FINAL POST- Technologies role in day to day life

    Technology has now become a very impactful part of society day to day-to-day life. In 2023 almost 70% of the world's population owned a smartphone and it has probably increased since then. In America, 97% of the population has a phone while 85% own a smartphone. There are many positives and many negatives of technology being so present in our lives. 

HEALTH:
    Mental health has been on a decline since the beginning of social media. Cyberbullying, social isolation, and unrealistic standards are all side effects of social media and technology that have an impact on mental health and more specifically teenagers' mental health. People can also become addicted to technology and people who have pre-existing mental health disorders are more likely to become addicted. Cyberbullying can cause stress, anxiety, and depression. Social isolation leads to anxiety and depression and the unrealistic standards all over TikTok and Instagram can lead to body image issues and low self-esteem which could lead to an eating disorder. 

    There are ways to reduce these negative effects such as lowering screen time, deleting apps that have negative effects on you, and turning off notifications and sounds. All of these things can help you step away from social media and have a healthy relationship with it. I understand that these things can be difficult. Personally, I probably spend too much time on my phone and social media. My average screen time on my phone is usually around eight hours and the top app is either Messages or TikTok. 

  POSITIVES:

  Even though there are a lot of negatives there are plenty of positives too. Specifically talking about mental health, people can now do online therapy appointments which can help people who have anxiety or other complications and can't do in-person sessions. Technology has also increased job opportunities, increased access to knowledge, better time management, and improved healthcare. 

    As someone who is six hours away from my immediate family and while at school around 12 hours from extended family, I really appreciate being able to text, call, and Facetime my family whenever. Social media keeps family and friends updated on each other lives and you can communicate with them. If not for being able to call my family every few days I don't know if I would have gone to a school out of state. Technology can help you reach people across the world which is truly amazing and something new that you couldn't do before this generation
. I think technology helps my relationship with my family and high school friends because we can still keep in touch even though I moved out of state.

    DIGITAL FOOTPRINT:

    Digital footprint can be a scary thing because even if you delete something you don't know if it is fully gone. In social media, nothing ever fully goes away. This affects society as a whole today because when you're looking for job opportunities they can look through your digital footprint and could find things you maybe don't want your future employer to see. I have been a victim of digital footprint. In late elementary school and middle school, I would go on what used to be Music.ly and post very cringy dumb videos. They have been deleted but it is embarrassing if people were able to see them. Google also uses your footprint to show you relevant ads and things you would want to pull you in. 

    

EOTO 2 REAX- Citizen Journalism

 

    Citizen Journalism is journalism that is conducted by people who are not professional journalists but who disseminate information using Web sites, blogs, and social media. This means it's just average citizens reporting news and usually their take on it. 

WHY?

    People have started doing this mainly because they no longer trust big news sources. People lack trust in the media so they search for a more local source of information. Usually, this information also does greater coverage of minor issues which is another reason why it appeals to people. Other reasons why people would choose citizen journalism over the media are there is less censorship and more progressive viewpoints. It shows unique and more diverse perspectives on big topics going on in our world today.  

    IMPLICATIONS:

    Even though this source of news is usually happening in real time it isn't always accurate. It's not always credible because they are not professionals and could perceive an event incorrectly and then end up spreading misinformation. Anyone can now say anything on social media which means some citizen journalists can spread their opinions as facts no matter if it is truly factual or not. They also don't have real-time fact-checkers like how some professionals do. 

    

     Journalists and news sources are also losing money. The number of newspaper reporters and editors has dropped by an astonishing 56 and 63 percent, respectively, since 2000. Professional journalists do benefit a little from citizen journalism because professionals will use social media to find and build stories but this means they are not the first to broadcast it. 

    Social media has fully changed how news is being spread and citizen journalism benefits greatly from social media. Whether it's a post, photo, or video people are able to see what is happening in real time faster than major media outlets can broadcast it. Our phones connect us all together so that we can see news 24/7. Now society as a whole can be a reporter and the effects of this are anyone can do more in-depth research. 

