Final Blog: Technoloy Pros and Cons/My Internet Presence

     Technology has its ups and its downs. We live in a more technologically dependent culture than we ever have before and this reliance on our devices and modern conveniences have many positive outcomes. Electricity makes it so that we can power our homes, phones, computers, televisions, refrigerators, washing machines, and the list goes on and on. These everyday commodities have their shortcomings, however. While our lives are much more convenient, this convenience comes at a cost such as pollution, poverty, the spread of misinformation, and even bullying. 

    I believe the largest advancement our society has made in a long time is the advancement of our forms of communication. If you compared the amount of information distributed from the 1970s to today in the 2020s, the gap is massive. Our phones, computers, and tablets are instant connections to the world of the internet and all of the information and data that comes with it. We have the capabilities to talk to and gather information from anywhere in the world at any time and place we chose. Constant communication means that news is readily available, but it also means that we are hardly ever alone. Growing up in a society that puts an emphasis on being connected over social media can leave an everlasting impact on my generation that has already taken roots. Child suicide was not as much as a problem, but when you are in a constant state of being able to be bullied or made fun of, the mental toll of not feeling accepted can push ones self to end their life. Another very relevant disadvantage of technology today is the spread of misinformation. It use to be that only reliable sources of news and experts in a field were trusted to get information from. Now, with the accessibility of social media platforms and blogs, anyone can write anything that they want or believe, factual or not, and people will take it as the truth. Even forign and sometimes even native governments will influence the publics beliefs on a matter in a false representation. 

    As someone born post 9/11, my entire life has been dominated by technology and mostly the internet. The internet is an incredible human achievement and has connected the world together, but like anything new, there comes the problems it creates. The first form of social media I used was Instagram at the beginning of middle school. Originally, my parents didn’t want me to get it, but I was able to persuade them. After that I got a Facebook account that I have since never really used. It is not very popular with people of my age, but I still have it and Facebook has access to a lot of my internet data, especially since they also bought out Instagram years ago. Snapchat I use more than anything else and I also used Twitter for about a week and then got bored of it. Along with many school related things and my YouTube channel where I posted a short film I made, I would say I have above the average internet presence, which I am not necessarily proud of. Looking back, I wish I would have been more careful about what I would let have access to my information. There is probably a lot more of my data on the internet then I will ever know about, but at this point there is not much I can do about that. The only way I can move forward is by hoping for the best and always posting as if the whole world is watching. The concept is kind of scary, but that’s the world we live in today and its all I’ve ever known.

 

 https://azbigmedia.com/business/the-pros-and-cons-of-modern-technology/

 

Blog #10: The Sherman Anti-Trust Act

    In the late 1800s, many industries were controlled by a single company or entity. This allowed the people in control of these industries to profit greatly, but it also made competition among other companies almost impossible. As a result, monopolies would be able to control a great deal of the power in the economy. Smaller businesses were either bought up or put out of business. This proved to be a problem for many reasons: prices for the things owned by these monopolies could be as high as the trust wanted, making it hard for people to afford, allows the workers of that industry to be undercut in wages because there is no other companies to work for, and makes it hard for smaller companies to survive. 

    The problems that monopolies like Standard Oil and The American Tobacco Company had to be solved or the economic unrest in the country would continue. The solution came from Senator John Sherman who proposed that the companies that made up trusts be outlawed, forcing them to break up into smaller pieces. The act passed in 1890 and created the much needed competition in the economy it was designed to ensure.

    While the law was passed way back in 1890, it has become increasingly relevant toady as it seems there are many corporations who have a vast network of control over some industries. With businesses like Google, Facebook, and Amazon becoming more and more influential on our day to day lives, as well as the standing of the global economy, some people are beginning to wonder if these companies should be broken up. This would cause a mad grab for power throughout the tech industry, but it would also offer more options to choose from for consumers. The likelihood of this happening however is low. The reason that the Anti-Trust Act was put into place in the first place was because there was no competition at all at the time. Today, there are at least several different companies you can buy a smart phone from, get a streaming subscription from, or download a social media app. 

