Final Blog Post (Our Relationship with Technology)

     This entire topic is honestly the most interesting to me because as I looked further and further into this, I became more and more frightened, specifically with certain "internet titans" like Google and Facebook. I just couldn't help but think: "Do we really use their technology that often? Honestly, I'm not surprised that we do since everyone has their own type of relationship with technology at this point, including myself. Even I am currently using technology in order to write this blog post. To be honest, I'm not really sure if there's anything we can really do about the amount of technology around us. 

    I would like to start off with how I would view my relationship with technology. Like everyone else, technology has the capability to make a strong impact on one's life. It definitely made an impact on my life, as I have a visual impairment, so technology can be a big help for me. It's allowed me to do my work better, learn about new things, and (most of the time) give me answers to questions I may have. I'll admit that it isn't all that great. Staring at a screen for long periods of time can be bad for my eyes and there can be issues that may prevent me from doing my work or watching something. When I use it for fun or leisurely stuff like video games, there are times that it can get me addicted to it for a long time, and it further encourages me to procrastinate, but I still manage to do what I need to do first No matter how I shape it, technology has been a part of my life since forever and I've learned to accept that.

    As for my family, I suppose I could say the same thing, especially regarding my siblings. I can't say exactly when they were introduced to technology, but I guess ever since they were toddlers as we all had electronic toys at that age. Then the wondrous invention of television came along and we were all hooked on kids' shows, but our parents limited us to only watch TV and play video games on weekends and breaks as they didn't want it to interfere with our schoolwork. As we got older, we were introduced to various handheld devices ranging from the Kindle Fire to the Nintendo 3DS. Honestly, we got hooked. So hooked that we took them almost everywhere we went (besides school). It was basically Futurama for us at the time. Now it's the present day, as my sister is somewhat active on social media while introducing my little brother to TikTok. I myself didn't really take part in that as I didn't want to be addicted and being on social media seemed like too much of a hassle.

 

    Regarding my online footprint, I feel that I keep my print relatively small as I prefer to keep my private life private and not post it for all the world to see. The only thing I have close to social media is Linkedin where people can learn a little bit about me on a professional level. The funny thing is I thought of googling myself as a bit self-centered in a weird way. I mean, unless you wanted to know more about your family history, why would you google yourself? After I did, I saw my LinkedIn account as my first result, my blog link, my interest account, and my name, age, and address on MyLife., which honestly kinda freaked me out a bit. I was certainly surprised to see there were more people with the name "Onafowokan." What I was really surprised about was on Legacy.com, there was a bit written about "Rosanna Olufumilayo Onafowokan," my grandmother from my dad's side of the family who passed away a long time ago. It even had the names of all the grandchildren, me included. After all of that, I now see that I'm not quite as private as I thought I was. If I could, I would take care of the stuff on MyLife and my interest account as I don't feel comfortable with random strangers knowing everything bout me. However, I will leave LinkedIn on so employers can look me up and learn about me only on a professional level.

    Learning more about technology and how it continues to advance in our daily lives, I am aware that there are lots of unintended consequences as a result, but out of all of them, I feel that Cyberbullying could be one of the most serious causes of unintended consequences, more so than the ghosting and the revenge pr0n. I had no idea how cyberbullying had so much of a negative influence on people that it would actually drive them to suicide. It's so surprising that it's honestly scary. This is one of the reasons why I personally keep my life away from the internet. I feel there must be some sort of solution to stop cyberbullying, or at the very least find a way to help those people who are being cyberbullied so they don't make any rash decisions.

    All that being said, technology is definitely not the root of all evil here. In fact, the amount of technology adapting to our very lives while continuing to advance and improve is pretty amazing. When it comes down to it, It's really not the tech, but the people who use it. Many people have worked so hard to create revolutionary things that have stapled into our society, such as the internet. It's a great tool when used correctly, but of course, it's a not-so-great tool for people who use it for things like internet scams, deep fakes, the dark web, pr0n, etc. I do wish we could enforce ways on how to use technology properly, but everyone has the freedom to do what they want, so I know enforcing these ideals will be difficult. I feel the only solution is to properly teach our generation and future ones how to use our tech properly. It's the only way to improve our relationship and future ones in general.

Blog Post #12

 After the discussion we had in class regarding the free flow of information n, it really got me thinking about how secretive our government is. Don't get me wrong, I'm well aware that our government is no stranger when it comes to keeping secrets and hiding things from the public eye, some of these things of which the public deserves to know about or be aware of, but the lecture really got me thinking about it, and to be honest with you, it kinda scares me.

    A topic that really surprised me during our discussion was the lengths of what the government would get to in order to keep their secrets classified from the public, especially when they're dealing with certain outsiders like third-party publishers, persistent journalists, and whistleblowers. I now have a bit of an appreciation for whistleblowers like Daniel Ellsberg as the government certainly lies to the public to cover up some classified information, and those types of people want to seek the truth in all those lies and bring the truth out to the public, as they believe that we the people have every right to know what is going on in our world. However, the government's measures they take in order to "silence" those people are a bit too extreme.

