DIFFUSION OF INNOVATIONS THEORY

 CELLPHONE DIFFUSION OF INNOVATION THEORY

    The diffusion of technologies theory is something that I've never heard of before taking this class. The basis of the theory consists around the idea that society has different standards for adapting to new technologies. For instance, early cellphones were mainly just used for phone calls, which was something that most homes already had installed in their house. New features began to be added that made cellphones more useful to users including the additions of voicemail and instant messaging. After developers realized that these features led to a huge increase in sales, they continued to add features that ultimately lead up into what we know and use today in the year 2021. Now, the cellphone is personified as a "mobile device" compared to its original name. This is because we are now able to take photos in 4k, talk to people over FaceTime, surf the web, check personal emails, and the ability to customize different social media pages. The social media aspect of it is one huge feature that made cellphones the most influential technology that can control how our society interacts with each other. With all that context in mind, the diffusion of innovation theories is interesting when linking cellphones to the older generations. Since my father works with all sorts of different technologies for his job, he had a seamless transition to the development of cellphones. My other family members on the other hand didn't feel the need to own a cellphone because all they would use it for is to call people and check emails which can be done without cellphones. In the past, they had technologies like a portable camera that would allow them to take pictures. Now, these older generations like the Baby Boomers are beginning to use cellphones more because all those features including a digital video camera and FaceTime are now all integrated into one singular device. This is the beauty of the mobile device. 

    Looking at the diffusion theory from the other side where the younger generations have grown up using cellphones, iPads, Apple Watches and VR headsets makes it crazy to think what our society is going to look like 30+ years from now. Generation Z and Millennials are the experimental generations that give us evidence on how the advance in technologies has changed the way our society interacts with each other. As younger kids grow up, they become fascinated with playing video games which naturally develops into the need for a cellphone to interact with all their other friends. I believe that part of the adaptation phase comes from a kid's FOMO (or fear of missing out) when they see all their friend's using all the new and cool technologies. Also, with the new capabilities that cellphones have nowadays, people always feel the need to capture any unique moment of their life onto their cellphones. This can be a negative thing however because it could hinder the actual moment they're experiencing. The older generations find this to be one of the main reasons why they refuse to adapt to the cellphone age because of how simplistic life was growing up in the 80's and 90's. Also, people notice how expensive the latest iPhones and iPads can be, so they are becoming increasingly unwilling to pay for these technologies. These people would be considered the laggards and late majority users that are still skeptical to this day about what cellphones and social media will do to our society as time goes by. 

FINAL KEY POST

 MY RELATIONSHIP WITH MEDIA

    The age of advanced technology has brought about many blessings and makes communicating more efficient, yet it can also have negatives to it as well. Having to balance your daily activities with engaging on social media can be hard for lots of people, but if you're a responsible person it can help you out in several way and make life more enjoyable. Personally, I believe that I maintain a healthy relationship with my use of my cell phone. I do use social media apps like Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok but it doesn't become a distraction for me. On average, I spend about 4 and a half hours per day on my phone. That may seem like a lot on first glance but the average for teenage screen time was 7 hours as of the year 2019. I try to prioritize using my phone as a reward for getting all of my work done during the day so that I can use my phone as a luxury to help me wind down and relax after a hard-working day. Like I mentioned earlier, technology has many benefits for the young adult brain, but being able to decipher good information from bad/fake information is a skill that I've been able to develop over the last 4 years. I even took a class here at High Point University that focused on features that make a news source fabricated or misleading. That class allowed me to take in information and make an educated decision on whether or not to subscribe to the opinions or narrative that the author is trying to spin. I've also developed the ability to find alternative sources for news, especially for politics, that offer the same facts but filter out all the opinionated takes that the talking heads feel the need to express. I try not to let all the stress of the online sphere affect me, but watching some people my age use social media in a negative fashion has rubbed me the wrong way in the past. That's why being able to block and mute people on social media allows you to remove those negative people off the platform. 

    

    It's interesting to look at how the older generations have approached the advance in technology. My father in particular is a software engineer so he has to use technology everyday for his job. Because of that, he's more technologically savvy than the ordinary middle-aged person would be. My mom on the other hand doesn't feel the need to use her phone as much. She typically only uses it to check on what other people are up to on Facebook and to communicate with the rest of my immediate family. I'd say the one bad thing that has come with my family adapting to digital media is their use of Life360. That's an app that allows a user to track the rest of their family through a tracking device integrated into your cellphone. It's important to have for emergency situations, but it can be extremely frustrating to be tracked for no reason other than that. It makes my social life a little bit harder to navigate but I can sympathize with my parents for why they feel the need to keep tabs on what I'm doing when I'm not around or at school. All together, I feel as if cellphones have lots of positives and negatives but ultimately gives us lots of opportunities to learn and feel safer. 

