Final Post: Relationship with Technology

    

    I do believe that my relationship with technology is healthy, and that’s good since I am majoring in Game Design so I am going to be surrounded by tech for most of my life. However, I do believe that without technology my life would be a lot less fun, with fewer things to do, see, or learn, and more isolated from my friends and family. The main reason why I think that is because I spend several hours every day on my computer playing video games while watching videos on YouTube in the background. Now, as I mentioned earlier, we can use technology to learn pretty much anything, but I have seen so many articles that are just flat out lacking the science to back up their claims. This is misleading for some people who are not careful. What I think about these misleading articles is just “Why”? What do people hope to gain by putting false information out into the world?

    My family, for the most part, uses technology for primarily educational/recreational purposes, or because their job requires it. They order food/supplies and household goods as well. I would say that on occasion there are nights that we all just spend on our devices, not talking to each other, but that is rare. For my friends, now that is more difficult to answer, but based on some context clues, I do think that technology is dominating a significant part of their life. For example, social media is a big element of their lives. They are constantly talking about things they post or see. It dominates our conversations.  

    With respect to my online footprint, it is hard to say how much of a trail I have left. On one hand, I don’t use social media like Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, TikTok, or Facebook, but on the other, I use the internet (YouTube) and play video games. I think that my footprint is fairly small since I am not constantly posting photos, or making short videos about myself. Even when I Googled myself I couldn’t find anything about myself. I did learn that there are a lot of people named Nathan Harvey though. I think the internet is one of, if not the greatest achievement in human history. There is so much knowledge behind one screen. Instead of looking through thousands of pages from a book that is likely outdated, you only have to look through one. What makes the internet so dangerous is how we choose to use it. We choose to use it in many ways. We can learn about our world, be entertained, make our lives easier, and connect with and help people. We can also opt to use it to mislead and make fun of people, cause physical harm, and destroy relationships. Technology in and of itself is not bad or good. It's just a tool. However, it can be used for good or bad, depending on its user. We get to decide for ourselves how we are going to use it. 

The Final Post

    

    Personally, I don’t have Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, TikTok, or facebook downloaded on my phone. I see this as a blessing. I am not spending hours of my day scrolling to see what is the funniest TikTok of the day, nor am I making sure that the pose, the angle, the lighting, the caption, or the likes are nothing but perfection. So, I believe I have less of an online footprint than most people and with that people will have a harder time looking me up. 

    When it comes to my email, I am a little less cautious with it. I have given it to a bunch of sites, mainly just retail stores and I get a lot of emails from them. Due to this I am taking a tip out of Mr. Smith's book and start using a different email address for these cites, along with a different name. This way I will lower my online footprint even more.

    While I don’t have those social media platforms the one that I use quite frequently is YouTube. Youtubers are the same as any other social media star. Instead of funny captions or short videos, it is for people to watch tutorial videos, gameplay videos, or cooking tips. Although recently YouTube has been trying to showcase their new feature YouTube shorts. Which is basically TikTok, but on YouTube. YouTube for me is a great way to have something playing in the background. For some reason, I don’t like listening to podcasts or music all that much. 

    Social media is changing the way we view people and society. Especially when it comes to social media influencers. I notice when watching YouTube that people slowly start to change and this can be good or bad. As you build up your fan base, they start to trust you. In the past, this has led to many people abusing their fan base. Whether it is to get their word out, tell false information, or raise the price of an online currency is just upsetting. Betraying your fans just to make a quick buck will ruin your reputation and you will lose fans because of it. Of course, there are many good ones out there, but these kinds of instances force others to comfort their fans to show that they will not do anything like this. 

    Once again, I am glad that I don’t upload anything to these social media platforms. As I know that this can lead to people being stressed out. In the time that we live in, anything that you post could lead to some being offended. So, you have to make sure that it appeals to everyone. For me, I take a picture of myself and I don’t do it that often to make sure that I look decent or sound decent if I am recording myself for an assignment. I can only imagine how stressful my life would be if I was also uploading images on Instagram or Snapchat. This is what I think social media is and what people can do to misuse their newfound fame.

