The Dual Nature of Technology

Technology has become a tool that is used in our daily lives for both good and bad. It can be used for good, such as creating new advancements and bringing loved ones together, or for bad, such as creating privacy concerns, misinformation, and even addiction. I think technology is very complex and holds a different significance for each of us. 

Technology, when used as a responsible tool, can have many benefits. However, if we were to ask ourselves, are we truly in control of technology and how we use it, or has it become a tool that manipulates us? What would your reply be? Each of us must answer that for ourselves. 

Technology, as shown in the World Fair in 1964 called Futurama, was shown as something that would help humanity. The original vision, as others saw it was intended to help us simplify tasks, which in reality, it did. As shown, it helped us achieve the “city of tomorrow” with highways, homes, and ways to shape our future. But somewhere down that path, technology became the driving force, and it was no longer society that was leading the way. 

The remake of Moby’s video, Mad World Remix, was powerful and incredibly accurate. We have become a society with minimum human interaction who are vulnerable to the information we surround ourselves with. Despite knowing that a lot of what we see is not real, we still like, search, and try to achieve these unrealistic expectations we know aren't real. Why is that? I think it’s attributed to psychology. People want to be acknowledged, seen, and validated. The focus of technology has moved away from being a tool that facilitates tasks. Instead, it has become a tool for the greedy, which has led the way in decreasing creative childhood play, family dinner time, and the ability to create memories with friends and family that aren't lived through a lens. 

Steve Cutts demonstrated a powerful timeline of mankind. He illustrates an accurate perception of how we use and abuse our own resources, and often simply for the purpose of vanity. All the while, pollution increases, landfills are at capacity, and we alter and modify our food sources because we don’t have enough, and as the end of the video shows, for what purpose? When you think about technology, do you think of all the great things it has done or the misuse of it? Personally, I can see both sides. 

Technology, for me, is an important tool as a Communications major. Without technology, many of the opportunities that I have at my disposal wouldn’t exist. As for the amount of time I spend on technology, I feel I could personally find a better balance. I am not scrolling for hours on end unproductively, but because it provides useful information that teaches me about what I am passionate about, I often spend a lot of time researching niches in my field. It isn’t time wasted to me because it does provide useful information which I learn from and am able to apply to an end result. 

So, has technology set out to achieve what others thought it could do in 1964? Yes, and it will continue to innovate and change our world. As for its downfalls, it is up to us as individuals to identify if our relationship with technology is a healthy one or not. For me, it is important to be mindful of the amount of time I use it and for what purpose. It is important to find a healthy balance between constructive purposes and entertainment and to learn to unplug from it as well. However, the likelihood of the amount of time that new generations will spend on technology doesn’t seem promising. Our new generations will only know technology, which will continue to normalize their frequent use of it. 

Anti War: The Progressive Era

 Anti War

After watching the three videos and reflecting back on cases that are based around the First Amendment, the videos show a pattern of anti-war voices being silenced. The government has often used incitement of violence or threat of national security as a way of trying to silence unpopular opinions. I believe this is still true in today's society. 

Prior to this assignment, I was not aware of the websites shared. I found the websites to be interesting. I believe the reason anti-war voices are not encouraged in mainstream news is because the media wants to control the information that is shared with the public. The government and the news media want to control the dialogue of the information that is being put out.  If unbiased news is presented to the public, too many opinions and questions would come up. They want to control the narrative. War also typically benefits one political party over another. With this usually comes quid pro quo. 

History has shown us that politics and news agencies, especially in our current day, often represent the view of one political party and not that of the people. Your political views might influence which network or source you get your information from, which is unfortunate. The news should be unbiased and based solely on facts. News networks are a business. Whoever has control, controls the information that is put out. 

The danger in this is that there are people who are not able to make intelligent and informed decisions for themselves. They aren’t able to hear viewpoints open-mindedly and separate opinions from facts. This again leads to the media controlling what people believe, as opposed to what is truly going on around them. Acknowledging and supporting strong anti-war voices comes down to one thing, it being bad for business.  

