My Relationship With Technology

     As a 22 year old, I can say that technology more importantly the internet have been present in my life since I was born. I grew up watching television, playing games on the computer, I had my first phone when I was 9 and my first computer when I was 12. Don't get me wrong, I was a very social child and spent a lot of time playing outside with my friends but overall I always had a deep relationship with technology. After all, it is how I ended up in America, how I met most of my friends, how I made amazing work connexions and more. 

   But I am now starting to realize how deep the relationship I have with technology actually is. For example: everytime I go through customs at an airport I give a fresh set of finger prints, or when applying for a visa where I have to answer all questions about my privacy, or all the accounts that I have created throughout my life. In our society and especially in the future, it is going to be almost impossible to not leave a footprint on the internet at some point, because we all have a relationship with technology to some degree, some stronger than others. 

    This realization also made me wonder if my relationship with technology is healthy? I personally think so, I rarely binge watch television, I use my phone like the average person does and I don't play any games or spend more than 2 hours using the internet. My relationship with technology at school is a little different, in almost every class I've been taking since high school I had to create an account for random websites, sometimes asked to put my picture, sometimes personal information, at first this doesn't sound like a problem, but what if some of my school work and research was about a controversial topic? And what about all the research that I had to do for these projects and the adds that I will be getting after. 

    My relationship with technology has definitely changed in the past few years because I am now abroad and because my phone is my only way of contacting my family and friends I always make sure it is on me, charged and my notifications are on. This means that my privacy has definitely compromised, or more than it was before. But I am not the only one in this situation, in the U.S according to -international-student-enrollment there are over one million international students in the U.S right now, this means that one million students here share all of their personal information on their phone like important documents, banking information and their only way of contacting or seeing their family members is a phone. 

    When thinking about the future and more importantly the future of AI, it is scary to think that everything we do will be monitored and controlled even more than it is today. Which is why I believe that the important question now is how do we control our privacy? rather than how do we obtain it?. Humans never had access to as many informations as we do today and no one can predict how that's going to affect our future or what humans will do with that knowledge which is why it is important to know our privacy right and stay updated about government decisions, information is key to finding solutions, the more people are informed the harder they are to control. 

Living in the Age of AI

     After watching the documentary about the future of artificial intelligence, I started to imagine if that was our present situation we were living in and my first thought was the lack of human interaction between people and how that would affect human's overall mental and physical health. The documentary makes a clear point that a lot of people will be losing their jobs in the future and will be replaced by AI, that to begin with will cause a lot of damage to these individuals health and their families. Another way AI can hurt people is that humans are lazy, and what that means is that people will find a way to make AI do everything for them to the point where the don't really do anything anymore. In the beginning of the documentary they show how computers have out smarted humans and are better at doing most things, what does this mean for human intelligence? What will humans do in the future that doesn't involve AI? Not much probably. More importantly people's safety, as we have seen throughout history counties where people are severely controlled tend to turn a blind eye on human rights, look at North Korea or China for example, the future of AI basically tells us that all humans will be controlled because everything will be monitored, this is a scary thought if the people in charge have an agenda, and what will happen to those who oppose this movement? They will have no privacy or sense of anonymity. 

    Overall I believe that AI is advancing and that will impact our society in a lot of good ways but there are also a lot of negative impacts that come with this advancement that need to be talked about and discussed before it's too late. 

Diffusion of Innovations

 Psychedelics in the United States: 

    Psychedelics have existed for a very long time, before humans even, but it was only about 60 years ago that people started taking a serious scientific approach to psychedelics. The pionners were scientists who were trying to understand how these drugs work and what their purpose was. Albert Hoffman started discovering LSD in 1943 through a series of trials that he conducted on himself and on animals, the years after that are known to be the most important decades in psychedelic research since a very large amount of experiments and statistics were conducted by other researchers all over the world, especially America, testing was happening all over the place which pushed the early adaptors to take interest in the subject, these people were research psychologist who were trying to incorporate psychedelics to their field in order to cure mental issues like depression, PTSD and bipolar disorder. Another large amount of research and testing was done and showed very promising results, psychedelics were in fact able to cure some mental illnesses. 