Age of AI

         The video "In the age of AI" by Frontline talked about the implications of having artificial intelligence. For me, it was quite terrifying to see what AI could bring upon us, but I saw some good in AI as well. One point that the video made was this AI program created by Google called AlphaGo. This AI program plays the Korean board game Go and learns how to play it while learning from its mistakes. They set up a game of Go with one of the best Go human players. After a few rounds, the AI ended up winning. Through learning from its own mistakes, it was able to calculate many steps ahead of the human player.

While I was watching the video, I realized a list of pros and cons of AI. Some pros include above all security. China uses Face ID to use almost everything and all of the video cameras keep us safe because everyone is being monitored. However, this comes with the loss of privacy and freedom. Another pro is that it allows the assembly of cars to be a lot more efficient, but once again this can also be a con as humans are no longer necessary to assemble the cars. This isn’t just the workers that make the cars but also the ones that drive them. One company in the video is using AI to tractor-trailers that are autonomous vehicles to transport goods across the country. 

I am a little worried as to what is going to happen in the next few decades. How far is AI going to be and how much are we going to rely on it? I don’t know if eventually a smart enough AI is going to try and kill us all like in the movie Terminator, but looking at the Go game we can already tell that AI is smarter than us. 

The Progressive Era

    Antiwar.com is a website that devotes itself to opposing imperialism and war. Opposing war is a big position to take, but why do we not hear about these people? We don't hear big mainstream news like CNN or FOX talk about the people trying to make sure that all of our troops aren't set out to their deaths.

    To answer the question on why their voices are silent we are going to have to go back in time. The United States government has a long history of silencing anti-war voices. In 1918, the government passed the sedition act which was a way to punish anti-war protestors. This act made it illegal to criticize the government. As you can guess, people did not like it. They stated that their opinion and voice was protected by the First Amendment. However, the government argued that it wasn't because of a new term they created in the act called incitement which is described as a speech that causes violent actions. As they thought that people protesting against the war would be a bad thing. They didn't want to hear any people talking about anti-war especially when they just joined World War 1. 

    To finish answering the question on why voices like Antiwar.com along with The American Conservative are silenced is simply because the government doesn’t want you to hear it. Whenever there is a war there will always be a group of people that will fight for anti-war but they are always silenced as both the government and other mainstream news outlets that look at anti-war in a negative mindset. This is unfortunate as seeing and learning from both sides of the argument is the best way to find out if you believe you are on the right side or not through your own opinions. This just isn’t the case here since we only get one side and that shortens our view on the issue which is exactly what the government and mainstream outlets want.

EOTO Terms and Concepts: Gatekeeping

    The gatekeeping theory is “the control of information as it passes through a gate”. This metaphorical “gate'' is guarded by gatekeepers who will make decisions based on what information to let through and what to keep out. In other words “gatekeeping is the process of selecting, and then filtering, items of media to be presented to an audience.” Gatekeeping often gets mixed up with censorship. Gatekeeping is maintaining the quality of the content and its relevance while censorship is just the removal of them. 

    Kurt Lewin who was a German psychologist first originated the concept of gatekeeping in 1943. He discovered this by using a housewife to illustrate how an individual determines which meals are served at the dinner table. Everyone knows that there is a lot of decision-making when it comes to food. Such as what you want to get, what are you actually buying, preparing, and cooking the meal. In this example, the wife normally had the food decisions and typically controlled the gate or rather what everyone will have for dinner. 

    Gatekeeping was further studied in 1950 by David White, a journalist who looked through all of the factors that an editor takes into consideration when deciding what news story to publish. In his study, he found that the editor chooses what article to publish based on its worthiness, importance to the audience, and the political attitudes of the editor. When the research concluded the editor mainly picks news stories to publish based on their own beliefs, attitudes, or experiences. 

