Final Post

My relationship with technology is one of the healthier ones comparted to the sphere of people around me. 

Work/School

I use the internet a lot in my schooling. As a historian, online databases give me the power to search vast archives by simply typing in a few key words. Websites like JSTOR enable undergraduates like me to engage in upper level research in our fields and is a genuine life saver when it comes to essay writing. Additionally, without the help of spellcheck and Grammarly I would have failed out of this institution long ago.

Creative Output

As a game designer, it would be literally impossible to work without technology. I use technology to create, something that is very important to me.

Recreation

I spend an abhorrent amount of time playing videogames, it is my primary method of recreation. Whenever I'm not playing games, I'm often watching YouTube. While I don't think my recreational methods are particularly problematic, I do acknowledge the need for more active recreation and actively take steps to diversify my life.

My Family

My Mother- My mother uses technology for primarily three things: to watch workout videos on You Tube, to watch videos on TikTok, and to work. My mother's work habits actually point out an interesting issue that emerges from technology, you simply cannot leave work at work, it follows you home every day. That is something that I think we need to be more conscience of as a society.

My Father- My dad hardly uses technology apart from listening to music on Spotify, but he has recently began using You Tube as recreation. He watches the oddest content about UFOs and the most falsified historical information I have ever seen. It seems that older generations are just as gullible online as younger generations.

My Sister- My sister does the whole social media thing and, as I don't have social media, I have no clue what she posts. I think she uses it primarily to keep in contact with old friends, something I think is admirable.

My Concerns

I can't help but get the feeling now that I'm always being watched and listened to, and that's because it's true. There is no privacy online, whatever you're doing is very profitable for someone to know and sell. There is also an issue of reliance on technology. When is the last time you left the house without your phone? It's been quite some time for me, but I urge everyone to try this. It's oddly freeing.

AI also scares me on the internet. It's gotten to a point where every picture and every article makes me second guess not only its legitimacy, but also if a human was even involved in creating of the content. The Dead Internet theory is one I find myself thinking about more and more in recent history. The gist of this theory is that the vast majority of online activity now consists of only bots interacting with one another, trying to make someone money or harvest someone's information. It's almost amusing at this point. Nowadays makes me long for an internet I never lived in, one with only people and GeoCities, the true wild west of the internet.

Cutting the Cord

Cutting the Cord is the cancellation of cable television by families in favor of wireless methods of receiving programming such as…

Internet Protocol television - Television programming streamed over the internet

Digital terrestrial television - Television transmitted using radio frequencies

Satellite Television - Television received through satellite, typically a paid subscription as well, though cord-cutting often refers to free-to-air satellite television

Families are doing this for various reasons, with modern pricing and convenience being the most prominent reasons. 

Pricing

The cost of cable television is not on the rise, but it is being rapidly outpaced by streaming services. Originally, there were few streaming services with cheap pricing. It wasn't difficult for families to add an additional fee to their cable television bill, but as time went on streaming services evolved. More and more services emerged and their pricing increased. All of a sudden, if families wanted to get access to all content, families were paying just as much for their streaming services as they were for cable, and doubling a cable bill just wasn't viable for many families. If a family were to have the most premium subscriptions to all the primary streaming services, the monthly fee would amount to $113 per month. The average cable television plan is $217 per month. Cable television is just not viable, more money for less content and more ads.

Convenience

The convenience of being able to watch anything you want at any time is impossible to understate. It is extremely difficult to name something cable television does better than streaming services. Originally, there was an argument to be made about the news, but now many streaming services have live television features, so the only thing cable does better is local news. Streaming services also have options to completely eliminate ads. If I learned anything in the time I was growing up it is that commercial breaks midway through an episode of the History Channel are the bane of fathers everywhere. There is no amount that a father wouldn't pay to watch more conspiracy theories.

Rich vs Poor

One of what I believe is the most significant effects of streaming services is the large gaps being driven between people of different financial standings. Simply put, the more poor you are the worse content you will be receiving. You won't have nearly the same catalog of content as wealthier people and you will be viewing a significantly higher volume of ads. We are now in an age where being rich means you get better entertainment, and that is a dangerous place to be in. Our entertainment is supposed to be a big bridge to unite classes, but now enjoying content is getting tied directly to class.

Me and the Cord

My family has cut the cord long ago. We never had cable, but we paid for a satellite television plan which is essentially the same thing. Once my mother finally did the math she realized we were pretty much paying a second TV bill on top of our TV bill. The only hurdle we had to surmount was the lack of local television and, most damning, teaching my father to use a new medium of technology and entertainment. This is how I firsthand witnessed the age separation that cutting the cord can present, but I also found that it wasn't nearly the impossible dealbreaker that I thought it would be.

