Final Blog Post

I grew up watching technology change the world around me, so I almost feel as if I grew up alongside it. As I got older, technology grew at a pace that I didn't realize was possible. Technology has had such a big impact on my life, as well as so many others in my generation. But everyone has a different relationship with technology, with some having more negative experiences than others. Luckily for me, I feel that my personal relationship with technology has been a positive one.

One of the ways that technology has most impacted my life is the ability to connect with family and friends no matter where I am. Using applications like FaceTime, Messages, and Zoom allows me to talk to the people I love when I am not physically with them, which to me is so special. I remember when I used to live in London, and I would call my family back in America to stay in contact with them and plan visits. Had my family and I not had this kind of technology to contact them, we would have only been able to talk to our extended family in America during Christmas and summer holiday when we visited. Even when I moved back to America, I was able to use these tools of communication to stay in touch with the friends I made in England, who I still talk to today. It makes me so glad that I can contact all of my favorite people in an instant, no matter how far apart we are. 

Another aspect of technology that has had a positive impact on my life is how easy it is for me to get information online. Search engines like Google has made so easy for people to get information on any topic they want to know about, whether it be for sources on a school project, how to make a certain food, or even asking how old a celebrity is. In my case, it has been the biggest help in school, especially for research assignments. Because of the internet, I am able to discover new information on certain topics and have a better understanding of what I am learning. There is so much information people can discover online, which has been greatly helpful to everyone.

With that being said, not all aspects of technology are positives, as there are many ways technology can be misused to cause harm to others. The most prominent way being the dangers of losing our privacy through technology. In recent years, it has been discovered by the public that just about everything from our phone calls, online search history, and anything we do online are being watched by the government. What is so scary about this is that the government actually tracks all of our texts and phone calls, despite us wanting to keep them private. This was discussed earlier in this course in a Ted Talk from speaker Christopher Soghoian, he discusses the ways the government taps into our phones through wiretapping them, giving them the ability to listen to any private conversation we may have. As I mentioned before, having the ability to talk to my family when apart is something I truly value, so to think that there are people listening to every conversation we have is very scary, and can ultimately cause harm to innocent people if used maliciously. 

Another negative side of technology is the way it began the trend of cyberbullying. This is a huge issue that has become very prominent in recent years, with multiple kinds of cyberbullying arising. Any place online that has a form of contact such as text, social media, forums, and games can be used to cruelly target someone, in some cases without them even knowing who you are if done anonymously. As a result, this has become one of the main reasons that the suicide rates teens and young adults have skyrocketed since the invention of social media. In 2017, it was discovered that suicide has become the second leading cause of death for Americans aged 15 to 24. But this issue can go even beyond bullying, and take a much darker turn. The invention of technology has also allowed for practices like revenge porn to be done, which causes extreme harm to the victim. Having intimate photos or videos be released online as a form of revenge is a horrible breach of privacy that I could only imagine is terrifying to go through. Luckily in recent years, both cyberbullying and revenge porn have had laws made to make these actions criminal offenses, but this still doesn't put a stop to either. Before we had online forums like what we have today, neither of these issues existed, but because technology has grown so much over the years, people are able to use it to hurt others and even drive them to the point of suicide.

Technology's rapid growth over the past few decades has both positive and negative affects on people's lives. While my experience with technology has luckily been mostly positive over the years, I also can't ignore that there are many others who have a more negative and harmful experience. The relationships we all have with technology is truly based on the person, and what they have experienced in their personal lives. 

Anti-War Voices

Calls to end war in the United States have been around for many years, gaining prominence during the Progressive Era and the First World War. However in recent years, these anti war sentiments haven't been shown in the media, despite how prominent they are in modern society. This poses the question as to why. Why aren't anti-war voices being shown in the media? In my opinion, I think the reason for this dates back to the Espionage Act of 1917. 

When World War I began Many Americans were against the idea of joining a brutal war that was on another continent, and had nothing to do with us. Initially the government appeared to agree with this, and the US was kept out of the war for the first 3 years. However when Woodrow Wilson was elected as president, this changed. Not only did he officially declare that the United States would enter the war, but he also saw Congress enact the Espionage Act, which made it illegal for anyone to speak out against the war. This was a clear violation of the First Amendment, yet thousands were arrested under this act. While the act luckily isn't in affect anymore, this silencing on anti-war voices from the government still happens today. 

There are currently multiple websites that speak against war, including antiwar.com and  theamericanconservative.com. The articles on these cites talk about the ongoing wars across the world, and how harmful they truly are. One such article discusses how the United States has been pushing the war in Ukraine to continue, and that the government is actively spreading a false narrative to the media so that the war appears justified. But despite there being so many cites talking about current wars, they never become big enough to become mass media in the United States. This seems to be a form of censorship on the part of the government. While the government can't legally silence them for stating their opinions, they can take steps to make sure that they are swept under the rug. Major news sources don't discuss any sort of anti-war sentiments, only discussing the matter if they were the subject in a known protest. These bigger news sources are the ones the government highlights to the public, covering up the lesser known sources that have different opinions. 

Our media is much more censored than people tend to realize. The sources that stay aligned with what the government wants people to hear are the ones that will be shown to the public. Those who don't, such as anti-war based websites, will be more covered up from the public eye. People who want to see these sources need to go out of their way to discover them, as opposed to the larger ones who are right there for us all to see. 

The Age of AI

In recent years, Artificial Intelligence, known as AI, has had a huge impact on society, with everyday life being changed because of it. Things such as school and work have been permanently changed because of this very powerful technology. Naturally, there are pros and cons to AI, which is what I am going to talk about today.

This documentary discusses how AI has changed the world around us, with the positives and negatives being described from multiple perspectives. One of the most profound changes AI has had is on the workforce due to it's ability to do certain jobs. As a result, many people have been put out of work to be replaced by AI machines, which puts a huge disadvantage on our way of living. While AI may be good from production standpoint, it has resulted in our quality of living decreasing due to the number of jobs that are now being taken from us. 

Our quality of living is also impacted by AI due to its influence on our privacy. AI is able to find out so much about our personal and private information, putting people in a position where their privacy is in jeopardy. In terms of protecting national security, this can be used for good so that people who intend to commit harmful acts are stopped. However there are many instances where people's private information are used harmfully. Large cooperations also use AI to have access to consumers' information at a far greater than any of us realized until recently. As said in the documentary, "you would be horrified is you knew how much we knew about you." In 2021, Facebook came under fire when it was revealed that they were stealing users' information, such as birthdays, email addresses, and phone numbers, which was used by hackers to sell. This was a huge deal, which got Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg fined $5 million. It is situations like these that shows how harmful AI can be when it comes to the protection of our privacy and information

Overall after watching this documentary, I would say that my outlook on AI has shifted towards a more negative viewpoint. While AI can do amazing things that will help build the future, it also has huge implications on our personal wellbeing. Its impact on our jobs and personal privacy are vast, and will only continue growing in the future. We don't even know the full extent yet as to how far AI can go, and it is definitely not going to slow down any time soon.