Antiwar

     Antiwar is something you will never hear the mainstream news talking about. You have to search for obscure websites to find strong opinions about antiwar views. One of the reasons for the mainstream media never talking about this subject is because the media is owned by corporations that have their own interest which usually run contradictorily to radical or progressive social change. 

    The biggest reason though, is money. Some companies profit during war time. Oil, weapon, and ammo companies profit during war and this means the United states as a whole profits. This is because the United states is the largest export of weapons so when other countries buy our weapons even though it is a war we are not apart of, they make profit. Since the government profits so much during wartime they try to silent people who have different views on war. 

    One example is the Iraq war. In 2023 alone, the United States provided $150 million in economic development assistance and $114.2 million in humanitarian assistance for Iraq. The United States puts interest on this money so as the years build and other governments need to pay it back the cost increases each year. 

    They also did this with the Ukraine war. The United States Imports from Ukraine was US$1.34 Billion during 2023, according to the United Nations COMTRADE database on international trade. 

  

 This leads to increasing dept for the United States because they are giving away so much money and it takes a while to get it back.

    Something I found insane is how many different governments owe the United States. As of April 2024, the five countries owning the most US debt are Japan ($1.1 trillion), China ($749.0 billion), the United Kingdom ($690.2 billion), Luxembourg ($373.5 billion), and Canada ($328.7 billion).In total the United States is 35 Trillion dollars in dept! This is why they encourage more war because they know in the end they will profit since most of the fighting happens overseas. 

EOTO Terms and Concepts- Confirmation bias

Confirmation bias: 

  The definition of confirmation bias is the tendency to seek out and give undue credibility to information that supports a desired conclusion. Due to confirmation bias, a party may unduly discredit contradictory information to the desired conclusion, or incorrectly believe it to reinforce a minority viewpoint at best. The majority of people do this unintentionally and tend to ignore the things that don't align with their beliefs. 

WHY? 

There are two main reasons why people do confirmation bias even if they don't realize they are. 

1) It's a more efficient way to process information when you are being bombarded with information and it takes too much time to carefully process the information and come up with an unbiased conclusion. It's easier to just believe what aligns with your values and not look into it. 

2) Another reason is people's self-esteem. Learning that your values might be wrong or incorrect in some people's eyes is harder to deal with when those values have been put into your brain since you grew up. It's easier to ignore the details that don't align with what you believe. 

Ways that you can try to lean away from confirmation bias is by surrounding yourself with both sides of the story. Make sure you watch both sides of the news and when an issue pops up see how different people with different values and morals react. Try to surround yourself with people of all different backgrounds so you are more well-rounded and understand why their opinion is the way it is. 

A real-life example of confirmation bias is when you are researching a topic you believe strongly in such as abortion or gun violence which are big topics in the world today and you seek out a news source that is already aligned with your current position. If you come upon a site that you don't agree with you can either read their opinion and consider them or think it is stupid and not care to listen to their opinions. If you choose the second option you are practicing confirmation bias with out realizing it. 

Some positives about confirmation bias, 

1) It can help us reach our personal goals faster. This is because if you're easily influenced and you

switch your opinion every time someone contradicts it, people will discourage you from your goals and then you might never reach them. If you stick to one opinion then people might also agree with you and come over to your side and help you. This isn't as likely to happen if you keep switching it up and don't stay focused on your personal goals. 

2) When you have strong beliefs you are more likely to be confident and it gives that person more of a sense of certainty and security.

A downside is that it can influence your decisions and lead to poor choices. Confirmation bias greatly affects our day-to-day choices and if we are going through life with a very biased outlook we are not making well-informed choices. There might also be missed opportunities in your life because of your biased outlook on life. 

 

EOTO Technology presentations

 Carrier Pigeons

    One of my classmates did his EOTO on the carrier pigeons. From his project, I learned a lot and thought it was very interesting. 

 Carrier pigeons were invented by Cyrus the Great in the 5th century BC, in Assyria and Persia. They were used in war and for navigation. They were the most efficient long-distance communication of that time. 

Before carrier pigeons, their only options were smoke signals to communicate a short distance away. 

    

    Something really cool about pigeons is that they are usually always able to find their way home. Their homing abilities were very useful for sending these messages. Scientists think they use the position of the sun the figure out where they are and determine
the proper direction for the flight. 

