Blog Post #5 - Privacy, Online and off

 Technology is cool. And weird and scary. When you think of technology; text messages, social media apps, videos, websites etc you think of privacy, no? I mean naturally when I go on social media I think I can look at anything and send anything I want because more often than not it is only between myself and another person. But no. Going into watching TedTalks about privacy with technology I thought that yeah I have my own privacy but I knew the government could check in if they wanted to if NEEDED (key word here), right? No. The government can look at whatever they want, they can take pictures of license plates anywhere without reasoning. Now off the top of my head I think well, people do bad things and I'd rather have them have pictures of my license plate if that means they can check others against possible warrants and other bad doings. But they can use this technology to try to find information on things they don't need to know about. In the video from Catherine Crump of police tracking proves that in New York City, police cars equipped with the ability to take photos of licenses plates were driving by mosques to track who goes in, and out of these scared places. Something clearly rooted in hate in another religion. That to me is just not right. While this may not directly affect me because all I do is go to class and sleep, it can affect so many others who may be targeted simply because their skin color resembles something the police don't like or they believe in a religion that isn't the norm. 

I think the government is in a hard place. On one hand they want to be scanning some things to protect the entire country from the potential of another terrorist attack, but on the other hand are sticking their noses in too far for comfort. Its hard to say that I'm okay with the government just sitting back and watching when Darieth Chisolm had to go through months of legal trial to get naked photos of herself taken down that she never even consented to. That could have been someone I knew, going through the pain of wondering who saw something they shouldn't have ever seen. It could have been my future daughter or son having to bear those emotional wounds for the rest of their lives. All too often we sit back as a whole community saying "oh jeez, well that sucks. Now I know what not to do" but until its yourself plastered everywhere you don't want to be, no one will understand the severity of the lack of privacy we all have and change will not be fought collectively because the majority is in the mindset of "that sucks, not me though." Things need to change. 

Blog post #6 - Diffusion of Innovation

 Tik Tok. An app, a trend, the latest thing. The idea of diffusion of innovation is separated into five different sections. Innovators, the people who create the innovation, early adopters, those who join in before it really takes off, early majority, the rest of the people who get in before everyone but also not the latest people, the late majority, the people who waited it out and decide to hop on with everyone else, and the laggards, the people who just aren't going to take part in the innovation for a variety of reasons. 

The innovators, the creators of tik tok were smart. They took an app that died, Vine, which allowed for very short videos to be shared and then liked and commented on, and almost re-vamped it. Tik tok, which is free, allows anyone with the app to take videos, share videos, view them, like and comment on them, and re make them if the user wanted to. Not to mention it really started to take off at the beginning of Covid-19, when everyone was stuck inside bored with nothing to do. The early adopters I would say had the app before Covid. While it was a thing, just not as popular, this group got on and were just hanging out really. The early majority I would define as the bored people during the infamous lock down. These people already watched all of OBX and All-American and needed something else to do to waste their time, enter tik tok. Now people can just scroll on the their phones watching 15-60 second videos and keep scrolling. The late majority would be the people later during the lockdown who finally got bored and then also the people who heard about all the cool things people would see on it post lockdown. And then we have the laggards, I would define these people in terms of tik tok as a few different things, either people who don't use any newer social media apps and are religious to Facebook, those without smart phones, or people who are seriously busy with their lives and don't just scroll on their phones. 

With a positive being it cured boredom during the lock down there are also some negatives. A big negative is that there is no big restrictions on what can and can't be posted on this app. While you can turn off comments on a video there is still a lot of bullying that can occur and also over sexualizing younger people on the app. I don't think the negatives can out weigh the positives in this app. 

Blog Post #4 - Com Tech Timeline - First Emoticon vs Emoji

 Emoticons. :) :( :? :/ :D are just a few. A few that first appeared in 1979.. 42 years ago, and first used in 1982 from a computer scientist Scott E. Fahlman. It was suggested that :-) could mean something funny or nice while :-( could mean something serious or sad. What needs to be considered here is the media richness theory this is when there are different forms of communication, phone calls, emails/text messages, and face to face meeting. Talking to someone when you can see their face, either in person or via video sharing calls you are able to read their facial expressions and also see their body language (for the more part if via Facetime like calls) however, when it is a conversation over the phone or over any sort of messenger, thats lost. It goes a step further to when only sending messages the tone of the conversation is also lost, bring in emotions. Even the most basic of emoticons can give the reader a sense of tone in the conversation that otherwise would've been missing. 