The Hidden Power of Gatekeeping Across Industries (EOTO2 Reax)

The Hidden Power of Gatekeeping Across Industries

Gatekeeping is a term that's popped up everywhere, from TikTok comments to scholarly debates. It goes far beyond sayings like "Don't gatekeep that recipe!" Originally coined by Kurt Lewin in the 1940s and expanded by David Manning White in the 1950s, it describes how a select few control access to information, opportunities, or resources. So how does this happen across all those fields?

Hollywood: The annual retreat that seems to attract all of Hollywood's A-listers, politicians, and tycoons, the Bohemian Grove, seems to know how to be very “exclusive”. Some have claimed that it's the country's most secretive gathering. And with the backdrop of California's redwood trees, it almost certainly gives off the appearance of an elite fraternity not to be messed with. In 2000, filmmaker Alex Jones did for the Grove what many of its fans might have dreaded. He infiltrated it and served up footage of its rituals, and the results were shocking.

Science: Claims that Big Pharma hides cancer cures to protect its profits are plentiful in online forums. A report by Statista in 2021 valued the oncology market at a staggering $203 billion, and some inject the report's findings as unflattering to Duke. In fact, the report's findings seem to present an argument that Duke should be avoided because it may not be a site of true scientific inquiry but rather one where pseudoscience is practiced and defended. Also its known many people who claim to have found a cure mysteriously disappear...

Academics: Aaron Swartz's battle for open access continues to resonate online. JSTOR's paywalls, sometimes $20 per article, shut out the common person, even though we fund most research. A 2023 Elsevier study showed academic publishers pocketing $19 billion a year. Swartz's 2011 arrest for mass downloading of papers ended in tragedy, but his legacy lives on in movements like those of Sci-Hub, which shares its millions of papers with the public without going through any gatekeepers.

Finance: According to the ICIJ, over 330 politicians and billionaires were outed in 2016 and 2021 as hiding money in offshore accounts. In the executive summary of the Pandora Papers, by far the biggest investigation ever undertaken by the ICIJ, the authors note that a "huge" share of untaxed offshore wealth remains out of sight. Oxfam, which regularly tracks the phenomenon of elites and corporations dodging taxes, puts the total at $7.6 trillion.

Music Industry: The Internet is filled with conversations about artists bartering for fame and fortune. For instance, Lil Nas X makes satanic references and Billie Eilish makes pyramid-packed music videos. Even though she is perfectly capable of crafting some of the most disarming pop songs imaginable. Yet, she contorts herself into a not-too-seductive-in-hindsight figure to get across the illusion of seduction that pop now requires in order to be more than mere background music.

History: The disappearance of the Library of Alexandria is a historical mystery. UNESCO estimates it held about 700,000 scrolls on subjects like math, medicine, and astrolabes that were probably burned in 48 BCE during a war in which Julius Caesar was involved. Others blame subsequent behavior by Christians of the period, particularly Theophilus, who was head of the Library, for its later plundering. A 2020 blog speculates about the knowledge in Alexandria’s scrolls: Could they have held the secret to the construction of the pyramids? We’ll never know for sure since archives of lost knowledge are bound to disappear. Did the Library of Alexandria have anything to do with what we know about the pyramids? It’s possible.

Understanding False Information: Disinformation, Misinformation, and Malinformation

The challenge of false information is spreading in today's digital world and affecting the public in every possible way. The public receives and believes all sorts of false information, some of which can indeed shape perceptions and even influence major societal events like elections. False information has several different forms, and it might be more useful for us to think about it as taking on a few key appearances, each with its unique set of characteristics. We might call these appearances disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation.

