Final Blog Post: My Relationship with Technology

 I would say I use technology more than I would like to admit but not quite as much as some people my age use it. I have been using technology and social media for probably most of my life by now and it has impacted me in both positive and negative ways. Some positives are that it has helped me easily attain information and allows me to connect with many different people. There are also many negative impacts technology and social media has had on my life the main ones being that it is very time consuming and can affect my mental health negatively. I think there is a fine line between the advantages and disadvantages of the media in my life but since I am still using social media and technology the disadvantages do not outweigh the advantages enough for me to stop, at least for now.

That being said I know that I do not have the healthiest relationship with technology and social media which I would like to change but still haven’t yet. I know that it can negatively affect my mental health and I spend way too much time on it and I think the main reason why I don’t just quit social media is that everyone else around me uses it. My family and mainly my friends are almost always on their phones using social media which inclines me to use it as well, we all affect one another when we do that. The video Are You Lost In The World Like Me is a great example of this and also why it can cause people to feel lonely and sad. So many people are attached to their phones and don’t pay enough attention to the people around them which can cause people to feel isolated among many other things. Social media is almost never authentic and makes people believe unrealistic expectations in life. I think the key for most people is to try and find a balance between the time they spend on technology (mainly social media) and off of it to actually connect to people in person.

Since I have used and been part of social media for a while now and have some public digital records I would say I have a medium digital footprint. I have social media accounts for Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube, Tik Tok, and possibly more where I have left the majority of my active digital footprints. Even the blogs I am making for this class right now contributes to this. I know I also have a lot of passive digital footprints which is information I unintentionally submit online that I probably don’t even know about. Everyday my digital footprint is growing more than I even realize which I now know I should be paying more attention to. 

 

Thinking about it now especially after googling my name I would say I am pretty exposed online or at least more than I would like to be. On Instagram and some other social media accounts I used to be public where anyone could view my page, but in the past year or so I changed to a private account because it made me feel a little more protected. Even though I have a lot online there is nothing I am necessarily worried about other people, especially possible future employers, seeing since I have always tried to keep a clean online presence. 

 

 

https://techterms.com/definition/digital_footprint 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DU1B_XkyIk&t=1s 

 

 

The Illusory Truth Effect

Why is it that we sometimes believe false information without actually knowing the facts especially if it reinforces our own opinions or beliefs? This is known as the Illusory Truth Effect which was first thought of in 1977 by Lynn Hasher, David Goldstein, and Thomas Toppino. The Illusory Truth Effect is when people start to believe false information to be true after they hear or see it multiple times. The Illusory Truth Effect is also known by many other names such as the reiteration effect, illusion of truth effect, truth effect, and validity effect. One time or another, whether you knew it or not we all fell victim to the Illusory Truth Effect.

There is a lot of bad that can come out of this effect because people can get you to believe what they want you to believe and spread fake news very fast. I guess some people could use it in a good way but for the most part I think people will use this negatively in order to manipulate others into believing what they want them to think. I think this because I have seen it happen so many times especially when it comes to politics and marketing. An example of the Illusory Truth Effect in marketing that comes to mind is promoting natural and healthy foods. Some companies like to promote that their food with all natural ingredients is healthy but a lot of times they still have hidden chemicals and a lot of sugar. Even though you can read the ingredients and see that they aren’t actually healthy most people do not do that and instead believe what the companies repeatedly promote even if they are wrong.

Since the beginning of social media it had a big influence on the Illusory Truth Effect and how it became more prevalent. All social media companies have political agendas and promote whatever they want in their own self-interest. Just think about how many people use social media multiple times a day and get the majority of their information from it. Anyone can post almost whatever they want on social media no matter if it is true or false and once people start to see the same thing multiple times the Illusory Truth Effect will start to take effect. 

 

The Illusory Truth Effect was very common with COVID-19 especially in the beginning when no one knew actual facts about it yet still spread information about it enough to where people believed them. “A study published in the British Medical Journal has shown that more than 1 in 4 of YouTube videos about the coronavirus contained ‘inaccurate or misleading information’.” (https://www.kub-uk.net/insights/illusory-truth-effect/ ). This was only one form of social media that has evidence of spreading wrong information about this virus so you can only imagine how much false information is out there that the Illusory Truth Effect led people to believe. For something as big and potentially life threatening as COVID-19 the Illusory Truth Effect had a huge negative impact on many people. 

