Post #10: Echo Chamber

 

Echo Chambers

In our modern well-connected society, it has never been easier for us to be able to look for ideas we wish to believe or find people that share out ideas and while this can be great it does put us at risk of falling into a pit where we only the ideas we wish to.

This idea of only surrounding ourselves with the ideas and people with which we agree with it becomes known as an echo chamber. These echo chambers on the surface don't appear to be too large of a problem as it is often viewed as simply finding friends or a community but as the chamber begins to echo more and more people become unwilling to agree to or even listen to other ideas that aren't in their chamber. The primary issue with this is that you will only ever listen to one side or a small part of an argument that is entirely within your echo chamber. While this holds to the rights a person has under the first amendment, it decreases the ability of the opposing ideas to express their own first amendment rights. This can become a major issue with media outlets, journals, or governments as they only publish one of the possible ideas and can control the lives of thousands to millions based off of only one side of a potential topic or issue.

The best course of action to stop ourselves from falling into an echo chamber is to simply be willing to listen to the other side of a potential argument and agree to disagree. 

Post #9: Diffusion Theory of Virtual Reality

 Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality is a technology that has slowly begun seeping into our lives through the use of science fiction and has begun to become an obtainable reality for us in the near future. By looking at the diffusion theory we can begin to predict how this advancing technology could begin to change in the future.

The pioneers of virtual reality are a combination of science fiction authors of the 1930s who created the basic idea and the inventors like Morton Heilig's who created early versions of virtual reality in order to enhance entertainment experiences. This pioneer and experimental phase lasted around 30 years as different technologies collided in order to help decrease the size and cost of virtual reality to a point where corporations felt like they could use it.

When virtual reality hit the early adopters phase in the 1990s many companies and scientific government organizations had begun using it for a variety of purposes. Many vehicle manufacturing companies like General Electric and Boeing began using virtual reality to simulate certain conditions their products may face in order to check out certain aspects of them. This was quickly followed by NASA using VR to help simulate various space-related topics such as rocket testing and rover footage which helped further our understanding of the unknown. The final early adopters were entertainment companies trying to make VR more accessible for the average person so many arcade machines began being created to bring the VR experience.

VR at its current stage is located in the Early Majority stage as it has become cheap enough for it to begin to see consistent use in education and simulation with it even being cheap enough for the average person to be able to buy VR headsets for entertainment. Many companies have begun eyeing the technology looking for ways they could be using it in everyday life in the work environment or at how and once this point is hit it will hit its critical mass and begin shifting toward Late Majority.

VR will likely begin continuing until the point where only those who can't afford it, have poor internet or don't want it will remain in the Laggards. The cycle of VR does have the potential to go through the diffusion cycle once again if it reaches the stage where it turns into Simulated Reality and our lives are changed in a major way.

Post #8: News Deserts

 What Are News Deserts?

News Deserts are something that has been slowly spreading through the United States with them taking hold in countless towns and cities without any of us noticing them. They have countless people to go without reliable information about their country, their state, their county, and at times their town.

So what are they? New Deserts are geographical areas or communities that suffer from having very few or no news outlets that are providing them with outside information. This means that potentially thousands of people located in the areas normally only have one way they are capable of getting information about topics outside their local area with hundreds having no information any sort of information at all.

What Causes New Deserts?

New Deserts are most commonly located in rural regions. These rural locations on their own can be one of the foundations for New Deserts as they are often heavily reliant on physical media such as newspapers or newsletters. This is because the rural location often has issues in getting reliable access to the internet as many internet providers don't see these areas as profitable enough to lay down cables. This immediately makes these areas News Deserts as they are now only subject to their local physical media but also makes them at higher risk of losing all of their sources of media.

The reason these are are at risk of losing all forms of media is because another main factor in creating News Deserts is economic distress in a region. This is because when a region comes under economic destress they attempt to find ways to cut back on costs and save money. One of the most common budgets that occur during these times is the slashing of available newspaper budgets due to the rise of online media.

Finally, the last cause is a general growing disinterest in traditional physical media due to the growth of online media platforms. This has caused many regions that are normally not at risk of becoming a news desert to become one as they no longer see the need for physical media and as such cut the funding of their own newspapers in order to save more money. This has allowed New Deserts to spread into areas that they would normally be unable to reach such as within major cities and wealthy communities.

Effects of News Deserts?

The primary and most pressing effect of News Deserts is that they have caused countless individuals to only be capable of forming their thoughts and ideas through one source of information. This goes hand in hand with thousands of Americans not even being able to receive information until days or even weeks have passed causing them to not understand potentially life-changing news from the state or the nation.

One of the most impactful changes for those not currently within the regions afflicted by News Deserts is that they are at risk of becoming one under the current circumstances unless an active effort to bring back physical media is undertaken.