Not too long after that the early majority joined the movement and these were people who realized that a lot of money can be made from these drugs and it was time to start selling them to the late majority which is the general public, psychedelics could be found all over the United States in the 50s, 60s and were easy to get. But that didn't last long after president Nixon started the war on drugs in 1970 and made all psychedelics illegal. This was a big step back since all research had to be terminated and there was not much discovered about these complex drugs after that. It took about 30 years for psychedelic research to come back to the United States and today there are more experiment getting conducted then ever before and a promising future where drugs are researched and studied. 

EOTO2 part 1: Propaganda

      Throughout history, governments and advertising companies have gone above and beyond to find ways to manipulate people into thinking a certain way or buying a specific product, one of the many tools used that we can still see today is Propaganda. Propaganda is a form of communication that has been used for decades that is always bias and its purpose is to promote a particular point of view or issue. Propagandists use specific symbols, language, themes and images to manipulate people's emotions into believing a message is true. So why is Propaganda so powerful? And where do we still see it today? 

    Research on Propaganda shows that this tool was heavily used by the U.S army during world war I and II where it usually depicts the enemy as evil, this technique was not only used to change public opinions but mostly to convince more Americans to join the U.S army and protect their country from "The evil enemy". This technique works well because instead of allowing people to make their own judgment and use critical thinking, propaganda creates a polarized society where you're either with this movement or you're against it. 

 In 1917 The Uncle Sam propaganda poster was adopted by the U.S army, it became so popular and such a powerful recruitment tool that it was used again during world war II and is still present and a part of American culture today. This propaganda poster inspired other countries like the British for example who used their own posters  in 1914 and saw the highest number of volunteers enlist in the entire duration of war. William Bird and Harry Rubenstein said " Propaganda posters were an agent for making the war aims the personal mission of every citizen". What this means is that instead of explaining the real reason why a country is going to war it targets people's emotions by making them feel guilty or scared. The poster below clearly show how guilt was used to make people join the army. 

Where do we see propaganda today? 

Overall, the idea of a big poster seems a little too old for our generation and with the rise of social media a new and more powerful form of propaganda surfaced: Memes. 

    Memes can be described as images with a caption that tend to make people laugh, but memes are so much more than that, they are shared by millions of people everyday all over the world and are almost always related to current events and politics. They are shared so much due to confirmation bias, popularity bias and lack of critical thinking. But the main two things that Propaganda posters and memes have in common are: Time and source. Time meaning they spread FAST and with the rise of technology and social media it is impossible to stop something from spreading once it is out. Sources means once the propaganda is out to the public it is almost impossible to trace where it came from, a meme for example is shared over 4 million times in one day, it would take years to find the first person that reposted it, what this does is make the source almost irrelevant to the message and when in reality the bias of the source is what created the message. 

EOTO 2 Part 2 : Confirmation Bias

 

Confirmation Bias is defined by apa.org as "the tendency to gather evidence that confirms preexisting expectations, typically by emphasizing or pursuing supporting evidence while dismissing or failing to seek contradictory evidence". Basically people tend to seek information from sources they know share their opinions and reject other sources that might challenge their views or beliefs. 

So, Why do humans do that? And why is it harmful for society especially with the rise of social media? 

Psychologists Believe that the reason confirmation bias happens is because people put more weight and value in their own believes and that leads them to reject anything that doesn't align with their views and in most cases consider it "false" or "misinformation".

 Different aspects of this phenomenon can be seen in our every day lives, for example: Social media. 

People go on social media apps everyday and all they have access to is what someone else (a creator) Decided they wanted to share today (meaning the information itself is already bias) There is a very large amount of "information" posted on the internet but a large amount of it is money and emotion driven, brands manipulate customers on social media based on their emotions in order to make more profit, for example: Starbucks, when BLM protests started it became a trend on social media to take part in the movement and post a black screen, Starbucks on the other hand went extra and wrote a very sensitive message, they also changed their logo from green/white to black/white for a day, this gave Starbucks a lot of new followers and costumers that only started doing so because they believed that Starbucks shared their views and beliefs. You can imagine the shock when a Starbucks worker tweeted the next day: "

Why make a statement saying your employees can’t wear BLM apparel but not 24 hours later, tell them now it’s okay because you ‘stand with us.’ Pick a side. Admit you made a mistake. Don’t romanticize this movement for publicity. This is real life".