  Since they were able to send information farther than anything else before,  they were very useful in war. A carrier pigeon saved almost 200 lives in World War I.  32 pigeons received the Dickin Medal because they were able to save the lives of soldiers because of their ability to send messages when there was nothing else during that time to send messages that long distance and that efficient. For example, people at sea were able to send a message to the soldiers on land. 

  One drawback to the carrier pigeons was that there is a limitation to how far they are able to fly. They are able to fly around 100 miles in one day. They also were very susceptible to disease and their training took time and experience. 

   One bird named Cher Ami was delivering messages for French soldiers during the battle of Verdun in October of 1918. Even though a German gunner tried to strike the pigeon down and it was injured it still traveled 25 miles back to the American base. The letter told them that they had traveled too far and became trapped in a ravine where they weathered repeated enemy attacks along with incoming friendly American artillery fire. This was 554 soldiers. Cher Ami arrived blinded in one eye, with a deep wound across his chest and a canister dangling from what was left of his right leg but she made it and saved many lives. She became an American hero of World War I.

Diffusion Theory

     Diffusion theory is a theory on how ideas grow to become the things we know and love today. So many examples can be explained through this theory like Apple iPhones, Twitter, and TikTok but today I will focus on an older invention the printing press. 

    Why did this invention catch and spread? 

This invention spread so quickly because it was the first of its time to be able to print books at the rate it did. Before the printing press, everything was by hand so it was prone to human mistakes and took years to write. After the printing press was made everyone was able to have books because of how plentiful and affordable they were. This was how people of that time found ideas and information so it spread across the world. 

    

    Why did so many people become early adopters? 

People were tired of only being able to get information through word of mouth. To get news they would have to stand in the square and someone would announce the news. This isn't very reliable because of human mistakes and misunderstandings. Through books, people were able to read news, gather information, and have entertainment from all over the world in many different languages.  Also back then people were very religious so a lot of people wanted the bible. 

   

  There are always late adopters when it comes to any invention. People who think their way is better and they don't want to change from tradition. Some people wouldn't participate in getting books because they don't think it is needed because they have word of mouth but eventually almost everyone in the entire world used the printing press or benefitted from it. 

 

    There were some negative impacts from the printing press too. Misinformation was able to spread faster and farther across the world. They also were able to read about ideas from all over the world so this led to riots and them wanting change. They started to challenge the authority. 

    The positive greatly outweighs the negative. The Renaissance was able to kick off as big as it did because of the printing press and people on the completely opposite sides of the world from each other were able to share ideas and discoveries. It was also such a big invention that it reigned for 200 years and changed the way we print things today for the better. 

  

The Age of AI

 What are the positive aspects of more and more complex artificial intelligence and machine learning?

    One positive aspect we learned from the video is the way they are using AI to detect breast cancer. The complex artificial intelligence can detect breast cancer at the earliest stages faster than the human eye which is more prone to mistakes.  Breast cancer is best able to be cured at the earliest stages which is why it is so important to detect it as soon as possible. It is also able to move faster and more reliably than a human so they would be better able to work in warehouses and other jobs similar to that. 

What are some cons of AI? 

    Some cons are it helps spread false information. It can create realistic photos that can spread lies that are hard to detect. It is also taking away jobs because they do them more efficiently. Some examples are truck drivers and warehouse jobs.  

What is something that frightened you about AI?

    Something that frightened me about AI is the fact that the government can now track us. In China, they are able to pay for things using their face because they have AI that can detect someone's face within less than a second. This means that they almost always know where you are since a security camera can always detect your face. They are doing similar things like this in the US with police cars. The police cars scan your license plates and never delete the information just in case they need it and they are able to track you and take pictures without your consent. 

This can also be a pro because they will be able to find criminals faster and are able to keep us safe considering national security using this AI detection through security cameras but, unfortunately, innocent people have to also be watched just in case it has information that could help a criminal case. 

AI can be used for good and bad concerning online security and identity theft. There are many new websites that use AI to keep all of your information safe but there are also other people that are able to hack through those AI's and get your information. This means you need to make sure you are using the right software to protect your data.