ONLINE PRIVACY

 ONLINE PRIVACY CONUNDRUM

    In the age digital technology, where all your contacts and conversations are built in to your cellular device, the concern over online privacy continues to grow. As you may know, the algorithm within certain applications like Youtube analyze your search history so that they can recommend certain videos to the user based off other videos they have watched in the past. Inherently, this seems like a great idea because it makes it easier on the user to find content that they may be looking for, however it's incredibly concerning how invasive these algorithms have turned out to be. They have all the necessary information including your age, sex, geographic location, and consent to conduct these procedures due to the user agreement when they decide to use the app. Private companies such as Youtube, Instagram, and Twitter are able to do this without government interference which makes cracking down on this issue a lot harder than one may think. You may not realize this, but allowing this much access to companies can create security issues for the user because they're agreeing to leak their information subconsciously without fully understanding what these companies are doing. For example, when you access a website and they notify you at the bottom of the screen about "accepting cookies", that's a euphemism for malware that most people wouldn't understand. When one bypasses that screen, they're merely doing it to access that website they were looking for without realizing what they just allowed the website creators to obtain. Malware is any software intentionally designed to cause disruption to a computer, server, client, or computer network, leak private information, gain unauthorized access to information or systems, deprive users access to information or which unknowingly interferes with the user's computer security and privacy.

    

The man you see on the left is Edward Snowden, a CIA intelligence contractor who was arrested for espionage in 2013 when he leaked information to the press about the NSA's data-mining programs that allowed them to track user's search history on Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, etc. Snowden is one of the most famous whistleblowers as far as technological privacy is concerned. It's important to note that Snowden had turned himself in and disclosed his name in a news feature because he genuinely felt that he hadn't done anything wrong. Snowden is one of the many activists for stricter regulations of online privacy, and many other organizations have begun to speak out on this growing issue. Personally, I don't want myself or anyone in my family to be subjected to sketchy hacking practices being done by these mega corporations, and steps need to be taken by cell phone and laptop providers in order to diminish the accessibility of private information. 

PRINTING PRESS EOTO REVIEW

 LESSON ON THE PRINTING PRESS

EOTO #1 REVIEW

After completing my first EOTO assignment of the emergence of non-funigible tokens, also known as NFT's, I wanted to detail my learnings on the printing press. Naomi's presentation on the printing press captured my attention and displayed how massive of a benefit it has turned out to be for us in the modern day. The European printing press was invented in 1436 by Johannes Gutinberg, and was commonly referred to as the "Gutinberg press". Before the printing press was invented back in the 15th century, it was extremely difficult to get access to daily news without having connections with people that have the information. The main goal for the printing press was to allow for mass production of written information that can be easily distributed across each town. This new technology was key for several movements including the Protestant Reformation which relied on swift movement of the news to keep the public informed on what issues are occuring in their area. 

The impact of the printing press also includes helping pull Europe out of the Middles Ages. This sparked an increase in literacy, along with more books and enhanced communication. In the modern day, the art of communication is so vital to our daily lives, and the printing press has proved to be one of the main reasons why we are so well developed technologically in the 21st century. Also, this brought about the dawn of the industrial revolution, which was incredibly important for our country to improve. These various invention of technology has led to several more job opputunities for people and allows for communication to be extremely easy. 

ANTIWAR

 ANTIWAR VOICES

The role of antiwar voices in the first amendment is truly astonishing if you're able to take a deep look into the state of US foreign affairs. Since we consider ourselves the world leaders in the United States, we feel the need to deploy our troops in these war-stricken countries in the Eastern part of the world. Our issues with countries like Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan are well-documented for being detrimental to our foreign policy. There have been several instances as early as a couple of months ago where lots of people are killed during bombings. The vast majority of these people are innocent women and children who are unfortunately living in a bad environment of war. The US government needs to be more calculated on which battles to fight against overseas. The assassination of Al-qaeda's Osama Bin-Laden is the only successful mission of terrorist executions that I can think of during my lifetime. It makes it even worse knowing that we've had troops in these countries for over ten years. 

Why do people that are against illegal occupation of foreign countries have their voices muzzled? As we can see, it's very hard to access anti-war information because of the agenda that it could drive in our local media. Taking those troops out of countries like Afghanistan would send a message of defeat to our military, and I believe that's what our government wants to avoid. They committed to keeping these countries civil, and it has and will come at a cost to our military. The vast amount of resources that are committed to maintaining foreign wars will put us into deeper debt. I strongly believe that it's proactive to listen to everyone's opinion, even if it can be considered radical. Social media apps are beginning to censor their users a lot more nowadays, which is indicative of how our society feels about war. These apps are allowed to censer users since they're private companies, but it's shown to be problematic for us as a society. 