    One of the only companies close to this level of no competition is Facebook who owns the social media apps Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Owning 3 of the major social media companies in the world would draw attention to the Anti-Trust Act, but when you consider that they are still in direct competition of Twitter, Snapchat, and YouTube, I believe there is enough evidence to say that Facebook is not a monopoly. Another company that is right on the edge of company and monopoly is Disney. Disney owns many entertainment companies such as Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, ESPN. and ABC. A statistic has shown that Disney is responsible for 40% of the content produced in the entertainment industry. As mind-boggling as that statistic is, that still means that 60% of all other entertainment is coming from separate entities, meaning Disney is not a monopoly. 

    While there are still many powerhouses in our economy today, none compare to those of the late 1800s and I do not believe that any action will be taken against them. As long as there is still competition in the open market, the chance of the US government taking the matter into their own hands is very unlikely. 

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sherman-antiturst-act.asp

Blog #9: Privacy

    I have grown up my entire life with the internet and modern technology. It is simply all I have ever known. To try and think of what life would be like without having my phone to communicate with my loved ones, my Xbox where I can interact and play games with my friends from miles away, or even this laptop I am typing this blog on is hard to imagine. Since I was young, I have been taught how to put my personal information out into the world, and now I have to hope it does not come back to haunt me. 

    It is crazy to think all of the personal things that a company or a hacker is able to find out about me without ever even meeting me. What is crazier is that that never seemed out of the ordinary to me until a few years ago. When you have lived your whole life under the influence of social media and modern communication and advertisement, everything seems normal. I would never think twice about giving my phone my thumbprint or doing a face scan of me. Now that I am entering adulthood and hope to go into my career and get going financially, I am worried what could become of my data.

https://www.ted.com/talks/ted_myerson_big_data_needs_big_privacy 

Blog #8: Diffusion of Snapchat

     Snapchat has become one of the most widely used forms of social media among people my age. Snapchat's use of a streamlined system of messaging and sharing has made talking to others much easier. The app is so broad and popular with teens and young adults, a lot of us have now transitioned from asking someone you meet, "What's your number?" to, "What's your snap?" It has not always been this way however. 

    Snapchat was founded in 2011 by three college students at Stafford University. The app started as a a way to send and receive pictures and videos from other users and featured a new type of mobile media sharing called stories. Snapchat stories set it apart from other apps as people could post all they wanted and their posts could not be viewed after 24 hours.  

    The app was originally used by college students and after some time, became available to anyone. While it is still used primarily by youth, many older celebrities have used the app as a way to connect to their younger fan base. I happen to believe that Snapchat is still on its accent and will be for a while. As the number of younger and older users continues to rise, the apps success will as well.

 https://www.thestreet.com/technology/history-of-snapchat

Blog #7: Reflection on Television

      Today in class, I learned about the history and pros and cons of the invention of the television. In 1922, Charles Jenkins sends the first still image over radio ways, setting up the opportunity for video images which finally came in 1926. Television quickly became an integral part of communication and society in the mid-1900s, color television sets became available to the public consumers. However, even though TV's had color capabilities already, the first colored live broadcast came in 1953.

    With the popularity of television increasing exponentially, the production of televisions became a booming business. With the United States having a massive influence over lots of East Asia, and especially Japan, the production of televisions was seen as a great opportunity to start up the economy in the region in a post-World-War-2 era. Japan, Korea, and China all became major producers of televisions and other technological devices which paved a way for the countries to become very profitable with big cities and more modern technology than the countries surrounding them.

