Blog Post #11 Final Blog Post

Final Blog Post

Barrett Owen

12/4/24

Our Relationship With Technology:

    Over the last few decades technology and specifically phones have become so popular and grown so big that almost everyone has one including kids and teens. Our relationship with technology in general changes so quickly and has a number of pros and cons that can be felt in many ways. One of the best examples currently is the debate on A.I. technology and how it will be used in the future. Use of generative A.I. technology has only become widespread by the general public for a few years now and there are many positive and negative aspects to it which have caused many debates. One of the main positives is that it can be used to summarize and gather large amounts of information into smaller parts that can make it faster and easier for people to consume. A negative is when this information is used for the wrong reasons and turns into people using the prompts and information these A.I. tools feed them to turn in as their own. There are also many debates on whether A.I. will be able to take over certain jobs in the future. “Roughly two-thirds of current jobs are exposed to some degree of AI automation, and that generative AI could substitute up to one-fourth of current work.” (American Progress) The amount of jobs which potentially can be replaced by A.I. tools is so large and we need to make sure that we find ways of detecting and regulating A.I. which will prevent certain uses of these tools so that humans dont become replaceable. Overall, I think that A.I. can be used in both positive and negative ways but we need to figure out how to monitor the intentions of people using A.I.

    I think that our relationship with technology is very complicated and can be healthy or unhealthy depending on the specific person and the ways they use it. Another major issue in recent years is the problem of misinformation and influences of creators online. Since it is so easy to create your own content and express your opinions online whether that is on Twitter (X), Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or another social media website/app anyone can post anything they want. This is another aspect that can be very beneficial to others but also very negative. The positive is when you are able to find creators who provide education, entertainment, and enjoyment, and the negative is when people start to manipulate, bully, or lie to their audience. Personally, I use social media a lot and that can be bad in some aspects but I try to stay open to multiple viewpoints, and explore a lot of sources of information. There are some apps which spread a lot of negativity and have more cyberbullies than others which might be causing some of the unhealthy aspects of social media. “[Misinformation is] really a function of the structure of the social media sites themselves.” (USC) Many large social media platforms are facing issues around what makes up possible misinformaton, but at the same time they need to provide they need to a place that upholds the first amendment. It is important that there is a space where people can share information and opinions freely  Overall I think that our relationship with technology across the world is very complicated and will continue to be debated. We need to be careful about what we consume and always looks for a good mix of enjoyment, truth, and education. 

Sources:

1- https://www.americanprogress.org/article/will-ai-benefit-or-harm-workers/

2- https://today.usc.edu/usc-study-reveals-the-key-reason-why-fake-news-spreads-on-social-media/

Blog Post #10 Antiwar

 Barrett Owen

Media Law and Literacy

12/3/24

Blog Post #10: Antiwar

    In recent years the U.S. has become involved in many different wars all over the world for a variety of reasons. These wars have ended up with our own citizens being hurt or killed by sending them over to these dangerous places. A lot of these wars could easily have been avoided if the U.S. government was not so interested in going to war. They have, both in the past and currently, been silencing many people who are independent of the major news sources and political view points that are antiwar because they feel the need to go to war for economic or political reasons. 

    Both of the antiwar websites are independent and not connected to a major company which allows them to say anything that they want to. A lot of the people who are saying these types of things, especially on big social media websites, have been censored recently. Both of the major political parties today seem pro war so the only way you can find the arguments against war is on smaller citizen journalist websites. The government is able to censor certain types of viewpoints that they don't want the general public to see, hear, or believe in. In recent years they have censored or hidden people with certain viewpoints and this is one of the major ones which is being hidden from the public in this country. If there is something they don't want people to have access to they can easily hide the information and their opinions from being seen or make it difficult to find. You have to specifically search for this opinion to be able to find people talking about it and expressing this argument which criticizes the government's willingness to enter into all of the wars that the U.S. has been involved in recently. 