    A perfect example of how the government goes to try and silence whistleblowers using such cruel and unnecessary measures would be the arrest of Julian Assange. The government considers him a criminal who needs to be held accountable by the law, while others consider him a hero who's just utilizing his first amendment rights against national security in order to bring the truth to the public. This debate was heated up after his arrest and started after he published thousands of pages of secret government documents. The way they treated him was probably a method used to silence potential whistleblowers. Though he still dealing with legal issues, I feel with the first amendment, he may be able to pull through in the end, but only time will tell.

Blog Post #11

     For this EOTO Presentation, I would have to say the topic that interested me the most would be the Echo Chamber. When I first heard of the team, I thought it was some kind of science chamber that's specifically designed to "echo" your voice, which sounded kinda funny to me. Now that I've learned about what it means, it kinda makes me somewhat neutral about it, as I feel there are many pros and cons regarding it.

     Echo Chambers has to do with people and sources supporting or having the same thoughts as you. I see this as a good thing for one key reason, the reason being that this type of thing can be important if one's goal is to try to find common interests between friends and even help support your thoughts and ideas for research purposes. Having people that have the same ideas as you and share your particular thoughts can make one feel a sense of fulfillment as if they found a special place where they can belong, but that's just my way of looking at it.

    That being said, Echo Chambers can also be a bad thing. If a person only focuses on people that support his/her ideas and only takes the sources that portray his own thoughts into account without any outside criticism, this can lead to some sort of fixed Mindset where you think that you alone are right and everyone else is wrong, being unable to keep an open mind and continue to be self-interested, not caring about anyone else's opinion that may oppose you. That basically goes against what HPU lives by having a Growth Mindset.

    In conclusion, I agree that it's important to focus on what you think is right while keeping an open mind about why your thoughts and ideas may be wrong. Looking at other sources and take all arguments into account is the key to having a good debate and a growth mindset.

Blog Post #10

 After watching the video regarding the Age of AI, I feel like I have a renewed importance of how we use and depend on this technology in this current day and age, but it can affect our society in a major way, whether positive or negative. This showed me that our current AI culture is great despite its risks, but China's yearning to "surpass" our AI culture can have risks that are too great to overlook. Either way, technology can have serious influences on society.

    I thought that AlphaGo by Google was honestly impressive. I never thought that this was one of the first pieces of artificial intelligence and was used as a highly viewed game in North Korea. A piece of technology learning over time and beating human intelligence through a process of teaching itself certain algorithms was fascinating to humans during that time. This was a good way to show the potential of artificial intelligence to the world while also highlighting its potential to be a danger to our society.  However, it's impressive when you think about AI being able to do tasks faster or better than a human, as long as you think small about it. These can lead to very ambitious goals that can help society, like making self-driving cars that could possibly reduce car accidents, and predicting from a group of women with breast cancer who are in need of surgery.

    I never knew that China would try to lead the world in this type of technology, and sometimes it's honestly scary to think about. They were actually able to advance AI to facial recognition, to be used in simple jobs such as cashiers, and replicating simple actions like driving. I see incredible potential in their technology because of the vast amount of data at their disposal, and their AI depends on it. However, this comes with a big negative. It's because of the fact that China's AI algorithm runs on data that you could have a lack of privacy and security. It picks up data of which you would never even be aware. I feel their aim to make AI "better than any human" can lead to a serious downfall in which people's lives could be easily accessible and no longer private. Data can even use other people's data to misinform or steal identities. That includes Deepfakes. Not to mention our risk of losing jobs to machines and interrupting the entire labor force.

    That being said, deep learning isn't entirely bad. This can be a big help in human advancement, and everyone uses it every day despite the challenges it can give us. I feel it only depends on how it's used and why. If China would use it right without having to rely so much on collecting data from everyone, then they could play a big part in the worlds technological advancement and others wouldn't be feared by it I also remain cautiously optimistic regarding jobs as technology can hopefully make our jobs easier for us, rather than replace us entirely.

Blog Post #9 (Key Post)

     Through further research for my EOTO presentation, I have begun to realize that deepfakes can be a fun and useful tool. It's a great advancement in technology that stores face data and can be used for good purpose. However, that is actually the problem with deepfakes, is the fact that it's not being used for good purpose. Because of this, deepfakes can be very threatening to almost anyone. 

    The term deepfake also means "Deep Learning Fake" referring to a specific learning algorithm that utilizes artificial images and sounds to create fake pictures or videos with someone else's likeness or voice. It's pretty much a super advanced photo editing software. An interesting fact is it was originally made by a reddit user manipulating Google's open source technology to make inappropriate content. With the use of a Generated Adversarial Network or GAN, it uses a specific set algorithm to make, combine, and cluster fake images and try to impose them on ones face matching it up, superimposing it on ones body and attaching a voice to it to create videos or pictures of one's likeness.

