Is Technology good for you?

Technology is constantly growing especially in recent years. Almost 20 years ago the first smartphone was released in 2007 by Steve Jobs. Now in 2024, everyone has a smartphone. They are small enough to carry around us all day, and we use them constantly since they are so powerful. We can gain so much from our phones which can be positive or negative. 

Backlinko has stats on YouTube and its users. It states that YouTube currently has 2.49 billion users on its platform, which is about half of the global online population. YouTube is a platform that offers a wide range of content, from entertainment to education. 63% of YouTube's users like to mostly watch the platform on their phones.

The Techsmith shows a statistic that 83% of users like to watch YouTube videos for educational purposes. These videos can be tutorials or just informational videos about any topic. Because having informational videos on literally any topic, no matter what you're doing or what you wanna look for, it's not that crazy for people to want to see those kinds of videos and learn more in an entertaining way or just physically be able to see someone do or teach them something.

Video Maker claims that 81% of parents turn YouTube on for their kids to watch. Is a good way to keep their kids entertained and keep them engaged in something without walking around and playing with things they probably shouldn't be playing with. 

Even though I've been writing about YouTube most of the time, it can't be a better platform to be on than a platform like TikTok. YouTube has longer videos that won't shorten your attention span and keep you on your phone. You're not just watching short videos and constantly scrolling for the next type of video, but actually learn something from a longer video. 

Having a short attention span can lead to someone being on their phones for an even longer period of time and just constantly wanting to be on the phone. National Liberty of Medicine writes that having a shorter attention span or having a scattered brain will cause someone to be on their phones for a longer period of time and to spend more time on their phone than talking or interacting with people around them.

Other platforms like TikTok and Instagram reel can really hurt people's attention spans and that's why you see a lot of people who are on their phones and not really interacting with other people around them. These platforms don't even have to be used in these ways and negatively impact people because they get curated by the users themselves on what they are watching. These platforms are why we get this fact of people all always just wanting to do or record things just for fame. 

Someone that I know of on these types of platforms is named Jack Doherty. He just uses the platform to mess with people and try to get a reaction out of them by getting them mad and then having his security guy block them from actually doing anything. People like him are the reasons why people have short attention spans and it's always seen as technology is not good for people to watch.

Me and my friends use these platforms, but we try to use them so we can learn or have a new skill that can help us with either what we're doing or something that we want to do in the future instead of watching things that aren't helpful or do us negatively in public situations,

Alternative Media on War

 How are other news sources different from the main news sources?

When people get their news, they typically find their news on the main sources when trying to figure out what's happening in the world. However, different sources are not just the main sources, like CNN or the New York Times. It's seen on Pew Research that only 6% of US citizens look at the news on alternative news sources.

Alternative media can have some stories that main news sources also talk about, but they mainly talk about things that main resources won't talk about. One big thing that alternative media talks about is anti-war. Alternative media tends to focus on anti-war and focus on the smaller, but also very important news that still goes on within the world. 

Alternative media also include writers or news reporters who are actually there in a war in a very dangerous position and can tell the true stories of something like they're being held as prisoners and how the conditions are. One example of this I found on the website anti-war. 

It is a story about a writer who is a prisoner in Israel and talks about the death March over there. Can story talks about how the writer has to deal with being. prisoners and have watched their colleagues be killed in front of them and are trying to stay alive as long as possible and get out of the situation.

If you try to find a story like this on Main news sources then you probably won't you probably will find nothing except for smaller reporters or journalists talking about the situation. Another site that contains alternative news sources is a site called The American Conservative. This has a story about life. in Ukraine from the North Korean troops and what they're going through.

I typically find stories that I've never heard about oversee stories that I'm actually interested about in seeing what the news is actually saying about certain situations that don't get that much coverage from the main news sources. It's always interesting seeing the different types of news coverage that's available.

 AI Is Growing

After watching Age of AI It really made me reflect Have AI has been growing nowadays and where it is heading. A couple years ago I really didn't think AI was going to be a big part of society. If you had asked me about five years ago if I thought that I would be dealing with AI a lot nowadays then I would have not believed you. The only thing that I thought AI would be able to do was sell driving cars, but I would think that it would still take a lot more years for it to be perfected or be super useful. 

Even had to be able to type AI questions to see if it knew anything about what I was talking about or even help me get ideas out. Chat GBT has been a big part of society nowadays and in the school system it's been helpful but also very hurtful because of how people use it to cheat. And I feel like it's changed very quickly and abruptly, but society has also adapted quickly to it.

AI has made it easier for your privacy to not be as secure because of things like facial recognition and just online sources or coding that can take your information. But facial recognition is also great because it can help detect people if they come in a crime so if they rob a store and their face is caught on camera the police can find out who they are just by their face. 

Now, national security is secure, but it's not secure at the same time because of the good coding in the back coating that's out there with bad hackers trying to take people's information, like their credit card information or their Social Security number. But the government has also been trying to use this as a way to protect us and make sure that we are able to keep things secure.

Online security has gotten very Insecure because of the new ways to get your information taken by either if it's email some Companies will take your email and sell it to other companies possibly sending you spam or sending you fake emails and making you try to tap on fake links to get access to your phone. But different sources can help prevent like pop up inside that like Firefox or VP N's like Nord VPN.

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 Theories

We had a presentation where we learned about different aspects of the communication world. But the One I would love to talk about the most is the different theories that people went over. 

Now, one of the theories that I was interested in was the overturn window. The overturn window is when there's a focus on an idea that comes to people's heads. But the things outside of this window don't seem thinkable or reasonable. Now, this is more of just saying that there's a certain barrier that people have that if it is crossed, they won't believe it or think that it's even possible to even happen. 