 

https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/illusory-truth-effect/

https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/repeating-misinformation-doesnt-make-it-true-but-does-make-it-more-likely-to-be-believed.html 

https://www.kub-uk.net/insights/illusory-truth-effect/

Diffusion of Innovations

 The beginning of Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovation (or Ideas) diagram would start in 2011 when talking about the mobile app Snapchat. Three guys named Evan Spiegel, Reggie Brown, and Bobby Murphy all collaborated to invent what we now know as Snapchat which debuted in 2011. Those three guys and the first couple hundred people to actually test it out would be considered the pioneers. In 2012 they reached 10 million active users who would be the early adopters of this app. Snapchat quickly became very popular and only kept growing. I think it could be debated when the early majority started using this app but I would say it was in 2016 when they reached 82.1 million users and became one of the most popular apps in the United States. The late adoptors in my opinion would be the people from around 2019 to now who are just starting to use the app because in 2019 Snapchat reached around 218 million users and kept slowly going up from there. Although many people use Snapchat a lot there are still a good amount of people who are mostly older in age who would be considered laggards.

 Being a Snapchat user myself I can see both sides as to why so many people like and use this app and those who don’t use it at all. Snapchat is basically just another form of communication and a way to connect with friends and family which we already have so many apps that allow us to do that, but people such as teens and younger kids love that sort of thing while more older people prefer to connect with people in person or will just refer to other forms of communication such as texting or calling. One reason why I think Snapchat caught on and spread so fast is because it is targeted mostly towards teens and young adults. That group of people already uses their phones a lot as a way to connect and communicate with people and Snapchat allowed them to do just that but made it a little different from the conventional ways. Once the early majority started using Snapchat it sort of became its own form of communication. To this day there are some people who solely use Snapchat to communicate with friends, instead of texting or calling, instead they do it all through that app. On the other hand I also understand why there are people who do not use this app at all. Snapchat is not that different from what texting and other apps allow you to do so I can see why people don’t want to use it or don’t think it is necessary. Also since Snapchat allows you to send people pictures that disappear after opening people can send inappropriate pictures and content and can get away with it easily which can also contributes to why some people don’t like or use the app.

https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/the-snap-generation-a-guide-to-snapchats-history/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/326452/snapchat-age-group-usa/ 

https://www.businessofapps.com/data/snapchat-statistics/

 

EOTO Presentations

  I learned many new things after watching all the different presentations and I especially learned a lot of new things about YouTube and found them to be very interesting. YouTube was founded in 2005 by three people named Jawed Karim, Steve Chen, Chad Hurley. A fact that was mentioned that I found to be very interesting was that there is 500 hours of video content uploaded every minute on YouTube. There are a lot of similar pros and cons that YouTube and motion pictures have in common but YouTube might have more cons because people can post basically whatever they want as long as YouTube allows it. 

YouTube Presentation  

Another EOTO presentation I found to be informative and interesting was about Netflix. I personally love Netflix and watch it all the time but I never knew much of the history behind it. Netflix was invented by Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings with the intentions to compete with Blockbuster in 1997. I knew Blockbuster went out of business because of other streaming services but I never knew it was mainly because of Netflix. In the very beginning Netflix only delivered DVDs, which I vaguely remember, until 2011 when they switched to both streaming and DVDs but sold both services separately. Throughout the years Netflix subscribers only kept increasing and in 2013 they came out with their first original series called House of Cards. Another interesting fact I learned about Netflix was that in 2020 they reached the most subscribers they ever had at 203.7 million subscribers which makes sense because that was during the start of the pandemic. Overall I enjoyed and learned a lot during the EOTO presentations. 

Netflix Presentation

Anti-war

 The websites cited are not well known so in a crowded field of cable news, web sites and podcasts they do not have a strong voice. Most people follow a small number of popular shows and personalities making it difficult for new or obscure sites to get popular. On the other hand, mainstream news sources would not be considered anti-war.

The mainstream news sources today are almost all biased and there are a lot of popular sources that are opinion sites. Conservative sites and channels have generally favored the military and military interventions that would presumably make the United States stronger or safer. Liberal sources have historically leaned more anti-war but favor military interventions when Democrats hold power. Many politicians and people in the political class can benefit from defense spending. Historically mainstream news has favored the military, and this is a reflection of the parties in power and popular American opinions at the time. That has started to change in recent years as people have become tired of years of fighting in the Middle east.

I disagree that you need to find obscure websites to hear strong anti-war voices. Some of the most popular right wing and left-wing commentators are anti- war. For example, Tucker Carlson is one of the highest rated news shows and has been critical of military action in the Middle East during the Trump and Biden administrations. Even pro military politicians like Donald Trump are leading a new group of populists that are against military interventions.  Democrats are generally less favorable to the military especially related to spending and the far-Left wing of the party is very anti-military and anti-war. There is still strong support for the military, but many mainstream news sites have become much more critical of war in recent years.