In a study over a six month time frame over 158,000 text messages were collected, of these texts roughly 4% contained at least one emoticon. The study found that, to no surprise in my opinion, females were sending more emoticons overall but the men had more varity of different emotions. What surprised me also was that in a 1998 study that focused on emails they found that 1-25% contained at least one of more emoticons. This is surprising to me because since being in college we are so heavily taught about email ettiquette. It is even an unspoken, yet somewhat spoken, rule to not even send an explanation point in a business email because the reader could think you're yelling at them. While emoticons were a welcomed creation to some, some had their cons with them. Some think that this creation formed a larger sense of laziness because instead of typing how one feels they may just send a quick :), it also can negatively affect the credibility of an author if all the time they're using emoticons in place of describing real emotion. However, we have our pros. The first being its creation, it gives non verbal communication when face to face communication is not currently feasibile. They can also clarify the tone of the current communication without any drawn out explanation. 

With new times come some updates, enter emojis. These little guys were first created in the 1990's by a Japanese phone provider and in 2009 came out with 722 released emojis to further emotions through online communication. Not many people study this form of communication, partly because it is new and because of it there are not many studys for it. There was a study done through Twitter to see the affect of emojis across the globe. When looking at over 12 million tweets by close to 8,500 users it was found that 19.6% of tweets shared contain at least one emoji, 45% of those having one all the way to 3% of those containing 5 different emojis. Broken down by country is a very interesting thing as well. Coming in at first is Indonesia having 46.5% of tweets containing an emoji, fifth is Qatar having 32.6%, and at last... the U.S, in the United States 7% of tweets contain an emoji. There is also correlation that when there is a higher life expectacy across the board, the use of emojis decreases, why? Great question, my thought is that these people may be having more real time conversation and aren't looking down to send an emoji but, my thoughts. 

The invention of emoticons and progression to emojis I think have changed communication in a good way. People who are unable to communicate real time, or just don't want to, are able to share more accurate feelings through a screen. Sometimes people only have their screen to "talk to" in a sense and this enables anyone to share their feelings, which at the end of the day, is what keeps people as sane as can be, especially during the current times. 

Blog Post #3 - Eight Values of Free Expression

Out of the eight values of free expression the value that resonates with me the most is number four "Individual Self-Fulfillment". This resonates with me because this value talks about freedom of speech and how it allows any individual to express themselves however they choose. In expressing themselves in a wide variety of different ways, they are able to find like-minded individuals who they can then befriend and grow with. This way everyone is able to find their "people" and then continuously grow beyond just their "group" and then create a whole species of civil people. We are among an era of self love and self-fulfillment and that is truly because of this particular value because it can enable others to help themselves and also help others in a caring way (not every day we come across those types of people). 

From the eight values, the one that seems the most important to me is number seven - "Promote Innovation". Our world is constantly changing and evolving. There is this idea that if one cannot continue to change with the world, then they're left behind. And I've never heard anything more true. This value shares the idea that in an environment where free speech is protected and valued then that community is more likely to have a creative environment where people can fulfill themselves in different ways - which then creates innovation derived from creativity. A community that can be innovative and evolve with the changing world around them will always stay on top of the newest ideas and will remain "on top" compared to others. I will say, with the age of technology and things changing, America does do a decent job of ever changing (not necessarily in the best ways always but nonetheless.) 