    The pros of television in society were that it provided many forms of entertainment, art, and mass communication. Some downsides to the widespread use of television however are that it has been proven to lower the attention span of people who watch it too much, can cause eye damage, and can be used to distribute inappropriate and inaccurate material.

https://library.duke.edu/specialcollections/scriptorium/adaccess/tv-history.html 

Blog #6: Motion Pictures

    As a Popular Culture a Media Production major here at High Point University, movies are everything to me. Once I graduate I hope to be making my own movies and being able to show them to the world. While researching technology for my class presentation, I learned a lot about the history of motion pictures that I had no idea about. I found it incredible how film had gotten its origins over 100 years ago. 

    In the 1800s, the idea of moving images was something of a fascination. The closest thing people had back then to a film though was a children's toy that flipped through several images of the same thing in different points of motion, giving the illusion of motion. Once photography became a big thing in the 1860s, showcasing parts of the American Civil War in ways people had never been able to see before, the thought of taking those images and putting them all together to make motion was not far behind. In the late 1800s, many inventors began trying to make the first successful and working video cameras. Some early iterations could even take even 40 frames per second, a difficult task to complete with that kind of technology. The other invention that had to be made was the movie projector. There had to be a way of showing these images in quick succession and some early projectors were even capable of showing these films at 16 frames a second. 

    Films became a part of everyday society in France during this time where the Lumiere Brothers had made a cost-efficient film projector. Their invention allowed people all over Paris to see movies in theaters and the public loved them. Films began to be made with plots and stories and by the 1910s, the movie industry was everywhere. Silent films debuted with famous, recognizable actors and music to set the mood. Then in the late 1920s, Talkies came to theaters and swept the world by storm with movies like The Jazz Singer and Lights of New York.  Color in motion pictures became normalized after the release of The Wizard of Oz in 1939, and thus began the modern form of movies. 

    Motion pictures today make up a large part of our culture and can even impact the public's view of the world. Whether it is movies, TV shows, or even videos on social media like YouTube and TikTok are readily available and consist of most people's entertainment. Trying to imagine what life would be like today without being able to see moving images of just about anything and everything is almost impossible. Our society has become completely reliant and infatuated with motion pictures.

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

Blog #5: Social Media and America's Political Separation

    Social media is a relatively new creation. When I was born in 2002, the term social media was not a commonly used phrase to describe the digital world that has grown along with me and become an integral part of our lives. In today's society, I believe we have a dangerous dependency on social media that is causing problems in every part of our culture. 

    I find the area of our lives that our beloved apps have the most destructive impact on is politics. Our country is on the forefront of technology compared to the rest of the world. The problem with that is that we do not know what happens to a civilization after being exposed to this kind of constant attention to ourselves. The social problems that have stemmed from new media are very prominent and can be seen on a daily basis. With many people feeling pressure from being constantly in the spotlight of the internet. This also is true for many issues that shape our political landscape. Continued and nonstop coverage of the world is good in many ways; exposing human rights violations, reporting crimes and illegal activity immediately, etc. However, it also allows false information to be spread whenever and where ever. 

    Before the days of social media, there were trusted and reliable sources of information that people could go to to get educated and well informed news. Fast forward to the present, and anybody with access to the internet can be an "expert" on whatever they please. This combined with the emotional and raw political nature of America, a deep rooted divide between people of this nation has formed. 

    Whether or not social media has caused the informational divide to grow, giving people a shared space to freely speak their beliefs without fear of getting into an argument in person has definitely added fuel to the fire. The internet has given people with extreme views a digital voice to be heard that they would not have had. This ties in with the speech theory of promoting tolerance. These extreme beliefs are now more prominent and there is now a lot more that we as Americans need to tolerate. I believe that this increase in radicals has thrown off the normal time that it takes us to learn or become tolerant of these beliefs. So, for a time, I think that the internet and social media will cause problems in politics, but I think that there will also be a period after this where we have a sort of golden age of acceptance of all kinds of people. 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2019/10/30/does-social-media-make-the-political-divide-worse/#193deca56e3a

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/05/13/publics-in-emerging-economies-worry-social-media-sow-division-even-as-they-offer-new-chances-for-political-engagement/