Final Post-Relationship With Technology

I believe my relationship with technology has ups and downs and is neither entirely positive or negative.

On one hand I appreciate the convenience of the internet, messaging, social media, etc. that technology provides for me on a daily basis, but a glaring problem is the amount of time these things often suck up. Sometimes I will scroll mindlessly on Instagram for 40 minutes without realizing what just happened until I snap out of it. Most members of my generation and even some of those who are older can say the same. While I undoubtedly spend too much time on social media, I do try to balance every day out. Instead of constantly reading or
watching something on a piece of technology, I make sure to spend time exercising, going outside, hanging out with family and friends, and more in order to nourish my mind, body, and soul. However, due to the way cellphones have infiltrated every aspect of our culture and my habits, even these activities are often not free of screens. At the gym I find myself checking the music playing on my phone. While walking outside I still scroll on social media. At meals with friends I still respond to messages from people apart from who I'm with in that moment. All of these little things combine to interrupt moments that should be left unmarred by the presence of screens.

As for the information I consume through technology, I view it all critically. While technology can inform and educate, it can also turn into a never-ending tunnel of bias and/or misinformation. Because of this, I try to obtain my online/tv content from a diverse array of trustworthy sources to compare and contrast and make sure I'm getting the best, most accurate info. I am also aware, however that most people in our society do not do this and place themselves into echo chambers whether intentionally or not.

Technology is a tool that can be used for good or evil. It can provide communication to people on opposite sides of the world, help solve complex problems, and allow instant access to heaps of information. It can also consume people's lives and alienate them from society, mislead millions at once, sink negative thoughts deep into anyone's brain, and more. When using any piece of technology, but especially my phone, I must always exercise discipline and self-control to discern between its good and bad uses.

Here are a couple links to websites talking about some additional pros and cons of technology in our society:

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/negative-effects-of-technology#in-children

https://dyopath.com/the-positive-effects-of-technology/

The Progressive Era-Antiwar/TAC

It is an objective fact that modern America funds war all around the world. Billions of dollars have gone to Ukraine over just a couple years. Billions more to both Israel and Palestine. The government loves war due to its profitability yet barely any mainstream news sources will ever mention this. Thankfully, there are independent voices in the media who address critical problems such as America's money-fueled bloodlust.

Antiwar.com is officially a self-described libertarian and non-interventionist website read by antiwar people all over the political spectrum. While the website does have a blatant agenda, its journalistic voice simply seeks to reveal corruption and deceit within the American government. To me, agenda doesn't matter as long as it is dedicated to unveiling lies and deception. Antiwar.com covers a broad variety of topics, such as the conflict/funding in Ukraine, the war in Gaza, new developments on American soil, and more. Additionally, the writers at Antiwar have all sorts of differing political viewpoints. Readers of the site may find a pro-Palestinian article right above a pro-Israel article. Again, however, the critical essence of the website is to promote voices against the American funding or intervention of either side of any war. 

Another website known as The American Conservative offers a conservative voice that sounds quite different from your average modern day "conservative". The website was started in 2002 with the aim of combating the widespread (including Republican) support for invasion of the middle east. While the word conservative is in the sight's name, its self-declared views sound more libertarian than anything. This is why I said earlier that TAC's voice differs greatly from "conservative" lawmakers today like Dan Crenshaw or Thom Tillis. 

Antiwar.com and The American Conservative are both excellent sites to read the truth behind the American military industrial complex, freedom of speech, and more, regardless of political affiliation.

EOTO 2 Reax

 I've chosen to talk about Julia, Jordan, Kennedy, and Olivia's presentations. 

One interesting thing I learned from Julia's presentation on propaganda include the fact that it was common during World War 1 to see propaganda posters of Uncle Sam pointing and saying I want you (in reference to enlisting in the military). Additionally, We can do it posters were plastered around towns to encourage women to get into the workforce in order to produce more war products. Finally, a few modern day examples of propaganda that Julia shared were a covid poster of a masked worker that read "stay in, stop the spread", a pro-abortion poster that said "get your laws off my body", and a Donald Trump poster that depicted him as a clown.

Next, Jordan's presentation on misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation was fascinating and important as these terms are often used as buzzwords in today's society. She helpfully explained the differences between the three terms. Misinformation can be described as spreading false or inaccurate info without the knowledge of its falsity. Disinformation is deliberately spreading false info to influence public opinion or obscure the truth. Malinformation is something that is based on a fact in its original context, but has been removed from that context and turned into something that is designed to mislead. A prime example would be revenge porn.

