Blog Post #6 Assignment

 Fast forward to today, when the United States government is waging military operations all over the globe. Explore this website: ANTIWAR.COM  Also explore this one: The American Conservative  Notice how the writers on these sites are all very strong antiwar voices that you NEVER seem to hear in the mainstream news. I wonder why that is, don't you? You've probably never even heard of these websites. I wonder why that is? Why do you think you have to seek out obscure websites in order to hear strong antiwar voices?

    There is no single answer to the question above, since it all depends on the person who's answering's perspective, opinion, or what they have witnessed or experienced in their life- basically, events that can create bias within their minds. For example, the most tame explanation that I can think of is that everyone has their own thoughts an opinions, and it just so happens to be that the mainstream news like NBC, CNN, and Fox simply do not share those same thoughts or opinions, or at least, don't entirely agree with them. 

    Another could be that the sites listed with the prompt do not share the same values or beliefs as mainstream news companies, and do things very differently. Looking at Antiwar, you can see that they are "devoted to the cause of non-interventionism and is read by libertarians, pacifists, leftists, "greens," and independents alike, as well as many on the Right who agree with our opposition to imperialism." Meanwhile, you would never catch places like Fox (or the other smaller news source, The American Conservative) saying something like that.

    For why I, and I assume many others, have not heard of these two sites is most likely due to how Google's algorithm, or more specifically, ranking results appear. They are more likely to put something on top if it is something that has generated a lot of views and clicks- which pushes Antiwar and American Conservative down. Not only that, but if you search for those sites more, they will likely appear higher in the future. People are not as likely to search for a specific non-mainstream news source. Not only that, but the mainstream news sources have people who trust and believe them to keep them relevant (for better or worse), while the others do not, or at least to the same degree. It also doesn't help that many people nowadays do not do as much research, often only sourcing one or even zero places (and the one place may be biased, incorrect, or from someone who is not an expert in the field).

    In the end, it seems to be that we need to seek out obscure websites because mainstream news, at this point, is most likely corrupted by greed and power. They will do whatever they can to make the ones they support appear to be correct, even if it means losing their reputation or twisting the truth. Though many in that situation do not care about their public image anymore, since they have enough money to have them set for life, to watch the world burn from the damage they've and others like them have done. This is why we need more obscure sources- while some may not have access to the same kind of information, these people know that messing up can bring them to an end- causing them to give it their all, to make sure they are correct to stay on the face of the internet. While they will likely be tempted by larger corporations to always take their side, to make them appear as perfect, they know the amount of damage that can be done upon a backfire. They are not going to take the dangerous risk, and as a reward for that, they become some of the best sources out there.

Blog Post #5 Assignment

 Write a regular blog post about technology that you learned about from someone else.

    I would say that this is a bit of a difficult question for me, due to many aspects of what I know about computers, which is what first came to mind when I thought of "technology," coming from me experimenting, messing around, just doing things on my own. There wasn't really anyone who I really asked for information or advice when it came down to how to use a computer, or how they worked. For example, no one really taught me how to use a search engine, or how to see something I downloaded. I was able to figure those out on my own, as well as many of the various sites that I know about. Curiosity (combined with caution, of course) and introvertedness led me to being able to look up or check out different things without talking to others about it beforehand. However, there were some aspects that I did get from others, that being from family or from people online.

    One of the first ever softwares I remember using was Type to Learn 4, or as we called it, TTL4. I believe my elementary school required us to use this software to learn how to type efficiently. It taught us how to position our hands when typing (though I'll admit I never used that advice, especially once I started gaming on PC- WASD, shift, and space keys all the way). It also, through different typing games and various sentences, gave us the knowledge and skill of how to type faster and with less errors. This was one of the few educational sites I actually found fun, so I often tried beating my previous records. I can't exactly say if it benefited me, but I don't regret using this software.

    Something else I learned about from others was coding. While I started learning my first programing language, java, in 9th grade, I've been using the program Scratch since 6th or 7th grade. Through that I made a few games of various genres, and decided to return to it for a school project (I would've used Unreal Engine 5 but my laptop keeps quickly crashing when trying to pull it up, and I haven't exactly learned C++ yet- only java and python). I'd say that those were among my favorite assignments in middle school. And now that I think about it, all of my favorite assignments for each school I went to had to deal a lot with computers. For high school, us using Code.org was a close second for my favorite, losing to us making music on Soundtrap (reminding of me of when we made music in Garageband. Wow, the memories...

    It goes without saying that we, intentional or not, or even willing or not, learn a lot about technology from others. This can surely also be applied to everything- since we do not start off knowing everything, and testing everything on our own would not only be very time consuming, but would be incredibly risky. It is best for everyone to learn from others, and have them help further the spread of that information. Through working together, we can become incredibly efficient vessels of knowledge, and increase what we know exponentially than if we researched on our own.

Blog Post #8 Assignment

Write a regular post about issues raised in the videos you watched.

• How do these issues affect you? You friends and family?

• What should the government be doing about these issues?

• What can we do to protect ourselves from invasions of our privacy?

 

It is no secret that the amount of surveillance throughout the United States have increased, our overall privacy has decreased, and that the internet and social media is not helping us. Our phones alone can track our location in real time, as well as record our surroundings and record audio. The apps on our phones can track our preferences, opinions, and ideas, and let those be shared with anyone on the internet. But even without phones, there are also cameras everywhere. Sure, they have been proven helpful when it comes down to finding evidence for a crime, or to know someone's whereabouts during a crime, but they can also be used to track people, scan licence plates or, if the person behind the camera is malicious, personal information like credit card numbers, things that you do not want anyone to really see In this modern age, filled with technology, the information put out there is permanent, and has a way to be seen by everyone.

