Coronavirus Lockdown

I guess you could say that no one in the world was expecting this coronavirus outbreak to wind up as serious of an event as it is. I for sure, did not expect school or the entire world to be shut down due to events that happened thousands of miles away from where I live. Overall, this pandemic has turned into a wild ride throughout the whole way. During this pandemic, the online move to school was really rough for me. I like having a structured life and academic environment for me to do work and live in. With the requirement of staying in my house, this became extremely tough. Along with this, professors and students didn't expect to have their classes turned into online form, which through everyone through a loop of confusion for a while. Everyone needed to adapt to their new environments and learn how to live their lives a little bit differently. The things that have helped me cope through the coronavirus pandemic probably have to be the occasional movie, games, food, and sleep. The main things we can do right now to survive this freak accident is to stay calm and carry out with our lives in the best way we can see fit. These next months will be hard for the world, but there is always a bright light at the end of the tunnel.



https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/seeking-relief-coronavirus-lockdowns-people-head-outside-across-u-s-n1199126

Final Blog

Technology is the pinnacle point of the advancements of the human race. Specifically, electronic technology has swept the world with amazing inventions from miniature desktop computers we call smart phones to artificial intelligence in physical robotic forms. With these amazing inventions brings some unexpected turn backs and effects that come after. An example of this is that due to people being more invested in mobile devices such as smart phones, they now become prone for addiction to these products. Due to them becoming more reliant to these products, they lose social skills that are necessary to the development of their personalities. Personally, I think that technology, like our phones, brings people together more easily than without them due to social media, instant messaging, phone calls, and more. Especially in times like these with the corona virus outbreak, people can stay connected with one another. They can watch television and stay up to date on current events, play games online with their friends, and continue school with programs online such as zoom and Skype. Technology allows people to stay connected to each other, but it is in a different way than face to face interactions. It is not necessarily bad; it is simply a type of variant of interaction that is not yet fully accepted by every person or community.

https://libertyclassicalacademy.org/technology-affects-social-skills/

Week #15 Pt. 1

The first term that I am going to discuss is the term False Flag. A false flag is a covert operation designed to deceive the public about a specific party, group, or nation for being responsible for an activity that they have or have not done. As an example, this means that the United States of America could create a false flag operation for a country/group of people they want to go to war against. The United States accuses them of harming American citizens as an act of war and declares it, making the other country look like the bad guys. Therefore, they make it seems like war is justified. Their reasoning could be that they want to do this in order to gain military power. In actuality, the other country/group did not do anything to these people, but the United States government is now authorized to act with motions of war with full political support, governmental support, and militaristic support. This is devastating because it creates scenarios that are only beneficial for powers (in the example's case the military) that benefit from the conflict, and without the false flag the situation would not have happened and or been looked at another way.

The second term that I would like to write about are Whistleblowers. A whistleblower is a person who exposes secretive information or activity that is illegal, unethical, or not correct from the inside of a private or public organization. The information that these whistleblowers can bring out are unknown to the general public and can bring light to illegal things that organizations are doing. An example could be that if a secret organization is stealing information from people secretly with malicious intent, a whistleblower from that organization can come out and exposes the organization in order to stop them from doing so. An exmple of a whistleblower being bad for society is if an organization is trying to stop an imminent threat that is unknown to the public, like a known attack. All of a sudden, a whistleblower from the organization trying to stop the attack comes out to the public about the attack, which then puts the operation at risk because of things like civilian panic, the attackers know that they know, and all types of non-beneficial scenarios.

The third concept that I am going to discuss is called Gatekeeping. Gatekeeping is the activity of controlling and limiting general access to something. An example of gatekeeping and a gatekeeper could be a secretary who controls who gets an appointment with the president of that company. This also could be carried out by a group of people or an organization. Another example of gatekeeping is how the 1% has an impact on all economic classes in the United States of America. By holding an overwhelming majority of the money, they in turn gatekeep the rest of the population below that class of the 1% to have a harder time to reach the other classes. This means that more poor classes have a harder time reaching the middle classes and the middle classes have a harder time reaching the more wealthier classes, and so on. If the the 1% would give more money out into the economy, then that would in turn release the gatekeeping on these other economic classes from becoming wealthier.

The fourth term that I am going to discuss is Net Neutrality. Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and without favoring or blocking particular products or websites. An example of this could be that an internet service provider could block Facebook and Netflix, then require the customer to pay for the internet they provide as well as make the customer pay more money in order to use those websites. This directly effects people with less money because they simply have to keep paying add on prices for websites and services in addition to the regular cost of access to the internet. Therefore, this denies people's freedom of the internet and these services that are included with the singular price of access to the internet when net neutrality is enabled. Net neutrality is new in terms with the internet, but it is important to keep and abide by in order to keep the market of the internet stable.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatekeeping_(communication)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality

Week #14 Privacy, Online & Off

Privacy is essential to a person’s mental and physical health. People need to have some sort of privacy in order to individualize themselves from the crowd and bare their own identities without other people knowing every detail about themselves. In the digital age that we live in, the old ideas of privacy have been stripped away in very interesting ways. Some of these ways are voluntary, like posting things about one’s self on a social media website, and others are taken without direct consent, like having your information taken and sold to advertisement companies without your permission. Specifically, the involuntary information that is released without someone's permission is absolutely absurd. This era that we live in allows everyone to have access to the internet all the time, which causes the capability for these technology to profile and stalk us when we are unsuspecting it. The most amazing thing about this is that people know/suspect that their phones and other technologies are spying on them, but they keep proceeding on. I think that even though people suspect their information is being breached, they do not seem to care as much as if someone snatched their credit card out of their hands in front of them. This is due to the layer of anonymity between the algorithms spying on them and their devices. Essentially, it does not seem as bad if they do not know the exact details on what is actually happening to them. That is one of the major reasons why people truly do not seem to care about their privacy being compromised in today's technology driven society.

https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_soghoian_government_surveillance_this_is_just_the_beginning?language=en

Week #13 Online Presence

The topic of online presence and how much information you give out is an extremely interesting topic to talk about. The supposed harmless nature of these social media websites is simply brushed off because the majority of people simply give all there information out to them for free. Examples of information given out are phone numbers, emails, real names, addresses, and much more. The underlining question is if these websites are safe to give this information to or not? This is a topic of debate because these websites are not all that secure when they get data breaches and millions of accounts get information leaked/released. Even the most popular and well-funded websites such as Facebook involuntarily lose users important data ranging from emails, passwords, credit card account information and so on. This begs users to evaluate whether the risk is worth it in the end. Overall, I think that the world has turned digital, and with that comes the ups and downs as does almost every situation in life. With the new age of the internet and technology, I have concluded that it is simply unavoidable to avoid the internet and online presence of oneself completely enough to not have even minor personal data leaked. No matter how hard one tries, some aspect, whether you are being careful or not, will not all be safe in this day and age if you use the internet and connect personal data to any website. The only way to truly avoid it would be to live out your life in a wood cabin in the wilderness with no connections to the inner world’s technology.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/2130877/the-biggest-data-breaches-of-the-21st-century.html

Week #12 Diffusion of Innovations

The Diffusion of Innovations Theory by Everett Rogers explains how new ideas and technologies gain attraction and are popularized/diffused. The theories say that people also decide if innovation is popularized and when. for each innovation there are five types of categories of people vital to the process of its outcome in the marker, successful or not successful. Out of the five categories, the first two and specifically the second one is what I will touch upon for the most part. The first category is the innovators, they are the first people who want to try the innovation because they are truly interested in the new idea. They are very willing to take risks, and little is needed to persuade this population to persuade/appeal to them. The second category is the Early Adopters, these people enjoy leadership roles and are aware of change and that they need to change. They do not need much information as well besides maybe a manual or some information. A great application for this theory is the rise of Facebook and how people came to it, specifically the early adopters. Facebook was a newly created social media website at the time of its release. The interface was ahead of all the others competition it had because it was made by the right people, being college students. The early adopters recognized that it was better than all the other attempts out there at the time, and that is why they jumped on the band wagon so soon. The product was well developed and simply ahead of all the competition, so the early adopters were attracted to that. This gave the product attraction which led it to become the main social media website for all ages. The only negatives I could possibly see from Facebook's upcoming are the usual claims of how it distances people from interaction, but I don't see any problem with the spread of the product overall. I think that it is perfectly fine and deserved that Facebook is as popular as it is today.

          

http://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/MPH-Modules/SB/BehavioralChangeTheories/BehavioralChangeTheories4.html

Week #11 Free Speech

The truly most import, most inspiring, most underrated, most meaningful to me value of expression has to be Freedom of Speech. Freedom of Speech is the right to express any opinions without censorship of restraint. For citizens of the United States of America, this idea is an unquestionable right that its purpose cannot be challenged or debated by any means. The right to the freedom of speech in the United States of America is known and accepted by nearly all American citizens. Freedom of speech is one of the key components that keeps America from becoming a non-democratic society. It is held so highly as part of the 1st Amendment of the United States in order to ingrain its importance in our society. Freedom of Speech allows citizens to broadcast their opinions and put themselves out to the country/world without the fear of getting punished/endangered by the government. In my opinion this is a vital necessity for enabling and creating a functioning capitalist society as the United States of America. This allows citizens the right to fight for things they believe in and lets them be supportive of their values.

One thing that I really like about freedom of Speech is that it puts a halt to any possible odd formations of the government. For example, in the rule of the National Socialist German Worker's Party, The Nazi Party, people definitely not allowed to question or dare to protest against the power due to its strength and fear instilled into the people who would do so. By the end of their reign, they were put in the books for being the worst fascist government in history in terms of humanitarian rights. With the elimination of freedom of speech in their government and no laws against their government's rule, they became a nightmare of a power without question from inside themselves. This was all enabled when the freedom of speech for the people was suppressed, leaving the Nazi party to reign however they pleased and it brought blind allegiance from the people. When freedom of speech is instilled into the people of the United States, or any country for that matter, the chances of something like Nazi Germany happening again is extremely low. This is because blind allegiance is not required, and people should not feel obligated to follow the upcoming powers, which is what brings them to rise in the first place. Although it truly cannot stop this completely, it does raise the chances of it ever happening to lower than it would be without it. Freedom of speech leaves the people to decide how they want to live their lives without the fear of harm if they believe otherwise than the majority or power in charge.

https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-resources/about-educational-outreach/activity-resources/what-does