Kennedy's presentation focused on the Five Eyes. The Five Eyes is a global intelligence agency created after World War II for surveillance and intelligence purposes. Some of its positives include better anti terrorism, investigations, national security, and crime prevention. Some of its negatives are privacy concerns, misuse of data, a chilling effect, and a civil liberties breach.

Finally, Olivia's presentation was about alternative media. I particularly liked this one because it was related to my topic of media consolidation. An alternative media source is one that communicates and provides information outside of the mainstream. This supports independent voices who may not be able to speak as freely as they would like in a mainstream setting.

EOTO Sherman Antitrust/Media Consolidation

The Sherman Antitrust Act is a piece of legislation that was passed by the United States Congress in 1890. Named after Ohio Senator John Sherman, the Act aimed to curtail state-to-state trade interference and prohibit the formation of corporate monopolies. Passing the Senate by a 51-1 vote and the House by a completely unanimous 242-0 vote, President Benjamin Harrison signed the Act into law on July 2nd, 1890.

The main imperative of the Sherman Antitrust Act was to curb the power of large trusts. In Layman's terms, a trust is an arrangement between two parties by which one side (the trustor), sets up a board of trustees who hold and oversee the use of the trustor's assets. The trustor then chooses beneficiaries who will eventually receive the assets being overlooked by the trustees in the trust. Large trusts often lead to monopolization of industries which can kill market competition. 

For several years after the Sherman Antitrust Act's codification, it was only rarely used against industrial monopolies. The Act was first strongly enforced by Teddy Roosevelt during his time as President from 1901-1909. Later, in 1914, two important measures related to the Sherman Antitrust Act were put into place. The first was the passing of the Clayton Antitrust Act which took what the Sherman Act had started and elaborated on it. It created more detailed specifications about what practices were illegal as the result of monopolization.

The second measure was the formation of the Federal Trade Commission, more commonly known as the FTC. This agency was granted the power to investigate potential violations of antitrust laws and create mandates against unfair business practices. According to the FTC's official website, the agency has a 2024 budget of over 400 million dollars. 

To recap, antitrust legislation was created with the intent of restraining the power of monopolies. One such monopolistic industry is the media.

Media consolidation is an issue affecting all Americans that has gotten vastly out of hand. Oxford English Dictionaries defines consolidation as "Combination into a compact mass, single body, or coherent whole." This means that American media companies have combined into large conglomerates, leaving little-to-no room for independent voices. According to Business Insider, 90% of all news comes from the same 6 sources. Back in 1983, that number was 50. This shows the frightening reality that Americans are being spoon-fed information from the same handful of massive, multi-billion dollar monopolies. These six companies are National Amusements, Disney, AT&T, Comcast, NewsCorp, and Sony. The total value across these conglomerates comes out to 430 billion dollars. If these companies were a country, that country would have the 26th highest GDP in the world. 

This is terrifying. The U.S., a country of over 330 million people, is handed information from 6 men who run some of the biggest monopolies in the world. Huge companies like these are the reason the number of small media sources is dwindling. Americans are largely uninformed about this issue and will continue to live in ignorant bliss until this problem gains more coverage. The problem is the coverage of this topic is extremely limited due to the small number of independent media sources. Obviously companies that are owned by the big 6 corporations would never cover this issue because doing so would hurt their owners.

The Sherman Antitrust Act was created to combat issues like media consolidation. Unfortunately, it seems as if these companies hold too much power and are too far gone for any real change to be made. Hopefully one day something will be done, but at this moment in American history, it is likely nothing will change for the foreseeable future.

Diffusion of Ideas

The Diffusion of Ideas is a theory/graph that displays the lifetimes of certain ideas, pieces of technology, and more. I will be putting the television into this graph to explain its history. The graph moves from left to right, showing different categories for a given thing's life over the course of time. 