False information that is created and spread with the intent to mislead and manipulate is known as disinformation. This is not done by accident but is a strategy. Disinformation works best when it's used to "sway public opinion through false narratives and misleading information." A prime example of this is the Hunter Biden laptop story from October 2020. In this instance, while the New York Post was publishing emails that were supposedly suggesting some influence peddling, a lot of critics were saying that what was really going on was that media outlets and social platforms were almost immediately labeling the story as disinformation. Whether you agree with the story or not, disinformation accomplishes what it set out to do in this instance: to control the public conversation. Online, disinformation prospers because it's meant to do one thing and do it well which is to provoke. It extracts and intensifies emotions of fear and anger that make our digital public square a little more unhealthy, and it gets us just a bit closer to home as a society.

Misinformation is not by design, it's false information shared unknowingly. It's all too often leading to widespread confusion. It is described as "unknowingly spreading false information that is teaching the public to be confused." It's a confusing definition with some pretty clear, if not flattering, descriptors. Misinformation might lie in its appearing to be harmless, but because it doesn't seem at all sinister, it skips by most people undetected, winning a moment's worth of shares before anyone gets around to checking whether it's actually true. This apparent nature of misinformation speaks to its effectiveness as a tool for amplifying confusion in our online world, where sharing is still the only way to be heard, and where being heard more often than not also means being believed.

Malinformation is information often used to harm or mislead specific targets. Defined as a "strategy using information to harm or mislead," it is something we don't usually think about when we consider harmful information. Imagine a misleading story about a public figure that gets a lot of attention. Now, imagine that story being used as a weapon against that public figure in a certain context. That's malinformation. This kind of false information is especially harmful because it combines fact with malice. Manipulation of information, which is crucial for understanding how malinformation affects us. It shifts perceptions by playing off our trust in partial truths. This makes it prime for political or corporate use, where the goal isn't just to confuse but to ruin. And because it's so well-suited to "the digital space," it can spread through online echo chambers faster than we can hit the "share" button.

Disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation are not simply terms, they are active forces in our world today, shaping events and influencing people. Governments are using false information to build censorship justification narratives. In extreme cases, they frame laws to target "fake news" that sometimes serves as a cover for legitimate dissent critical of the government. This balancing act between harm reduction and free speech is a significant current issue. However, understanding these categories of harmful information offers sneak peeks through the onslaught of narrative information. Knowledge of these three can only encourage us to learn more about what is being done to us.

Living in the Age of AI

With great power comes great responsibility. This has proven to be the case with AI technology. Although AI is still considered to be fairly new, we are at a point where we must start focusing on boundaries and regulations. In the Age of AI, the documentary only confirms what many of us know to be true. AI is a great concern for individual privacy. As stated in the video, AI can be used as a powerful tool to make our daily lives easier, but many companies are taking notice of the capital benefit that AI can provide and are using it for capital gain instead. 

In watching this documentary, I learned that AI continues to drive a further wedge between the 1% of the wealthy and the economically disadvantaged causing further inequality. I also learned that AI has become an important tool for companies. More jobs are being eliminated at an alarming rate creating a bigger economic imbalance. This is creating a terrible cycle because people who are already at an economic disadvantage can not afford to learn and study new trades after losing their jobs. I was surprised by just how much surveillance China has and the danger of sharing it with other countries like Pakistan, Venezuela, and Ecuador.  As frightening as that is, it is equally as frightening on how facial recognition is being used by law enforcement without our consent. 

Individuals have lost their rights to privacy. We are at the mercy of who controls the power and what they choose to do with it. It affects us as an entire society because AI has become part of our daily lives and we are being placed at a disadvantage without our consent. AI is not being governed or regulated at the level of importance it should be. It affects our entire society and citizens. There can be election interference that distorts democracy, loss of jobs that affect the economy, and invasion of privacy which can lead to identity theft. Better controls need to be set in place. 