Brianna and many other Starbucks employees explained that they were not allowed to wear BLM apparel inside the stores which made it very clear that the brand only joined the cause in order to make profit. 

 one can say that people are responsible for not falling into the trap but marketing experts use very complex psychological tricks on social media to trick people and use their confirmation bias to make more money. At the end of the day people have to remember that brands care about money and most of what we see on social media isn't information, it's marketing. 

Privacy

 A few weeks ago, after visiting my doctor's office I decided to go on my phone and research the medicine that I was prescribed, most importantly read about any side effects and the duration of the treatment. Later that afternoon I was giving a presentation in class and when I opened youtube to play a video I had to watch a 15second ad about the medication that I was taking in front of my whole class and instructor. The ad described my symptoms, why I needed that medication, my allergies and side effects. 

At that moment I was wondering how can it be that none of these people have the right to know about my personal health nor the medications I’m on but youtube can play a 15second ad and give the classroom a lot of detail on my physical health. 

That is sadly an issue that we all have to deal with today, “privacy” or more importantly the level of privacy one has when using the internet is becoming more and more of a debate topic. 
The harsh truth is that every single individual using social media has agreed to these terms and provides companies with data everyday. In today’s world, almost every electronic device humans touch records their behavior. This behavior is recorded in the form of data which is then sold to marketing companies. Overall this doesn’t sound like a bad idea, studying people and finding out what they like so later on they can get ads for products they potentially need or want. 
But this becomes an issue in my situation for example, when my whole classroom gets information about my personal health without my consent, or what if another student was doing research on extremist groups? The ads on his computer will give people an imagined student that is false. Overall it is a vicious circle that can ruin lives and put people in danger. 

So what do we do about it? Well, here are some tips from staysafeonline.org to control your online privacy as best as you can: 

1- Try to share a very limited amount of personal information online and try to avoid websites and apps that require a lot ( phone number, address…) 

2- Use private mode or incognito mode: this makes sure that  none browsing history, temporary internet files, or cookies are saved 

3- Read before you click: most privacy terms are not read by the users plus a lot of hackers use emails and text to hack which is why it is important to read and understand what you’re clicking “YES” to. 

https://www.privacymonitor.com/articles/privacy-guide/ 

The Progressive Era

 

 The first amendment and most importantly freedom of speech is known to get damaged at most during times of war. This pattern is repetitive throughout history in places without freedom of speech but is pretty ironic coming from the American government that swore to protect civilians’s individual rights. 

Not only are these individuals arrested and their freedom of speech taken, they are also portrayed as traitors and people who don’t “love” their country. Why? 

        How can a group of individuals with simple ideas and speeches  threaten the American government so much? 

                The truth is…There were A LOT of people who shared those anti-war voices but it was in the American government’s best interest to continue with the war. 

According to www.cnn.com "33% said they favored the war in Iraq, 64% opposed, and 3% was undecided. The margin of error was plus or minus 3%".  Another poll made by cbsnews also shows that By a margin of more than two-to-one (51% to 22%), Americans think the U.S. should have stayed out of the conflict, versus those who believed the "did the right thing" by participating in the war. Roughly a quarter of respondents (27%) had no opinion.

   These are so pretty drastic measures to take against freedom of speech which only proves the power it holds. The American government silenced anti war voices because the people disagreed with what the government was doing and were demanding change. But what about today? We rarely hear  of someone getting thrown in jail for writing a speech or an article in this country…Well that’s because the American government discovered a new modern way of keeping anti war voices silenced: If you don’t know what your government is doing in other places, how are you going to protest it? 

The average American has no idea what their government is doing around the world but is it their fault? In reality we wouldn’t know anything that's happening internationally if it wasn't for the media. So why aren’t they doing their job here
? Why does the American media only report on government action inside the country when they have such an important presence internationally? 

The good news is, there are still a few people doing that job: Websites like www.antiwar.com who educate Americans on their governments actions and give people an opportunity to oppose these decisions, it also lists all the different locations America is having an impact on like China, Indonesia, Iraq, Latin America, Africa…

The American government and people made one thing clear throughout history and it is the power of words. As long as there are people writing and voicing their opinions there will be hope for change.