Out of the eight values of expression there are a few that stick out, but only one feels the most personal. Number six, "Promote Tolerance", gives me mixed emotions. This gives me mixed emotions of on one hand, while it's a good idea, currently in today's world is the most opposite thing I've ever read. But also, it is something that if more people consciously consider in their daily lives, the world could actually be a better place. This idea of promoting tolerance is that with the freedom of speech then people can express anything, sometimes things are said that one might not agree with, the idea of this value is that it is okay to find what someone said at hateful or upsetting. Then it teaches us to become more tolerant and accepting of other point of views, then making us a better society because everyone is tolerant. This is a load of crap and not at all the closest in being true with today's world. I don't know about you, but I know MANY people who when they hear something they don't agree with in the slightest sense they cause an uproar. This "uproar" could be anything from just plainly saying something to the person to putting them on full blast on social media explaining how that person is wrong while they themselves are right and are always right. Now, could this have to do with the idea of political divide, and how some Democrats will never believe or trust a word that comes out of a Republicans mouth (and vise versa because this majorly goes both ways), yes. However, on top of the political divide that has separated so many in today's world, I also believe people are far too sensitive these days. Again, there are many people who I know personally and people who I've heard stories from, that if anything "hurts" them in any way possible then that person plays the victim to the most extreme point possible. While this value makes conceptual sense, if people in our world continue to be far too sensitive (and in my opinion, it will only get worse), then this value will only remain an idea and never come to life because there are too many people who avoid any sort of CIVIL conversation surrounding ideas they do not like. 

The value that I truly see in action today is number five. "Check on Governmental Power" also known as the watch dog rule". This is the idea that free speech combined with freedom of press that anyone can voice their concerns about any idelation of abuse of power. There is already a system of checks and balances in place in a governmental setting within the three branches - legislative, judicial, and executive, but this goes further to include citizens to be able to express their concerns. With the power of social media in today's world this allows anyone - whether or not they are in a role of publicizing this news to be able to voice their concerns. Whenever there is any news of someone abusing power more often than not this is voice one way or another on platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and/or Instagram which then brings to light the abuse of power but also informs those who may not be aware of it. This social media "coverage" then almost forces the individual to confront the news about them and provides the people to get to the bottom of it. A very well known abuse of power was with President Trump, the one who got impeached because of it. Trumps Power was clear during his time in office and more often than not got him in some trouble. There were many times on Twitter where just his name alone was trending, where over thousands of tweets were surrounding him. This just goes to show that without freedom of speech AND press, this news wouldn't be able to come to light. 

Blog Post #2 - The Founding Era

 After watching the video of the founding and history of the U.S Supreme Court there were a few things that I learned that I hadn't already known. Before watching the video I thought that the justices did their own thing individually but its quite the opposite. All the justices meet together, in private, and go over the cases collectively and try to resolve things by working together. The justices also enacted a system where everyone must speak at least once before anyone can speak for a second time. I found this interesting because it shows that although the justices were appointed by different presidents of different political parties, they still share a general overview of respect for each other. Another piece of information I learned was that when the news says that the Supreme Court "upheld" or "decided" when they didn't take the case, they, the Court, just didn't do anything regarding the case brought to their attention. Also, to determine whether a case is worthy of hearing in front of the actual court four out of the nine justices have to agree on it before moving forward. When it is time to make a decision on whether or not there was a legal issue either missed or wrongly used at the lower court, five out of the nine justices have to agree. 

The most important take-away point that I personally gathered about the Supreme Court is that these are the people who tell everyone; the government, states, local level courts what they can and cannot do. Every person who serves as a justice has to be objective, which to me in surprising because it is very much easier said than done to be objective as much as the justices are required to be. Something surprising that I have learned is that since the creation of the United States and the Supreme Court's establishment in 1789, there has been only just over 100 members, to me that is surprising because let's be honest. Is it the greatest idea to have all old (predominately) white people always serving in these roles as times are ever changing right before our eyes? Which goes along to the next surprising thing I learned was that the members last decades past the person who first appointed them into their position. There are also over 100 new cases every WEEK, that is just crazy to me, it's like finding out you have 10 new tests and homework assignments given to you every week, just unimaginable. Although I learned a lot of things from this video that I didn't know about before there was one thing that this video changed about how I thought about the Supreme Court. This is not a job you can just "pick up". In the video it mentioned that it takes anywhere from three to five years to start getting comfortable with it and used to the title of being a Supreme Court justice rather than what many people are used to within a couple months of their "normal" job. Again, just imagine you accept a new and fun job you think you'll be able to master in just a short couple of months and then BAM it hits you, you're kinda all over the place for the next three to five YEARS. 

Overall, going into watching this video I thought I knew a relatively decent amount of information about the Supreme Court. But, it is safe to say this video not only taught me new things about the Court, but surprised me as well.