     All of this, without a doubt, affects everyone, even people who do not own any social media or a phone. Nowadays, there are very few places one can go without being tracked in any way. Though, some are able to find ways, intentional or not, to not be tracked as much as others. I will use myself for an example. While I do have and post messages and videos on apps like YouTube and Discord, I do not have any apps that are more focused on posting messages or videos about or of yourself. YouTube has a wide variety of videos that can be posted, with my most common one being of gaming. You do not need to post your face or surroundings- or even your voice, to do this. All that can really be obtained is your interests or what games you have played in the past. For Discord, I mainly just talk to friends and people who I met online. To this day, I have not given any information about myself besides things they could have found out on their own, like my timezone. I have not revealed my face or name to anyone on either of these sites.

    I cannot speak much for my friends- I know some have Instagram or Snapchat, but I've never visited their accounts/pages, though I know my family use social media. My parents both use facebook (though have become less and less active on it throughout the past few years), and my sister uses TikTok (and used to post content on there). Their faces have definitely been put out there, and through my parents' accounts mine is out there as well.

    While it would be in our best interest for the government and police to limit the amount of privacy that can been breached, but that is likely never going to happen. This is because it would make things much harder for them. With how powerful surveillance is nowadays, it is much more difficult to get away with a crime, with the existence of security cameras, us being able to do fingerprint and DNA tests, and countless other ways of us tracking and stopping criminals. However, all of this data is also being tracked for people with no criminal record. While it is possible for anyone to commit a crime, and having information on them already can be helpful, I do not believe that this amount of breach in privacy is necessary.

 

    While there is not much we can do to protect ourselves from the equipment of the government, we can try and prevent information that we create or share from entering the wrong hands. For one, we can turn on airplane mode on our phones when we're not using it, to prevent having our location tracked. We can also use some of the apps mentioned in the third video, like Whatsapp, that have encryption built into them. We can delete pictures that we no longer need, and only share photos to people who wouldn't share them with the world. One final thing we can do is, as stated by the final video, have an easier way of deleting what is posted online, and if posted by another with malicious intent, be able to punish them.

Blog Post #4 Assignment

Do a KEY POST based on your research for this EOTO project. This will be graded as a separate assignment. Make this post 500 words minimum. Be sure to think about hallmarks of a good blog post — at least one visual element and at least one link. But since this is a special assignment, I think you should do more. Make it special! 

History: Who invented your technology? What were the circumstances? What problem were they trying to solve with their invention? 

Impact: How did the invention change our world? What problems did it solve? How did it change communication? Did it have any negative effects?

Ever since I was the age of seven, I knew I had a love for video games. I had played video games before, via my family, Playstation 3, but at the age of seven I received my first handheld device, a Kindle Fire HD (2012), and proceeded to download games on it (with the one that won me over being Angry Birds Go). Over the course of the next few years, I eventually got a PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, and an MSI gaming laptop, and through those I was able to experience countless kinds of games, and gained a further appreciation for them, to the point that I knew my college major had to deal with video games- whether it was programming them, or creating its world, or composing music for them. I still do not entirely know what I want to do, since so many aspects of games interest me, so for now I am exploring all aspects of game development.

However, there is one part of video games that I have not put much time or research into: Knowing the past of video games, how they started, how they became popular, and what challenges they had to overcome. Of course, I knew a bit in advance, like many of the names of the Nintendo consoles and handheld devices, as well as some of their older titles (though I’ll admit that the Nintendo Switch Online service helped me a bit). Though I feel like that is not enough. I needed to learn a bit more about the past of this rapidly growing industry and form of entertainment.

Most people believe that Pong (1972) was the first video game released, but it is believed to actually be Tennis for Two (1958) However, Pong’s popularity is what let the video game industry first begin. Initially, video games were only really playable via arcade machines, but eventually made its way to console and home computers. Things were looking good for the industry until the video game crash of 1983, when many low quality games, most notably E.T the Extraterrestrial, released from 1983 to 1985. What put the industry back on track was Nintendo releasing the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in the US.

Nintendo goes off to create several successful franchises, the two most known being the Mario franchise and the Legend of Zelda franchise. Later, Sega joins the fray and competes with Nintendo for decades. Meanwhile, Sony’s Playstation and Microsoft’s Xbox have also been competing against each other since the 2000s. While the consoles have been fighting for dominance, Steam opens up on PC in 2003, and grew to a level of popularity that they caused a “war” consisting of the entirety of PC gaming against the entirety of console gaming. While Nintendo did end up beating Sega, the other arguments are only just quieting down- gamers are able to agree that each have their benefits and downsides, and that there is no need to argue about this- since we’re here to play video games, no matter how we do it.

Nowadays, the only major thing I can find that could become part of video game history is indie games becoming more popular than AAA games- games made by smaller development teams becoming more popular than games made by large companies like Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard. Over the past few years, indie games have increased their revenue, while for AAA games the revenue has decreased. In fact, they now account for 40% of all units sold on Steam. In this modern age of video games, history is being created and written by a new group of people- a group of people who started not with a large company, but the will, grit, and determination to make a difference in the video game industry, and how we see games as a whole.