On the far left side of the graph is the pioneers. The television's pioneers were its creators like Philo Taylor Farnsworth, John Logie Baird, and more. Additionally, the earliest users and consumers of television could fall into this category. Moving right, the next category is early adopters. This category contains the users of the television once it started to gain some traction and uptaking popularity among the public. This can reasonably be estimated to have happened with the TV around the 1940's, at least in my opinion. Next is the early majority. The early majority phase occurred when the majority of the public began to adopt TV use into everyday life and most families possessed a television. I would say this tipping point appeared to have been reached around the 1960's. Next is the late adopters. The late adopters period was when the TV had solidified its place in society and was starting to mature. This likely happened around the 1990's or early 2000's. Finally, the laggard category contains the remaining people who have still never bought a television. This could be for many reasons, such as simple stubbornness or lack of funds. In the laggard category, the market for the TV has finally saturated and the level of TV ownership has probably reached its peak. While more TV's will continue to be made and bought, there will always be the group of laggards who will never buy one.

The Diffusion of Ideas Theory is one that proves useful in tracking the lifespan of virtually anything you can think of. Politics, ideas, creations, trends, etc. can all be visually inspected using it. This is why it is a helpful and important tool to employ.

Privacy

These TED talk videos provide a glimpse into the shocking reality we live in today. While I knew some about the complete lack of technological privacy we hold going into the videos, I was stunned by just how far it goes. Virtually nothing we use is untouched. The lack of privacy in our day and age is scary for a few reasons. 

Just by going out and walking around in public we are subjecting ourselves to pictures being taken of us unwantedly. Corporations and likely the government both more than likely have pictures of every student in this class, which enables virtually anything. Those who hold these pictures can quickly match the picture to the name of the person in it and access heaps of information with ease. It is terrifying that everything about me and my life is accessible simply from a picture of me.

Additionally, any piece of technology we use can be monitored by the companies that make them and other companies that buy the "rights" to our information. While some apps do have safeguards against government tapping, the apps themselves and the corporations that own the apps have free range access to anything we store on our computers, phones, etc. Also, the fact that all of our phones include microphones and cameras enables even further breach of privacy. 

Americans should be horrified about the commonality of governmental and corporate intrusion in our day-to-day lives. It would be strange if we were not. At no other point in history has technology been advanced enough to do the things that big corporations and the government can. Our faces are the key to all of our personal information. Our phones and laptops can be looked through and listened to with seemingly the click of a button. This is concerning and no one says a word about it.

EOTO: Television

The Television has been one of the most impactful technological creations of all time. In 1946, just 8,000 U.S. households owned a Television and now over 96% of American families have at least one in their house. The average American today spends two to five hours a day watching TV. Interestingly, however, even back in 1950, the average American who owned a TV still watched for 5 hours a day. A typical American home now contains 2.3 TV's. There is no doubt that Television has drastically affected our society but who should be credited with its invention? What does the Television's complicated history show?

There is much debate over who deserves the credit for inventing the TV. The fact of the matter is that not one person can take that credit. The electronic version of the Television was initially found to be successful on September, 7th, 1927, in San Francisco, California. Designed by the young Philo Taylor Farnsworth, the electronic Television took off and the company Farnsworth was working for was renamed after him. 

Before this, however, other inventors were working with their o

wn versions of early TV prototypes. In Russia, a man named Boris Rosing had made attempts at transmitting images 16 years before Farnsworth's initial success. Two men helped to invent a mechanical TV -- in the U.S., Charles Francis Jenkins, and in England, John Logie Baird. These innovative creators formed mechanical Television systems by using a spiral pattern on rotating disks with holes in it. Utilizing this mechanism, the mechanical Television was able to scan images. While the mechanical TV was fir

st demonstrated a year before the electronic, it did have limitations such as a capped amount of lines of resolution. This gave the electronic version a clear advantage. Even so, the mechanical Television was still a critical breakthrough in this piece of technology. However, the electronic version of the TV is what took off. RCA (Radio Corporation of America) is an American company that dominated the radio industry at this time. Because of this dominance, it had the funds to invest 50 million dollars into the further development of electronic TV, seeing its potential. RCA's president, David Sarnoff, recruited Russian scientist Vladimir Zworykin who had helped in Boris Rosing's earlier experiments. At the 1939 New York World's Fair, RCA televised the opening which even included a speech from then-president Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Later in the same year, RCA bought a license to use Philo Taylor Farnsworth's electronic TV patents in order to start selling systems. Through the pros and cons of the mechanical and electronic systems, both contributed undeniably toward the production of TVs as we know them today. Various people from around the globe made strides in their own ways and can all be considered equally important.

Overall, the invention of the TV has greatly impacted our world. It has shaped the way we consume our news, entertainment, and more. The world we live in today would not be anywhere close to the same as it currently is without it.