    Unfortunately, this seemingly astonishing piece of technology has been misused from the very beginning. The best thing it's known for today is being a primary tool for media manipulation. Deepfakes were used for different media such as Online Scams, Pornography, Identity theft, Financial fraud, and most importantly,  Election manipulation, as well as just spreading disinformation in general. The only thing it was used in a positive way was in animated movies

    All of these reasons that I've listed above could more or less explain how deepfakess are a real threat to our society, but the real question would be WHY deepfakes are a real threat. The main reason is because of who deepfakes can affect, which is unfortunately everyone, young and old. This goes especially for those who are connected to the internet and social media. Because of deepfakes and it's heavy media influence, it can c ause a lot of controversy for unexpecting people, going on very touchy subjects like politics, using someone's face or voice to spread disinformation. Also, audio deepfakes can play a part in financial scaams or taking your identity and can threaten internet security, and most people aren't really aware of whether or not they're listening to a deepfake.

    I feel that because of these deepfakes that we need to further exercise cautions as we take information from certain sources. Besides finding out whether or not the sources we use are credible, there are some way we can tell if a piece of media is a deepfake. The key is to try to find anything unnatural looking, such as their eye movement, skin color, positioning of their head and body, terrible lip syncing, and peculiar voices, among other things. Hopefully i n due time, we might come up with a technology y to counter these deepfakes, but it's better to be safe and make sure the sources which you get your information from are trustworthy.

Blog Post #8

     I  honestly never really thought that much about antiwar. I always felt that war was a touchy subject to go into and I always thought why we always had to resort to that. Of course, I'm completely against war as I see no point in it. Two countries fighting each other violently against certain issues that are either pressing and concerning or frivolous and unnecessary. However, I'm aware that sometimes war is just unavoidable and maybe is our last resort. I'. curious as to why antiwar isn't as frequently discussed as the news.

    Regarding this site on Antiwars, It was made clear that Antiwars are a bit of a controversial topic and most political figures take it lightly. There was actually an article that outlined this regarding that if there was a case where the US would fight in a new cold war,  then who would we be fighting it with? The article touched on what Biden said, denying that he was "fighting China out of aggression, but of competition." It went on to explain why picking a fight with China would prove more than the US to handle, as it wouldn't just fight China, but Russia as well. and it further supports my reasoning of why wars to me are somewhat unnecessary and can be easily avoided depending on the situation.

    Just in case my certain reason for antiwar wasn't enough, now through discovering a website regarding Realism and Restraint, There are so much more reasons as to why wars are not just unnecessary, but arguably complete nonsense. Each reason is explained in good depth through articles such as "War is Big Business" and "A Half-Century of Conflict is Enough." These explain how certain organizations make a profit from these wars and how people are needlessly trying to reignite the fire of conflict. There are also articles that make suggestions of how to avoid these needless conflicts. There's this one article about American Exceptionalism where it outlines why the US's own states need to be shown respect, and that goes for its neighboring countries. 

    My thought as a whole on why there are very few of these types of antiwar people being vocal is probably because of the subject of the war itself. War can be a touchy subject for certain people, but it is a pressing issue that needs to be further discussed. After all, war can cost a lot of money, and possibly a lot of brave lives as well, so this should hopefully end up on the news one day if people are willing to listen and talk about it.

Blog Post #7

    I thoroughly enjoyed all of the EOTO Presentations and I thought that all of the topics discussed played a big part in technological history and entertainment. However, if there was one presentation that truly spoke out to me, it would have to be the one about video games. Though I knew a good majority of the facts that were presented, I couldn't help but feel super invested in it, and that's to be expected as I'm a Game Major. 

    I always found the history of video games to be truly fascinating. Sure TV shows and filmmaking were a good source of entertainment, but I feel that Video Games were a true hallmark of entertainment and advancing technology and I firmly believe that it still holds true today.  Ever since the first video game with the first computer, the Apple I, the industry just kept growing, especially with arcade games. The arcade era holds a bit of nostalgia for me even though I wasn't born anywhere near that time, but it's because it gave birth to recognizable characters that we know and love such as Pac-man, Mario, Donkey Kong, and more.

    I remember someone saying this expression: "Sometimes you have to fail in order to succeed." I feel this holds true for the Gaming industry. Thanks to Atari and its overproduction of slightly below mediocre games, this caused the legendary gaming crash of 1983 as video games were doing horrible in the stock market, but thanks to Nintendo and their Super Mario Bros, the industry was able to rise from the ashes and get even better. This even brought other competitors like Sega to join the industry and rival Nintendo, creating several platforms over time. Even Sony and Microsoft took part with the Xbox and PlayStation. As they are still relevant today, I'm happy to have such an immersive form of entertainment as video games becoming its own billion-dollar industry.