than ever about my privacy online. What I am most worried about is my social media pages. What we learned from the videos is that when you delete something, you are not really deleting it. Everything online will always be out there in a computer somewhere. It's very concerning to know that my information is tracked and recorded somewhere for technology companies to access. It's even scary knowing that the messages I send to my friends or family could be somewhere even though that is personal information. 

I don't think there is much the government can do about this issue. They can help by putting laws in place to keep companies from tracking our information but I think these companies would do it anyway. They benefit so much from stealing our information so I don't see it stopping anytime soon. I also don't know how to reverse this problem. Our society is so deep in the privacy issue that reversing it would be so difficult and would completely change the whole industry.

I think the most we can do about the issue is to try our best to not put anything online thats too personal. We need to be careful with what we share and not keep anything on our devices that could be used against us in anyway. I think social media should be limited and Amazon Alexa's should not always be turned on. It's also important we listen to the individuals who give TED talks or others trying to give advice on how to stop or prevent these issues. 

Eight Values of Free Expression

I think out of all the theories of free expression number 4, Individual Self-fulfillment, resonates most with me. "Free speech enables individuals to express themselves and thereby create their own identity. " As an artist and musician this one seems close to home. Being able to express myself and have my own identity is very important in the creative industry. Artists need to have the ability to share their message and have an individual unique identity for fans to relate to. Without having this, this world would have no creativity. No art, music, or dance which we all innately need. I also love the idea of theory 3, Stable Change. This is important to me because certain things can really set me off sometimes but Im not a violent person. What I mean by this is that I can get very angry but Im not going to react by becoming violent with someone-most people feel the same way. When I feel angry I tend to "vent" to someone I trust or feel would understand where Im coming from. I think this expression is very important for people to be able to get their anger out without having to resort to violence. Its a much safer way to get your feelings out there and work it in a healthy way. 

Theory 2, Participation in Self Government, seems like the one that might be struggling in todays society. This theory states that citizens should be well informed on all candidates when voting on an election. I think with todays issues with censorship and social media this isn't completely accurate. There is a problem with algorithms to where you are force-fed certain information. Yes, anyone can post whatever they want so all candidate information is out there somewhere, but that doesn't necessarily mean its going to get to you and your feed. Therefore, information is getting lost and rumors and fake news have become so prominent we don't know whats real and whats fake.

Going back to theory 4, not only is this seen in music its also seen in social media. Being able to have our own identity a part of all fields across communication. When we look at social media today we know its a huge industry that has a lot of opportunity to make a lot of money. A lot of people get their fix of individual self fulfillment just off of social media. People use their Instagram, Snapchats and Facebook as an extension of their personality. Many people pour out their whole lives onto these platforms for hundreds, thousands, or millions to see. This theory shows us why people do this. As human beings, we want to be relatable and we want the approval of others. We want to show people who we really are and be accepted for that. Many people use social media to do this and find others who are similar to them. This is also why people photoshop themselves to be acceptable to society. For some people in order to feel self fulfillment they think they need to change what they look like so people will approve of them. Over time this has become a huge problem in our society and has led to more complicated issues in mental health. Linkedin has an article that describes these issues that are very important to our society today.