Post #7: Online Privacy

 Our Privacy

As social media have continued to grow over the past two decades, we have seen a spike in the online presence that each individual has. While this has created an ideal environment for people to communicated with one another, it has also created the perfect environment for our personal privacies to become violated on a regular bases which could affect us in hundreds if not thousands of different way.

This stripping of privacy is something we now must deal with as part of our daily life and many have mixed feelings about. At first this stripping of privacy doesn't seem very bad as it allows corporations to understand our interests based off our posts, pictures, and locations which can make there advertisement towards us be more personal. This one its own isn't to bad but people are also concerned about what else these companies or governments are doing with this information about you. They could sell it, use it to track our daily lives, or even use it to control our opinions and thoughts which is a major issue when it comes to our first amendment liberties.

This violation of our privacy to attempt to control our actions should be something that government attempts to protect us from because of its potential to violate our liberty. What I feel should be done by the government to help further our personal privacies is one of two things. The first, more extreme, option is to punish companies for selling our information in third party deals in order to stop the spread of information. The second option is to enforce a similar policy to that of cookies where its informs the users that their information is able to given to other companies in a understandable and easy to read format which would hopefully let the users be mindful of it at the very minimum.

The best way to avoid this however is to be careful regarding your personal footprint online. Attempt to avoid giving your real information on websites and being careful on what you post online are the two best ways to take personal responsibility of your privacy in order to defend your life. 

Post #6: The Camera Lens

 

The Camera Lens

While going through our EOTO presentation we allowed ourselves to be exposed to many technologies that were vital in the evolution of how we communicate with each other today. While we covered many different ways in which we as humans have begun to communicate with each other the side that has been the most interesting to me is regarding the camera or more directly the camera lens.

The first major thing about the camera that surprised me was how old the bases of the technology actually were. The Egyptians use of concaved quartz in order to create the illusion was not the origin I was expecting. The new step of various states across the Mediterranean adopting the lens for various purposes like magnification or fire starters seemed like a natural progression that made a large amount of sense for the technology during the middle ages but it was when people discovered that if they could use a form of metal power were the technology really took off.

 Once the French discovered that the power reacted when expose to light we were able to get the first photograph in which they cover a piece of concrete in the power. The process was extremely different but after 8 hours the power had left behind a temporary image based off of the light it was exposed to. This quickly the technology evolved resulting in the first permanent photo shortly after as people figured out how to contain the reaction and transfer the result onto a paper with the help of a lens that controlled and angled the light. This technology would continue to evolve, allowing for photos, films, and shows to be created until we reach a point where the lens has become so common place we all have one in our pocket.

Post #5: Anti-War Websites

Anti-War Websites

 2022 has proven to be a very interesting year so far but one of the most intriguing things to occur is the political conflict over Ukraine or more precisely the media coverage of it. While both NATO and Russia have stated their cases and have sour relations in an echo of the Cold War, the mainstream media has been a mirror of one another regarding aspects of the diplomatic conflict which is not something we see often. They have all been in support of a potential conflict and view it as the only way for the west to stay strong, but where are the other voices?

Looking into Anti-War sites like Antiwar.com and The American Conservative we can see where these voices have placed themselves which should make us ask why they have to do this. I feel that the answer to this question is fairly obvious and it is that these voices point out the ugly fact the U.S. government has become so entrenched in war without us even knowing. The government fears how these sorts of articles could make themselves appear and as such attempt to minimize the number of people who see them by forcing them into these obscure sites where very few will see them. It paints them in a very bad light to the people who see these articles stating the actions they are doing so they likely encourage major news outlets such as CNN or Fox to refrain from showing such articles in an attempt to control the damage and save face.

If the government is willing to go through with this method of what is essentially censorship, it should make us begin to wonder what else they would be willing to do to stop certain voices from being heard in order to make us see what they want and by result make us think the way they want.

Post #4: Communication Technology/Carrier Pidgeon

 

Introduction

Throughout history there have been many animals that were used for the purposes of letting people communicate with one another. One of the earliest and longest lasting however is that of the carrier pigeon and its cousin species. For thousands of years these birds helped to share words between people and were still used for communication up until the 1950s. These birds may have been small but they made a large impact on how we as humans shared our ideas.

Early Use of Carrier Pigeons

The early history of carrier pigeons is a little hard to pin down. There are few different areas that are believed to have been the start of carrier pigeon communication but most people have agreed that it began in Egypt around 3000 BC. During the time the methods for using the pigeons were a bit more crude and they would simply take the bird from its nest and release it whenever they wished to send a message with the expectation it would find its way home. The next recorded instance is in Mesopotamia around 2000 BC and was believed to allow communication between the various city-states of the region, this is further shown in the story of Noah’s Ark where a dove, a type of pigeon, brings him a message about land. Ancient Greece was the next place the use of carrier pigeons was documented. The pigeons were used to inform the city-states participating in the Olympics Games who won the overall games. The last major use before the turn to AD was by the Romans who used pigeons for a variety of different things. Most notably it was used by the military to inform Rome the results of battles and by the senate to communicate laws. All these early empires were trying to solve the similar problem of trying to decrease communication time between regions.