Sources:

https://www.antiwar.com

https://www.theamericanconservative.com

Blog Post #9 EOTO 2 Reflection

 Blog Post #9

Barrett Owen

In class today we did the second EOTO technology presentations. They are all focused on the history and impact of technology/online related theories and cases. A lot of the topics had to do with the media and different ways mainstream media can spread misinformation and control/influence their audiences. My presentation was focused on the illusory truth effect which is a theory that says when information is repeated a lot then people tend to believe it more. This theory can be found easily in mainstream media sources and also influencers who are trying to spread information based on one specific side/candidate. One topic that I learned a lot from the presentations today was citizen journalism. One of the presentations was focused on the pros and cons of citizen journalism and the impact it has on society and the big media sources. Citizen journalism is when someone who is not associated with a big news company decides to try and spread the news on their own. The aspect of biases which can come with major news sources will not be seen as much in the citizen journalists even though they might be favoring one candidate as well. It is also more diverse in both locations, people, and stories which the main news sources would never mention. Another topic I learned a lot about was propaganda. Propaganda can mostly be found around more dictatorship countries but every single country uses their own version of it such as in the army or for certain political parties. All political sides use their own form of propaganda for the extra support especially in election times. There was also another presentation about the Smith-Mundt act which tried to stop the harmful propaganda that was starting to spread. Overall, the presentations taught me a lot about these theories and concepts which I had not known before today.

Blog Post #4- Privacy

 Blog Post #4- Privacy 

In recent years technology has only gotten more popular and continues to develop more every single year. Now we have the introduction of A.I. tools and bots that can create and write almost anything in only seconds for you. This has become popular for many people in the last year and thinking about how something this huge and significant in the world of technology which could possibly erase or change so many peoples jobs and livelihoods is crazy to think about. With social media privacy, which is more important now than it ever has been because of the amount of cyberbullies and hackers that could gather your data very easily if you aren't careful. It is common that people will not think too hard what they post and post something to social media which they regret and delete it later in hopes that it is gone forever after they have done that and that now they can forget that it ever happened. This is not the case because most social media apps are very easy to recover deleted posts pr data as well as anything off of social media just on someone's phone. The fact that all this information about ourselves and things we have said are so easy to access is scary when it comes to our online privacy. Nothing that is posted online is gone forever which can be dangerous for some people who aren't careful on what they comment and post every day. It becomes even more scary when you realize that anybody can access this information you post and most of the times deleting a post or comment doesn't even work either. Most people bring their phones or some type of technology with them almost everywhere that they go, which can cause privacy and safety issue to become even more common in recent years. 

Blog Post #8 EOTO 2

 EOTO 2: Illusory Truth Effect

The illusory truth effect is a theory that says that something that is repeated a lot will be remembered and believed as the truth because the same thing is seen so much. The actual truth may be hidden and forgotten because a false statement is repeated multiple times across many places. There have been experiments done that prove this theory where groups of people would hear a certain false phrase and then have to rate different phrases on how true they are. A lot of the people in the experiments would believe afterwards that the false statements were true. This is a theory that could be used to easily spread misinformation and other  kinds of false statements to mass audiences. "repeated information is processed more fluently" (ScienceDirect) If you see a lot of sources repeating the exact same information more people will think it is correct. This could be a major downside to the public if this theory is used in mainstream media because those who watch the channels that spread it would be starting to believe the misinformation more every time they watch it. "The deliberate spread of misinformation by individuals or groups, especially by way of the Internet, is known as dark participation. There is much evidence that it is being used by bad actors to foment discord and doubt about policies, leadership, and other important matters in populations approaching important decisions." (Psychology Today) This quote shows one example of how this theory can be used by the wrong people for very bad effects on others and that some people might even intentionally spreading their misinformation just to try and trick people of a certain thing by making it show up in many places. This is probably the biggest example of  how the theory can be used for a bad reason and an even worse and larger impact on the people affected. It is hard to say how this could be used for good because either way the information is being used in a certain way to trick viewers into believing a certain viewpoint and lying to them about what the truth really is. The bad parts of this theory definitely outweigh the good parts because it is harder to use the ideas in this theory without intention because of the necessary repetition and repeated information. This could affect society as a whole depending on its use and how many people it is spread to. If the person in charge decides to try and manipulate a whole country or more people they could probably do it if they had the power to control/bribe certain groups of people in the media or even online. This could affect different groups of people in many types of classes, ages, and location depending on the demographic that is targeted by the repetitive information and who the information is trying to manipulate. If the data being presented is targeted towards a younger group of people in a certain city the rest of the audience might not be affected the same way or even at all as the group that is being directly targeted by this information.