Privacy and Lack Thereof

Personally, I do not engage with social media. I don't have Snapchat, Instagram, or even Facebook. This gives me the slightest leg up in the privacy war, but I am still losing horrifically. I have a Google account, meaning it's game over for me. Of course, the first video presented me with no new information. From a young age, my whole generation has been taught that we have a digital footprint that everyone can see. However, as a historian, I appreciate the analogies present by relating the technology conversation to ancient Greece, proving once again that whatever you think, someone in ancient Greece thought it first. 

I also live in a very small town, technically to be considered a village due to its small population. The neighboring town where we go to grocery shop is somewhat larger, but still small and poor. While I do engage with larger cities that I am sure are harvesting my information and location for their gain, my small, poor town gives me a form of immunity to this harvesting. I know it's only a matter of time before the technology reaches even my small town, but for now, I am relatively safe.

Luckily, I use an iPhone, giving me protection from government surveillance. It is extremely jarring to hear about how tap-friendly our whole lives have been since the beginning. I agree with the speaker in his opinion that it is better and safer to design a protected program than one built for surveillance. This video feels like a rare thing in this class, technology furthering our privacy. So for maybe the first time in this course, I would like to say thank you to massive corporations for protecting my privacy. 

I encourage everyone to watch other TED videos on privacy. The more you see, the more you learn. The more you learn, the more scared you should be, but it's far more important to be afraid and informed than to live in blissful ignorance.

https://www.ted.com/search?q=privacy

War in the News

 War, when properly managed, is undeniably good for the leaders of this country. They use it to get cheaper materials, to make money, and to push their own agendas. Since war is so profitable, American leaders have no interest in stopping the perpetual war machine of America.

While constitutionally politicians are not allowed to silence the press, mainstream media has been proven to be in the pockets of Washington D.C. I've already discussed the profitability of war, so it isn't hard to see why politicians have no interest in American citizens hearing anti-war reporting. 

For example, the United States government has consistently expressed ongoing support for Ukraine in the Russo-Ukrainian war. The Biden administration has provided over 75 billion dollars in financial and logistical aid to Ukraine. The majority of American taxpayers have supported these financial aids, but how do you think popular opinion would sway if the following article was more reported upon?

US Officials See Ukraine as an Active and Bountiful Military Research Opportunity

Since the dawn of anti-war protesting, protesters have been silenced by the government. War is how nations progress, and governmental bodies don't want citizens to stand in the way. In American history, I believe the strongest outcry against war was during Vietnam. American citizens were outraged at the Vietnam War and demanded our men return home. Thousands of people showed up in DC to protest, and over time it worked. Of course, large-scale activism like this rarely exists today, with everyone instead opting to sign an online petition or buy a bumper sticker. I believe a huge reason Americans don't oppose American wars to a greater extent is the effort it takes to protest. Additionally, I don't think the American people are informed about the ongoing wars that America is in. In several cases, I have met people who believe the United States isn't at war at all, and that just goes to show how well the government and major news outlets are doing to hide the truth of American war and violence.

Carrier Pigeons

Never have I considered Carrier Pigeons to be a form of technology but after Ms. Nguyen's presentation on the subject I have reconsidered my position. Carrier pigeons are just as much a communicative technology as radio or the telegram.

Ancient Pigeons

I found it particularly interesting to hear about the carrier pigeon in antiquity. Ancient Egypt has a rich history, but also one where I, as a historian, had never heard of the presence of the pigeon. That being said, I have learned that the pigeon was likely the first ever animal to be domesticated, so it isn't unreasonable to assume that ancient man would have been utilizing them since the dawn of civilization. Additionally, there have been ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs that depict swarms of pigeons in the sky, all but confirming their presence in the ancient civilization.

Police Pigeons

I also found it fascinating to learn about the decline of pigeons being used in police forces around the world. Pigeons used to be used by police forces to communicate with one another prior to the development of communicative technologies like the radio, telegram, and telephone. Currently, India's police force is the only remaining police force that uses carrier pigeons in preparations for disasters where communicative infrastructure collapses. Additionally, if somewhat unrelated, in my research I found an amusing article about a suspected Chinese spy pigeon being detained by Indian police for several months, presumably for questioning, that I highly recommend everyone read.

Prison Pigeons

One subject that I had some prior knowledge of was prison pigeons. Pigeons are being used to smuggle all sorts of contraband into prisons for prisoners. They are typically used to deliver to higher-profile prisoners, giving sim cards, phones, and chargers to prisoners. In recent history, pigeons have more often been replaced by drones, just as they have been replaced in most contexts that were discussed in the presentation. Most recently, pigeons have been caught delivering illegal narcotics into prisons. I would also be remiss to fail to mention that, instead of the classic package tied to the pigeon's leg, prison pigeons are sometimes equipped with small and personally made backpacks, leading to an amusing image of cartel arts and crafts sessions

Virtual Reality

History

The timeline of virtual reality has an intertwining development of VR for education and VR for entertainment. Most people who engage with virtual reality engage with the entertainment side of it,  but the educational side of VR has evolved right alongside that of the entertainment. The education side of VR is continuously saving lives through teaching in a safe and humanless context.