Early-Modern Use of Carrier Pigeons

The year 1167 was the next notable point for carrier pigeons in Baghdad when the first regular service line was established by Sultan Nur ad-Din between Baghdad and Syria. This pigeon network was later adopted by the Mongols in 1280 after they took over Baghdad. The Mongols would use a pigeon network in order to police their trade lanes which aided heavily in the low amount of banditry they experienced. The next major event that can be seen is the evolution of carrier pigeon use by many European powers for the purposes of military communication. During this time frame we see a clear change from the carrier pigeons being used for a mix of different purposes to being solely used by nation states in order to enforce their command and authority.

Modern Use of Carrier Pigeons

Looking at how carrier pigeons were used past the 1500s we see another clear evolution of how people used them. Many European powers began using pigeons to help them defend their borders due to the speed they could send out messages. In 1860 we saw the next step in the use of carrier pigeons as Brussels began using them in a more civilian manner to inform the citizens of important news and stock prices. This use was short lived however as new technologies replaced them in the civilian area fairly quickly but pigeons were still vital for the operations of militaries. The Franco-Prussian War in 1870 was the first major war that saw extensive use of carrier pigeons by both powers at war which would only encourage their use by other powers by the turn of the century. By WWI in 1914, all nations in the war used carrier pigeons in some way to aid them in the war effort, be it communication between units, distress messages, or artillery coordinates, these birds made an impact on the results of the conflict. Between WWI and WWII many new technologies replaced pigeons but as war once again came to Europe the bird went with it and WWII was the last major war pigeons were a part of before they were replaced.

Impact

The last pigeon service in use closed down in 2006 but the impact of these birds can not be understated. It is fair to say that many of our modern technologies would not be the same if it were not for carrier pigeons creating these ideas of what we were looking for in a communication technology and creating a base for other technology to be based around.

Post #3: Values of Free Expression

 

Values Of Free Expression

Through the history of the United States the ability for people to freely express how they feel about certain aspects of the nation has been a key piece of the foundation that the country was made on. As time has moved on more of these values have become more important as more and more of the world have realized the importance of free expression for the citizens. These values all have an importance but there are two that I feel are most important to us today and those are the idea of Stable Change and the idea of Individual Self-Fulfillment. 

Stable Change is the ability of the people to vent their problems which helps them decrease the likelihood of them turning to violent means which on its own is super important due to the large number of differing opinions we can now find in the world. This becomes even more important when considering Individual Self-Fulfillment however. Being able to express yourself in many different ways to create a new identity is the basis of Individual Self-Fulfillment so when you combine this ability to express yourself in various manner and the ability to be able to vent your ideas and state what you don’t like, you get and a compounding of both ideas with one another allowing not only for sole individuals to create an identity for themselves but allows entire groups to create an identity and move as a group.

Free Expression In Games

These two values can be found in many places throughout our modern culture in response to all sorts of topics. From politics to music preference, the ability to vent and express yourself has become a core aspect of what we can do within the United States. There is one area however that I feel that these values can be found extremely heavily and that is within the bubble surrounding games.

Games have created the ideal area for both of these values as they created a unique environment for people to be able to express themselves. First and foremost, most people love to vent about games, especially if a game manages to build up a large amount of hype around it.  It is human nature to like to state their opinion on something they spent money on, so when a game doesn’t meet your expectations or, even worse, falls below expectations you better believe they will let you know how they feel. 

The most recent major example of this Stable Change expression in the game industry was with the release of Fallout:76 in 2018 which had the failure of meeting the player exception, the full attention of the game industry, and the dubious actions of the games producer Bethesda caused players to have a large amount of problems that they wished to vent. As the tried to vent their problems they often found their voices being snuffed out or muted as the company tried to do damage control so in anger the player decided to put everything that Bethesda made to the torch by flooding the company's games with bad review, refund requests, and complaints which ultimately hurt the company more which is expected to be one of the reasons they sold to Microsoft in 2020. This a clear warning to other companies what can happen if you deny the players who buy your games the inability to vent then they will turn to other methods.

This failure of Fallout:76 however has also shown the values of being able to have Individual Self-Fulfillment. Even though the game came under a large amount of heat during its release, there was always a small community who even though the game didn’t meet their expectations still enjoyed the game and they also voiced their opinions on the things the game managed to do right. These people created a group identity by expressing where they stand with the game and as such managed to create a small cult following of the game that still lasts to this day.