Sources: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/illusory-truth-effect

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X23001811

Blog Post #5 Documentary

Blog Post #5
In-Class Documentary:

In class recently we watched a documentary on the future of A.I. which focused on many different aspects of the present and future possibilities of A.I. technology and what it could mean for people all around the world. The first section of the documentary was focused on China and how it is the leading country in technology and A.I. I did not know anything about this so I learned a lot in this first section about China and its current state when it comes to technology in comparison to the rest of the world. China has already implemented a very accurate facial recognition software all over its country in companies, restaurants, and in its apps. This facial recognition software can be used to order food in restaurants, recognize people in business buildings, and recognize people for crimes. This is something that hasn't been implemented in this large of a way in other countries. They said that the only country that is close to China in technological development is the U.S. An important quote from the documentary is "China will catch up to the U.S. in AI technology by 2025 and lead the world by 2030." They stated that if the technological development in these countries stays consistent then China will overtake the U.S. and be the leading country when it comes to technology. With the developments the documentary shows this doesn't seem too surprising because they have a larger implementation of technology in their everyday lives and in public than in other countries. The next section of this documentary was focused on small towns and how a lot of people in smaller towns are starting to lose their livelihoods and jobs due to the increase and development in technology in recent years. In the documentary some of the people who came to speak said that in the next fifteen years they think that around 50% of jobs will either be replaced or heavily affected by the increase in A.I. Overall this problem of replacement of jobs is a big one when it comes to the increase and improvement of automated technology in recent years and where it could go in the future. A lot of jobs could be affected by this and it will be a big thing for everyone to have to adapt their careers to the future of A.I. and automated technology. 

Blog Post #7 Presentations

 Blog Post #7 In-Class Presentations:

In class this week we all gave presentations on different inventions in the history of technology as well as their history and their impact. Throughout the presentations there was a variety of topics such as streaming services, computers, cameras, and the printing press which were focused on and I learned something from every presentation about the website, app, device, or invention that was talked about because everyone talked about the entire history and creation of their technology and there was a lot of new information and people that I had never heard of that was very interesting to learn about for the first time. I think that some of the presentations focused on the older technologies were the most interesting to me because I did not know most of the information that they talked about so I learned a lot from them. Some of these were the printing press, vinyl records, and the telegraph. Some specific information that I learned in the presentation was that the first full in color film was released in 1908, and that the firs fully animated film was released in 1995 which was Toy Story from Pixar. Something else I learned was that TV's became a household thing which a lot of people started to frequently use after WWII and were appearing in most people's houses starting in the 1950's. I also learned that DVD's were first invented in 1997. The first smartphone was invented in 2007 with the first version of the iPhone from Apple. This surprised me to learn about because I always think about the iPhone as something that was created before I was born but it was actually a few years after I was born. The original iPhone also introduced the touchscreens which was a big deal that changed modern technology to this day. The personal computers were probably the biggest piece of technology which was focused on in these presentations because of the amount of uses and people that use it every day in recent years. The invention of the personal computer is pretty recent and the amount of impact that this device has had since its creation is huge. The invention that I personally focused on was the app/website Youtube which is a video sharing platform which is used by millions today and has only continued to grow since its release in 2005. Overall, these presentations helped me learn a lot about a variety of major technology devices and inventions which I had not known before and also helped me learn about where the devices I use daily come from and how they were made.