Entertainment

The roots of modern virtual reality can be seen as far back as the 1830s with stereoscopic photos and viewers. Virtual reality was much, much later developed into Morton Heilig's Sensorama in 1962. The Sensorama was, for all intents for all intents and purposes, a virtual reality arcade cabinet used for the viewing of movies using all of your senses. In the early 90s, video games took a keen interest in VR. Companies like Sony and Nintendo attempted to get a foothold into the technology, but it wasn't until the 2010s that the technology and the games industry had advanced far enough to make a consistently successful industry in VR hardware and software for the uses of entertainment.

Education

In 1929, the first practical application for VR was created in the form of the first flight simulator used to train pilots. Virtual reality was further changed in 1968 with the development of the first head-mounted VR display and further still in 1979 with the first standalone VR headset that could be removed from a lab setting. Today, education VR has developed far past that of VR made for the average consumer.  

Impact

Virtual reality received huge loops in technological advancements as a result of the technology being used as training. The technology got its original boom in the field of training technology, beginning with flight trainers and getting developed further in the military and especially in the field of healthcare to train surgeons on complex procedures. 

A large portion of the field today is dedicated to entertainment, specifically video games. This has pros and cons. A pro is simply that it is fun for the consumer. The development of new video games relating to VR as well as hardware to complement these games has led to an extremely enjoyable new medium for those who are involved in it. A con to this is the lack of further development unless stimulated by financial promise. This means development of hardware is slow for the consumer as the VR entertainment market has a high financial entrance barrier.

Unfortunately, virtual reality's previously mentioned financial barrier of entry has led to a lack of expansion in the industry. Those looking into VR have to buy a headset, and a powerful computer (if they wish to play more graphically intensive games), and must have room set aside to play VR. Additionally, modern VR faces a similar problem as older VR did, namely motion sickness. The feeling of virtual moving while standing still is simply too much for a lot of people to handle, meaning the already small market of people able to afford and wanting to engage with VR has been shortened even further.

Free Speech and Free Expression

"Marketplace of ideas" and "promoting innovation" are the two values that I think are most intertwined. A marketplace of ideas inherently promotes innovation and in order to have innovation you need to have a marketplace of ideas. All of the eight values of free expression fit together extremely well, but I believe these two cannot exist without each other. While these values are, of course, extremely important to our modern society, I don't believe they are the most integral to discuss. 

To me, "promote tolerance" is the most important value of free expression. We live in an age where everyone wants to be as inclusive as possible. A result of this is an extreme sensitivity when it comes to disagreeable speech. I feel that, as a society, we are forgetting the importance of protecting what you don't want to hear. If everyone is forced to think a certain way then we are bound to go nowhere as a society. While I understand the desire to be more inviting and accepting, I think that not protecting the right to what some people call hate speech could have dire consequences for our freedom of speech. I've always subscribed to the quote "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

The perfect example of this is Tyler VanderWeele, an epidemiology professor at Harvard’s public health school. VanderWeele shared his beliefs of opposition to gay marriage, causing an outcry from students demanding he be fired or reprimanded. Regardless of whether or not you agree with VanderWelle, there is no reason that he should be reprimanded. The idea that he should be inching dangerously close to the complete removal of freedom of speech. While I understand that Harvard is a private institution and thus it would not be unconstitutional to fire him, I believe if he was fired it would represent a shift into an unconstitutional mindset. An article from the New Yorker touches upon this situation as well, later describing how close-minded the classroom has become. Students have reported being weary of sharing opinions in the classroom out of fear of being reprimanded for their own beliefs. This is something I have experienced and witnessed in the modern age, particularly in a classroom setting. People no longer feel comfortable discussing important topics because nowadays saying a single wrong thing can cost someone their entire future.

Freedom of speech under the "promote tolerance" value is perhaps the most in danger on online platforms. Since these platforms want to retain their users they attempt to be as accepting of others as humanly possible. Combine this with the fact that social media platforms are privately owned and thus have the right to kick anyone off their platform at any time and you have a severe lack of freedom of speech. As a result, I would argue that social media has done just as much bad for freedom of speech as it has good. We live in an age where our words are immortalized online, and this can lead to gross consequences. It denies people the right to discuss their beliefs or ideas out of fear that they will be denied a place in society. It also denies people change, as no matter how you change or evolve as a person, everyone will likely judge you for things you have said in the past. The permanent digital footprint that we leave denies basic freedoms of speech, specifically that of promoting tolerance.