My Relationship with Technology

I have had a rather odd past with technology. My father keeps up to date with all the latest Apple products. He buys us the new iPhones for Christmas, and we have iMacs, iPads all over our home. However, from an early age, I was never that involved with technology. During middle and high school, "cell phones are bad" "social media is draining life from teens" "kids are glued to their screens" was drilled into my mind over and over and over again by teachers and other adult figures in my life. That definitely had an impression on me. When I finally did get a phone, I avoided getting any social media all because I was told it was bad. It was bad to conform with your peers. And all throughout high school, I was proud to not have a Twitter, or an Instagram, or a SnapChat. I'd think I am different,  that I am not like the sheep around me.

I am a very different person now. Now I've fully embraced technology in my life. If fact, since I am majoring in Game Design, I'm placing my whole future life into technology. I have a phone, a laptop, a tablet and many more items. It's hard to think about if I'm engaged into too much tech now. All time spent using my laptop or phone to do something, whether it be schoolwork, hobbies, or entertainment. Of course, that's assuming that all technology usage is bad, which I obviously don't think. Though I think there is a distinction between productive vs nonproductive use of time with technology.

I think most people have more grievances with nonproductive technology use. I'd categorize unproductive tech use with browsing social media feeds, or just seeking low effort entertainment. That's anything that is comfortable, familiar, and readily available. Of course, I don't think you should never consume easy entertainment. Everything has its place in your budgeted, but too much time staying cozy in what you know can be harmful. What do I consider productive tech use? Anything where you are actively working on something, whether that be creating art or music, writing something, video editing, or just actively learning about something new. Anything that demands full engagement and takes you out of your comfort zone I think is very good.

All the social medias I have are all dedicated to stuff I make and do with intent. When I looked for my online fingerprint, I found a completely different Christian Hsieh. But when I googled the username I commonly use, I found my social media platforms where I post my art and animations, like my Twitch, my Twitter, and my Pixiv, places that showcase the work I have created like portfolios. These are all places I am proud, and there is nothing I feel compelled to erase.

My social media platforms:

DeviantArt
Twitter
Pixiv
Twitch

What is Five Eyes?!

Okay. So apparently Five eyes in an intelligence alliance between the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. It dates all the way back to World War II where they would hold top secret meetings. About what? I can only imagine. It was also alive during the Cold War, during the arms race and espionage of the USSR. I can only imagine how tense those meeting would have been back then. However, what bugs the most is that most people apparently still have no idea Five Eyes even exists. It seems like something right out of a movie. That's crazy.

Here's a Wikipedia about it:

Five Eyes

Citizen Journalism

 What is Citizen Journalism? It is the collection, dissemination, and analysis of news and information by the general public by the means of internet. What does this mean? It is referring to any time someone "unprofessional" discusses a topic and/or expresses an opinion on something news related. This could mean anything. Blogs, social media posts, YouTube videos, podcasts, streams, music, memes, all of it is considered Citizen Journalism. What do I mean by "unprofessional?" I simply mean anyone who is not a professional journalist working for a new company.

Citizen Journalism is a fairly new concept, thanks to the rise of the internet and social media platforms. Why is Citizen Journalism so significant? It is because of the post modern world and the age of information that t has helped to create. Public opinion has always been an important thing for centuries. Public opinion is what could determine if someone is reelected. However, for the most part, public opinion been relatively slow and controlled by news, propaganda, and the press. But in the first time in history, Citizen Journalism has given people ability to completely sidestep mainstream news sources and form their opinions and know what everyone else's opinions are. For once, public opinion is not fully  dependent on the press. One example of this in action would be Donald Trump. He is the first president to fully make use of Twitter to speak directly to the American people. He did not need interviews from the press. If he an opinion, he could write a tweet and instantly share his opinion with millions.

Citizen Journalism has a lot of advantages. For one, it is extremely friendly to diversity. It doesn't matter if you are rich, poor, male, female, white, black, or colored. If you have an internet connection, you can share your opinion. There is also a very large poll of opinions. People can share stories that aren't covered in mainstream news outlets. And there is not nearly as much threat of stories being skewed because of sponsors and investors in a big company. It is completely unfiltered.

However, there are some advantages. One obvious one would be the lack of credibility and no peer reviews or fact checking. Of course, that doesn't mean everything is like that. But there is no guarantee. That is why it is important to get information from as many sources as possible. Another disadvantage would be group think mentality. People can be prone to think a certain way in order to conform. And from group think, we get another disadvantage: Cancel Culture. That is, when someone does anything the general public views as wrong, they are quick cancel their online presence. The problem come when people are quick to judge even when they don't have all the facts. And the way memes and other similar media function, the case is presented as a one and done deal; something that has already been proven to be true even thought it has not been proven.

Citizen Journalism is an exciting new way of discussing news. However, we must not fall into the traps, and we must have have our wits when expressing online opinions.