 

EOTO #2

WHISTLEBLOWING

    The concept of whistleblowing is one that has progressed over the 20th and 21st centuries due to the advancement in digital media. Simply, whistleblowing is the act of someone who has the knowledge and releases insider information about illegal activities inside of a workplace or organization. Whistleblowers could be anyone including employees, contractors, suppliers, or customers that report on sketchy behavior by the business in question. There are several people that would compare whistleblowing to snitching, however the act of whistleblowing is protected by the government through programs created by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Federally, all employees are protected through law by the Whistleblower Protection Act of 2012. 

    The origins of this term dates back to the early 19th century where it originally had a negative connotation behind it until famous political activist Ralph Nader shifted its tone to a positive one. The term is conjoined by the words "whistle", which is used to alert someone, and "blower" which is the person sending out the message. One may have a misconception of this term as it's used in other aspects including sports. When someone hears the word 'whistleblower', the most assumption is that they're referring to a referee at a sporting event. However, both contexts of the term make sense because a referee is meant to call out illegal plays which is a direct mirror of whistleblowing in politics or sketchy businesses. 

The most infamous of whistleblowing in our American history is that of the Watergate scandal involving former President Richard Nixon. The man that can be seen on the left is W. Mark Felt, also known as "Deep Throat" for his role as a whistleblower. Felt was the second-in-charge in the FBI at the time, and was constantly leaking information to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein who reported the alleged scandal in their book "All the President's Men". Felt would not let Woodward and Bernstein directly quote him even after Nixon had resigned two months after the burglars were arrested on June 17, 1972. The entire situation was full of corruption and collusion between the Nixon administration and the FBI, as the director of the FBI was hired by Nixon then fired shortly after information came out that Gray was attempting to cover up recordings of one of the co-conspirators of Watergate. Mark Felt went under the alias of "Deep Throat" until 2005 which is truly astonishing. Felt even denied the truth to his friends and family for 30 years until he was quoted in a Vanity Fair article saying "I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat".

    Another memorable whistleblower was Sherron Watkins, who was an employee at Enron, an energy-trading and utility company. Watkins came out and exposed Enron for their fraudulent accounting practices which ultimately put them out of business. This incident led to new legislation including the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 which created stricter regulations for a businesses' record-keeping and invoked criminal punishments for any violators. Lots of companies have measures put in place for employees to report sketchy activities, which leads to rewards for those whistleblowers. Some whistleblowers are given a percentage of the government's recuperation funds which gives incentive for those to report on these issues. However, lots of these whistleblowers use illegal methods to obtain and report such information, it has become a lot less common to give out rewards for whistleblowing.  

EOTO PRESENTATION

THE NFT MARKETPLACE

    For my first EOTO presentation, I decided to research the evolution of cryptocurrencies in global society and the birth of NFT's. N-F-T is an acronym for non-fungible token, which is a collection of data that is spawned by smart contracts from developers that allow for users to make artistic content and make money on it on the free market. However, in order to fully understand the benefit of NFT's we need to look at the cause for a new monetary system. In 2008 when the recession plummeted the stock market, investors were looking for a way to take power out of big banks hands and place the control into the hands of the investment community. Traditional banks are known to be secure, but the various cryptocurrencies on the emerging blockchain are even more secure because every transaction is able to be tracked on the blockchain. The problem of hacking is almost nonexistent with NFT's due to this line of security features. The first major blockchain innovation was that of the popular Bitcoin currency. The benefit of Bitcoin was its ability to bypass all foreign exchange rates which allowed traders to deal at a faster rate. Bitcoin is currently valued at over $61K which is an all-time high since it's inception back in 2013. Since society is becoming more automated each day, people are more inclined to trade their money on their phone by using apps such as Coinbase, Robinhood, and Kraken. 

    The next big development of the blockchain was the cryptocurrency Ethereum. Ethereum was the decentralized form of currency that allowed developers to implement the smart contracts that are now known as NFT's. These digital assets are items that a users can buy with their cryptocurrency portfolios. The NFT world is currently dominated mostly by artists that want to ensure authenticity with an indestructible proof of ownership. One of the only downfalls to NFT's is their extreme volatility in the marketplace. When a user buys an NFT online, the price can either skyrocket or plummet which is risky for those who are seeking a long-term investment instead of owning a piece of art that interests them. However, these NFTs are listed on a marketplace that minimal or even no cut from the developer which is rare for this industry. 

Below is an NFT of Shawshank Redemption stars Andy Dufresne and Ellis "Red" Redding that currently sells for 1.3 Ethereum. That would currently be valued at $5,668. This is one of many examples of miscellaneous content that developers have made through NFT's. Also, the sporting world has begun to adapt to popularity of NFT's especially for the NBA and the UFC. There are several different individual plays from each NBA game that can sell online as an NFT. Depending on whether or not people think those moments aged well over time, the more I would anticipate the price going up. The UFC has also sold some of there fight card posters as an NFT as well. This is still an extremely new industry and there's so much more that can be done as far as creativity can go.