    There are five factors of gatekeeping. The first one is “Individual”. This is where the journalist who is reporting the news has the most influence over the article as they can edit the story based on their personal preferences. “Routine” is the second one and what this means is that they must keep up with their schedules and preferably make time for different categories. Different “Organizations” take a news story and interpret it differently than the other with their different views and bias. “Third-Party Media” or “Extra Media'' is when someone with wealth and/or power like sponsors, advertisers, or the government can manipulate the gates to allow their information to get through. This is unfortunate as media companies can be influenced by financial support. The final factor is “Ideology” where the norms and values of people must be respected.

    Along with the five factors of gatekeeping comes the five criteria that journalists rely on when they choose a story to publish. The first criteria is “Strong Impact''. This is when they take local stories that impact the public more than unfamiliar international events. So they can grab attention more easily. Next is a “Captivating Topic”. These are typically violent or disastrous events. “Familiarity” gets more attention if they make the issues about the public or concern a large audience. “Proximity” is when people get local news stories. The fifth criteria is “Timeliness and Novelty”. News stories show something that doesn’t happen every day. 

    We need gatekeeping now more than ever as we see more clickbait, fake news, and misinformation. With the rise of fake news has also given rise to a new form of gatekeeping called audience gatekeeping. Audience gatekeeping is when the users share the news items or comment on them based on their own opinion. This allows regular online users to tell the stories from their point of view. I hope that eventually, we will reach a point in the media that is unbiased, truthful, and honest. 

Sources:

Gatekeeping Theory | Mass Communication Theory (masscommtheory.com)

GATEKEEPING - Media theory (weebly.com)

GateKeeping Theory (communicationtheory.org)

The Origin of Gatekeeping Theory | GatekeepinginOnlineJournalism Wiki | Fandom

Gatekeeping Theory of Mass Communication Explained - HRF (healthresearchfunding.org)

EOTO Presentation React: The first the American Newspaper

    

One thing that I learned from the other people's presentation was the very first American Newspaper by Caroline Peacock. The first newspaper in America was only printed once because it was banned by the British Governor Council just four days after publication. It was printed by Richard Pierce and edited by Benjamin Harris in Boston on September 25, 1690. Harris owned a coffee house and came up with the idea of a newspaper through his customers who often talked about politics. It was made so that people can read the newspaper while drinking their coffee. All of which I found so fascinating that this is the origin of the American newspaper. Having to fight through British control just to allow people to access to what is going on in the world is incredible.

Diffusion of Innovations

    

    In 2020, there was an estimate that 2.69 billion people play video games and this number is expected to rise to 3 billion in the next couple of years. How did this all start? Well, the first video game was Pong in 1958. A few years later Steve Russell made Spacewar!, in 1962 and the first home console was made in 1972. Over the next few years, video games started to grow with the introduction of arcades where most of the famous video games would be available to play.

    This is one-way video games started to rise as it was available to everyone who had coins. Another way was the home console was making huge strides in making their consoles better and cheaper with increased graphics and gameplay in order to give people more of an incentive to get them.

    Video games today are of course way different than they were back in the 80s. As technology has advanced, games have been available to more and more people through different means. Through arcade machines, home consoles, computers, phones, and in more recent years VR. With so many options to choose from, there is almost no way people would be able to get these games right?

    Unfortunately, as I said earlier, only about 2.69 billion people play video games and there are about 7.85 billion people in 2021. So not everyone even has access to technology. Like India for example in 2010 only about 92 million people had access to the internet and now in 2021, there are about 845 million people who have access. This is the only thing that is stopping people from playing video games. It is also a personal preference as some people just don’t want to play even though they could or people don’t like what video games can do to people like these articles (Article1, Article2) talking about how video games cause aggression. 

    For me at least I think that video games have done so much good in this world. They have allowed people to stay in touch with other people and make new friends. Video games' effects on people are good, like giving people better problem-solving skills to solve a puzzle, social skills, teamwork, and overall a better mental state. 

Other sources: 

• Total internet users in India | Statista

Video Game History - Timeline & Facts - HISTORY