Info used:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1748048512461761
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/photojournalism/power-people

Technology I learned About

 It was an interesting time hearing about all sorts of technologies about how they were started. I was particularly interested in how the personal computer got started and its evolution. I never really thought about it, but the idea of having a computer at home would be pretty revolutionary, especially since computers at the time were giant machines that filled up entire rooms only used for calculations and processing. I had never heard of the Altair 8800, and apparently it was the very first personal computer. Another thing that's hard to think about as someone from my generation is computers only having a terminal for executing commands and nothing else. Now I understand why the Apple Macintosh computer was so significant. It was the first personal computer to have a mouse and a user interface that could be interacted with. And with that, came a whole new wave of computer users, for creativity.

I also watched this recently: Link

Printing Press

 The printing press is one of the most important and influential pieces of technology to ever be invented. So many major historic event owe their existence to the printing press. I cannot imagine where we would be without the invention printing.

The printing press was invented by Johannes Gutenberg around 1450 in Italy. The device allowed writings to be constructed with wooden blocks with letters arranged in rows to make sentences. Ink is put onto the lettered blocks and pressed against a sheet of paper. This can be repeated as many times as needed as long as there is enough ink. Before printing, people had to rely on scribes and people dedicated to the busywork of copying texts. This brings many disadvantages. First, the sheer amount of time it takes to write. For example, making a full copy of the Bible would have taken over fifteen months for scribes to complete. These slow times also meant the slow transportation of information and communication. Another disadvantage would be just human error. Hand writing an entire book, people are bound to make little mistakes and slip ups.

The printing press mitigates all these issues. Where a scribe was able to write around forty pages of text a day on average, a single printing press could make anywhere from 1600 to 3600 pages per day. Why was this so significant? First would be the reduced amount of required labor. Scribes were no longer necessary and could go into other workforces. Next would be the increased speed of sharing ideas. When wanting to communicate with a large body of people, there were very limited options before the printing press. But printing allowed people to share their ideas with thousands of people in a very short amount of time since a pamphlet could just be copied over and over.

This brought opportunities for new kinds of social events to take place. The most prominent example would be the Protestant Reformation spearheaded by Martin Luther in 1517. The printing press was a major asset to spreading grievances with the Catholic church and a call to action to reform. And of course, the Protestant Reformation caused other major event to happen, like England severing connections to the church.

Sources:
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2005/P8014.pdf
https://economics.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Workshops-Seminars/Economic-History/dittmar-090928.pdf
https://www.britannica.com/summary/Reformation-Timeline

YouTube through the Lens of Diffusion Theory

 

YouTube is an extremely popular platform nowadays to make and share content. Now, there is no other place to share a video. And for many younger people, platforms like YouTube and Twitch is all one needs to be entertained. No need for cable television. Let's think about the rise of YouTube using Diffusion Theory.

Why did it catch on? YouTube officially launched in 2005 with around 30,000 visitors per day. I'd say, what attracted the early adopters would be just the novelty and convenience of a platform like YouTube. Early channels like the Angry Video Game Nerd and RoosterTeeth were already fairly well-know content creators before YouTube, uploading videos to their own personal sites. Moving to YouTube, a universal platform, marked the spark of experimental phase. The introduction of multi channel networks showed the uptake into the early majority. Now, would be the time bigger companies saw the marketing opportunities of, and so making a profit off of YouTube content emerged. Why did this happen later? Safe bets are what businesses usually take, so it would take a little while before they would invest in YouTube with marketing. As the late majority would come in, YouTube would mature. 

Information Used

The Age of AI

To me it seems like artificial intelligence is getting more and more advanced with each passing year. That excitement for what the future has in store but also worry for how AI could be abused. It is interesting to think about how China and the United States are essentially rival in this new age. China has a much larger market of consumers than we do which means they have more people to test with and more room to grow their technology. One of the most frightening things to come from China would be their new social credit score system. AI can keep watch over citizens's actions in all places whether it be public or online. Things like facial recognition can be used to prevent services to individuals with low scores. It terrifies me that there is a place on earth that has a system like this, like competition to see who can agree with the government the most, with real world penalties.

What about our own country? What about the United States? What are some of the pros and cons of AI in our own economy? To me, I see a lot of parallel of the advancement of AI to the industrial revolution of the 19th century. Both the pros and the cons. Good production skyrocketed and many technological advancements happened because of it. However at the same time, many lower class people lost their jobs and livelihoods because of all the rapid advancements in production. There was a reason "rage against the machine" was something that happened. On top of that, these advances and technology were used because wealthier people wanted to cut costs and maximize profit, with no care for the average worker. And all those mirror that cons of advancing AI. Business owners will unitize new technologies so that they can pay less people and produce the same, if not more, goods. The film used the trucking business as an example of this already happening. However, despite all these woes, over a century later, do we wish the industrial revolution never happened? Of course not. Although the progress was painful, it was still progress. What saved the average workers were government legislations and labor laws. Things like minimum wage, welfare, and labor unions were formed to protect workers from mistreatment. I think in order to avoid the worst case scenario of a future with AI, there needs to be some new laws that limit AI and protect us.

Video: IN THE AGE OF AI