What is meant to be a useful tool has become a tool used against its users to target them against what they search and use. Companies continue to alter these algorithms for profitable gains. If no regulations are set in place to protect the public, what was meant to be a useful tool to help us, can turn into something that will hurt our society instead. 

EOTO1 Reaction

EOTO2 Reaction

When we presented to one another about new technologies, one that really stood out for me was "The History of Motion Pictures." This segment truly taught me about how film has developed over time and across cultures. I had long thought of film as something that just was (part of my entertainment, part of my life), but this traced the way the film had gone from a simple scientific curiosity to a worldwide part of virtually everyone's life. The first slide, “History of Motion Pictures,” traces the origins of cinema. It begins with the zoetrope, a 19th-century device that created the illusion of motion through a series of sequential images, like Eadweard Muybridge’s iconic study of a horse in motion. This laid the groundwork for moving pictures. The slide also brings up Thomas Edison’s kinetograph, which filmed the first movies in history. From there, the presentation moves to the silent film era exemplified by black-and-white classics and the introduction of sound that revolutionized storytelling. Finally, it touches on the rise of color movies and big-budget blockbusters like Star Wars that transformed the medium into a massive, profit-making industry. The second slide, “Impact of Motion Pictures,” explores how films have influenced society. They convey messages and ideas through the medium of visual storytelling, as in their formation of the classic The Wizard of Oz.

They also influence the public’s perception of events, cultures, and people, with preceding societal norms often found in their frames. For their part, technological advancements have not left films behind, they appear at the forefront of various revolutionary communication technologies, platforms like Netflix making their content nearby and accessible anytime, anywhere. The third slide, “The History and Impact of CDs,” while not directly about motion pictures, connects to the broader evolution of media.

Developed by Sony and Philips, CDs made music and movies portable, holding 74 minutes of content and blurring the lines of radio efficiency. They were also part of the near total envelopment of popular entertainment in the computer, with all the not-so-implicit potential for the use and misuse of computers, as in the illegal sales of CDs. Together, these slides demonstrate the remarkable adaptability of motion pictures and related technologies, which have consistently left a profound impression on popular culture. This investigation of moving pictures pays heed to their still potent ability to charm, teach, and unify people across the eons.

Privacy, Online & Off

 Privacy

Privacy both online and off is a concern that we should take seriously because it affects all of us in some way. Our private information is being shared across multiple platforms without our knowledge. However, because we as the users are consenting to their unrealistic terms, companies continue to be protected while the users become the victims. Our personal information being shared personally affects my friends, family, and myself because our information becomes public to third parties and targeted advertisers without our control. Our personal information is being sold, manipulated, and used for an indefinite period. The amount of breaches with personal information continues to rise while greedy companies continue to expose personal information with minimal to no repercussions.

Our government needs to create stronger laws to protect consumers and users which limits the amount of information that can be gathered and how it is shared. However, the government is also part of the problem as they abuse the power of gathering personal information themselves. Some may argue that gathering information by our government can be for the greater good, but gathering and holding on to private citizen's information indefinitely and without their consent is problematic. 

Companies and individuals need to be held accountable. Stronger laws and heftier fines need to be set in place both locally and internationally which should include consequences such as jail time for misuse of personal information. Because the internet is used on an international level, international laws should also be in place to protect us. The burden should not be placed on the victim to face and address the many consequences and often legal fees. Surveillance features have proven that companies can not control who can gain access which leaves our information exposed. We need stronger protection of our personal information, heavier fines for companies that breach and violate these laws, and harsher penalties for individuals including jail time.

To protect ourselves, we should use encrypted emails and encrypted platforms for better security of our information. Adjust our cookie settings whenever possible, block and report suspicious activities, and teach our younger society to limit the amount of personal data that they share. We must also continue to make our voices heard by local policymakers and demand government enforcement and policy change.

The burden of having our private information protected should not fall on the user. Companies will continue to manipulate their power if we continue to be forced to accept their “take it or leave it” policies which we are often forced to do.