Tucker Carlson: Biden's Syria strike shows the folly of Establishment 'counter-terrorism' | Fox News

The Beginning of Motion Pictures

 There were many steps and people involved in making the first motion picture. The first steps in creating motion pictures started with identifying the illusions that make up a movie. The phi phenomenon and persistence of vision made up these optical illusions. Max Wertheimer discovered the phi phenomenon which is an optical illusion where stationary objects seem like they are moving by moving them fast enough in a certain sequence. Peter Mark Roget identified what is known as persistence of vision which is a phenomenon that allows you to not see the black spaces between the frames of a projected film. The invention of photography also is a huge step in creating motion pictures. Joseph Nicéphore Niépce took the first known photograph in 1826 and it kept improving since then and in 1839 the first positive photographic process was invented by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre.

The next big step took place in 1888 when Thomas Edison wanted to create a phonograph but for the eyes. His assistant William Kennedy-Laurie Dickson did just that when he finished creating the kinetograph in 1892. The kinetograph is the first motion picture camera that uses the kinetoscope, which Dickson also invented, to view the motion picture. The kinetoscope only allowed one person to view it at a time through a peephole like device that showed about a 16 second clip. They used emulsion-coated celluloid film sheets that were invented by John Carbutt and later produced by George Eastman’s company. In 1892 Edison and Dickson built the first film production studio in the world in New Jersey where they would produce their films there. Two years later the first kinetoscope parlor was opened by Andrew Holland in New York City which allowed people to view motion pictures through the kinetoscope. There were quite a few limitations with the kinetograph and kinetoscope such as it could not move, required a lot of light, and only one person could watch it at a time. 

kinetoscope

 

Then in 1895 Auguste and Louis Lumière invented the cinématograph which was another device that made movies and also projected them, it was basically the new and improved kinetograph and kinetoscope all in one. Woodville Latham had the official first public screening of a motion picture in May of 1895, but Auguste and Louis Lumière had the first successful public screening in December 1895 where they screened a series of 10 short films. That is just the beginning of the history of motion pictures and ever since then things have just kept improving until we got to where we are today. 

cinématograph 

 

Motion pictures over the years have had lots of positive effects and were a big part in the evolution of technology. From the first public showings of motion pictures to now it still accomplishes the same sort of goal in bringing people together in a community to be entertained and have a good time. Without motion pictures we would not have been able to see and experience all the things we are able to today.  Although there are many great things about motion pictures being invented there are also some negative effects. I think the main negative effects are the different messages that movies contain such as violence, controversial, or misinterpreted. Even though it can be argued I think that the pros outweigh the cons in motion pictures. 

https://www.britannica.com/art/history-of-the-motion-picture

https://www.victorian-cinema.net/dickson

 

https://www.loc.gov/collections/edison-company-motion-pictures-and-sound-recordings/articles-and-essays/history-of-edison-motion-pictures/origins-of-motion-pictures/ 

https://history.nebraska.gov/publications/effect-motion-pictures

Living in the Age of AI

 When it comes to AI I am somewhat conflicted on what to think. On one hand I think some of the innovation is great and beneficial especially when it comes to productivity. On the other hand I hate how it is almost taking over and controlling many parts of our world, invading our privacy, and taking away jobs. Yes there are some good things that come from AI but the question is does it out way all the bad and is it even ethical?

I personally think that some of the automation is unnecessary especially when it is taking over jobs that humans are perfectly capable of doing. Kai-Fu Lee who is a computer scientist who works in AI warns society that “50% of jobs would be somewhat or extremely threatened by AI in the next 15 years or so”. Right now having AI take over some jobs might seem like a good thing especially for the big companies and their productivity but what will happen in the years to come when so many people are out of jobs? I think that is something people should be paying attention to more because if half of the jobs are threatened in a few years what does that mean for the future of our country and its people?

In theory having AI and facial recognition to help with the safety of our country sounds great but in reality it isn’t. After watching the video In the Age of AI I fear to live in a world like China is living in with cameras everywhere watching everyone's every move. I don’t think the government should have that much power over us but instead use this technology in a different way that could still protect our country.

I think that AI technology would be great if it was used to do actual beneficial things by the hands of good people. We should focus our energy into developing more AI technology that helps with health care, especially what they were talking about in the video about using it to detect cancer in people sooner. I recently lost someone very close to me from breast cancer that was diagnosed too late in order to do anything about it, she died about a month after she was diagnosed. I can’t help thinking that if AI companies originally focused their attention on trying to improve problems in medicine  instead of using it for selfish reasons to benefit themselves if they could have found the cancer early and possibly saved her life. Like Kai-Fu Lee said “AI can be used for good and for evil.” and I hope at some point our country will end up using it for good but I am doubtful that it will happen.