Posts

Phone Surveillance

TED TALK Throughout the semester in class we have been talking and reading about how much technology has advanced, how it impacts us and more recently how this advanced technology affects our privacy information. I decided to write my post on the ted talk "How to avoid surveillance... with the phone in your pocket" by Christopher Soghoian. He talks about how phone and computer companies have put surveillance features in our phones and computers to record our emails, texts, calls, etc. There have been huge cases regarding this. For example, with Facebook people's account and private information is being leaked and they are getting hacked from outside sources and how the new amazon Alexa is always listening to conversations that are held near the device. Many people have also had problems with advertisements online. If you look something up, a clothing company for example, then you will get advertisements for the clothing company on other websites you visit because the

Disinformation

Two weeks ago in class we had presentations on theories and concepts in communication. The concept that I found interesting was about awareness, specifically disinformation. I found this interesting because it is a huge issue in our world today, especially with news and politics and it also related to theory (confirmation bias) and I thought that I would relate the two. First, disinformation is false information that is purposely said to mislead consumers. This is a huge issue in news stations and social media because they say things that are current around the world and they want you to believe what they said. This relates to my confirmation bias because they both have to do with fake news. For example, if someone believes something, whether it's true or not, and saw it on the news they would automatically confirm that it is true because the news is reliable so they have no reason not to believe them. The disinformation would confirm their believe regardless if it is true or not

Confirmation Bias

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This week in class our group was assigned communication theories and the theory that I picked to research was confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is when people would like a certain idea or concept to be true, they start to believe that it is actually true. This occurs from the direct influence of desire on beliefs. For example, if someone is not answering your calls or texts you jump to the conclusion that they are purposely ignoring you, but they could just be busy and that is why they are not answering. This is very common with people who have anxiety. Some negatives of confirmation bias are that once people read something that confirms their beliefs they automatically assume it is right and they stop looking for other information. The news is a good example. People hear things that are going around the world and when they read it in the news, whether is true or not, they automatically believe it is true and stop looking for information that opposes their belief.  People also confi

Online Presence

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Within the past year Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has been in the spotlight and in court because of Facebook's privacy policies and how people's private information has been leaked. Hackers have been using Facebook to try and get people's information by making them "sign in" to Facebook again. People would type in their email and password and basically just give their information to the hackers. In class, we learned about our online presence and how much information about us is on the internet. We had to look up ourselves on google and see what came up. When I googled myself almost all my pictures from my Instagram page were there. My LinkedIn photo was there as well as some other pictures I have uploaded to Facebook. I was amazed to see a lot of my pictures there since my account is private on Instagram. I do not have a personal website and this is my only blog account so I was very surprised. Most of my pictures that I post on Instagram I also attach the l

Values of Free Expression

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For this post, I have decided to talk about the 7th value of free expression which is to promote innovation. The 7th value states that a community in which free speech is valued and protected is likely to be a more energizes, creative and interesting society as its citizens actively fulfill themselves in many diverse and interesting ways. Most people think of creative destruction as a negative, but in class we learned how it is actually a good thing and we need it to keep up with our changing society. Promoting innovation and creative destruction go hand in hand because they both encourage new ideas and ways to innovate technology that will change with our society. I think this is the most important value because we would not have the technology we have today without innovation and creative destruction. For example the computer came from typewriters, phones came from the telegraph and MP3 music came from records. This is also inspiring to me because of the technology we have today. If

Timeline of Typewriter

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Diffusion of Innovations- Typewriter Timeline Innovators- 1868, This is the first model of the typewriter. Christopher L. Sholes was the main inventor for the typewriter but had help from his associate Glidden which resulted in the name Sholes & Glidden Typewriter. This typewriter introduced the QWERTY that we use today, but when it first came out it only typed in capital letters. The keyboard was designed this way to separate frequently used pairs of letters so the keys would not get jammed together. Early Adopters- 1874, This is when the Sholes and Glidden typewriter first came out on the market. Although this model was slow and inefficient, they sold about 5,000 typewriters for $125 each. This typewriter had a floral design on it because typing back then was considered women's work. This opened up many jobs for women in the workplace where there weren't many before. Early Majority- 1881, This was a new model of the typewriter called The Hall, invented by Thomas H

Type Writer

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The type of technology that I did my presentation on was the typewriter. I chose to talk about this because I thought it was so interesting that we came from the typewriter all the way to a light as a feather laptop. While I was researching and learning more about it I learned so much more about it that I never knew. I found out that the first typewriter used the QWERTY keyboard the we all use today. For 151 years and counting we have used the same keyboard. The idea to place the letters and numbers (although there were no numbers on the Sholes typewriter) was very smart because of the clashes between commonly used pairs of letters. For example, the letters c and h or s and h are not right next to each other to avoid clashes so they would not have to open the typewriter often to fix it. Another thing I found very interesting was that typewriters and typing were mainly for females. I had no idea, I always thought that males would use them to write at home or at work. When looking at the