But there is a six-step process on how. to change people's windows and have them think about this new idea that people might have. The six-step process is introducing the new idea, getting public awareness, having gradual acceptance, political adoption, and a feedback loop.

Another thing that they talked about in their presentation was agenda setting and gatekeeping. Agenda setting is the media telling us what to think about and is controlling what we see. Gatekeeping is keeping information from the public and changing it to make it sound more how they want it to sound.

These two different theories that the media pulls on the public are two different ideas that happen in the media, but when they are combined together, they can completely control and influence most people watching. A theory like this was big during COVID because people believed that the media was being controlled on. what vaccines to take and what vaccines were good in order to harm us and set a certain agenda that the government wants.

New theories always are made especially when it comes to the media and how much control or how stubborn people are there will always be new ways that people will either be persuaded or not.

 The Effects of Alternative Media

Alternative media is typically a non-commercial media source that writes about topics that mainstream media doesn’t write about. They can write about what mainstream media writes about but write about problems like race or sexuality problems happening in the world. Alternative media also can involve news outside of the US like Russia or other countries with big problems. Alternative media staff is not that big and is not like the big production of mainstream media. One example of alternative media is Antiwar.

There are good and bad things about alternative media. The good thing about it is that Alternative media can include stories that mainstream media might be scared of writing or don’t want to tell the public. Alternative media is supposed to show people “the truth” about our world and what is being hidden. Alternative media can bring very biased thoughts or theories that might not be true. They might try to change your mind about topics with little evidence. So it really matters what sources you trust. 

Alternative media can be used to persuade the media on topics like religion. There is a percentage of people who use alternative media and only trust alternative media because they say it is more reliable than mainstream. Surprisingly not a lot of Americans use alternative media. Only 6% of Americans use alternative media as a source of news. More Americans rather get their news from social media than alternative media. The 6% that do use alternative media are more susceptible to false ideas or theories about things like aliens living on Earth with us or other things like that. 

Like I said before though not all alternative media is bad. Some alternative media can talk about problems within groups of people that mainstream media isn’t and that needs to be covered. One thing they might talk about is the problems that the LGBTQ community is going through and bring more awareness to that so they can get more community help. Different minority groups might lean more toward alternative media because of the inclusion of their group whether it’s good or bad. Some groups feel like mainstream media just doesn’t fill the coverage that minority groups deserve to get.

Now I have been talking about Alternative media writing about problems but they also give other types of news. An example is on Ars Technica there’s a story on the space x president saying that he thinks that there will be an increase in Starship launch rates. So alternative media still talks about good news within the world but alternative media is typically for groups or communities of people.

Alternative media affects me because I can see the news within communities that I’m a part of. Some of them talk about the news that happens within the music space or what new plugins come out. It doesn’t really affect my family because they like to use mainstream media but it does affect my friends. They like to see both main and alternative news because some of them think that the government controls and manipulates main news sources. With this being said I do think that the younger generation is going to use alternative media more than mainstream media.

How to stop surveillance from your phone?

 You are always being watched

Technology and security have upgraded in the past years for the better and the worse. Phone taps are not just things that happen to criminals but also happen to all of us. Nowadays it's easier to phone tap somebody or figure out what they're saying on a call or see their messages. Now, if you use things like an iPhone like their messaging system or FaceTime, those are not as easy to tap, but we use many communication sources that can be tapped and listened to. 

Now this can affect me by just having to be careful what I say or type on a message or a phone call. Now for now it isn't really a big problem because I don't really have to communicate through my phone to someone else with private information. But when I go into the work area I will have to communicate through my phone and probably talk about sensitive information for a company or even my personal information. Now this affects my friends and family beca
use they have companies and they work with other people and their information can be stolen or even just taken advantage of wi
th that information that the criminal could take from them.

Now I think the government should have a better and more secure way of making sure this doesn't happen. Because I know that we as People want to have secure ways of communicating but I do know this will affect the police when it comes to wiretapping into criminal phones but we as people have to be secure. So if they just build a system that makes it harder for people to listen in on what we're doing and what we're saying we won't have to deal with things like fraud or blackmail.

Now ways to protect ourselves is to use the products we have that are not easy to phone tab. One of those things is FaceTime because Facetime is not easy to tap telephone which Apple has confirmed that it is secure and safe for people not to listen to and even they can't listen to the conversation. The same thing goes for their messaging app or you could use WhatsApp if you don't have an iPhone you can use those products so people aren't listening and or keeping what you're saying.

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Communication inventions

Intro

I listen to my classmates talk about different inventions that have changed the communication space. They went through the history of the invention and the impact of the invention and some even talked about what is the future of this invention if it was still going on today. There were a lot of inventions that were talked about but I just want to highlight a few.

The search engine 

So the first invention I want to highlight is the search engine. He was talked about how the search engine was a big step forward after the first public computer and Internet was available. It was made to help people find answers that they need. Just like how it is now you had to put in some keywords and it would give you a list of items close to your keyword. One thing interesting I thought about search engine was it was actually made from a university which was McGill University. Of course with invention like this it's hard to make money off because no one has to pay for the service so they made it a ad based service so they could make money off it. 

The first personal computer

Another invention I want to highlight is the first personal computer which is now known as the PC. Before people actually had their own computers the only people who had computers was scientists the government and the FBI which I think is interesting because of course they would need as much technology as possible but I'm interested what the computer could do before the PC. Now the first computer that was given out to the public was the Altair 8800. Of course now PC's have grown and everyone has a PC mostly now and it has been very helpful in today's time.