Final Post

I'd say that my relationship with technology is better than average, but it still has room for improvement. Reflecting on my habits and tendencies surrounding technology (especially phones), I've come up with some good and some bad: 

The good:

Avoiding doomscrolling 

Although I'm not perfect with it, I do try to make efforts to avoid doomscrolling. Since I don't have TikTok, Instagram is the other biggest source of this for me. I've implemented things like pop-up reminders every ten minutes to interrupt scrolling and sometimes will go on sprees of hitting "Not Interested" when too many of those toxic, incendiary posts start to crop up. 

Creative Endeavors

Although there's a lot of bad stuff to consume on social media, there's also a lot of good that can come from it. I've found a lot of great stuff like new games, shows, comics and the like through social media that I probably would have never found (and may have never even existed) otherwise. These things are enjoyable in their own right but can also serve as great inspiration for my own creative projects. 

Connecting with friends

One of the undeniably great benefits of today's technology is its ability to connect people. I myself often use places like Discord and online games to chat with friends, and it's also a great place to follow updates on things like school clubs. 

The bad:

High screen time

It's easy to think your screen time isn't that high when you only use your phone in short bursts, but I've found it quickly adds up to more than you'd think. I have a phone screen time average of around 5 to 6 hours a day, which is actually below average for college students. I'm still pushing to get it down even lower, since it's hard not to look at those numbers and wonder what else could've been done with that time. 

Hard time focusing on work

Sitting down to work for long periods of time can be really difficult because of social media. My phone sitting there can oftentimes be irresistibly tempting when I'm trying to get work done, especially if it's an assignment that's not easy to work on. I've tried a couple things, like keeping my phone out of arm's reach, but the best tactic to combat this I've found is to have an easy assignment or two I can knock out fairly quickly before starting on more difficult stuff. I work best when I find that I'm making real, immediate progress. 

Non-phone screen time

When I talk about screen time, I'm almost exclusively referring to phones. But the fact of the matter is, that's not the only screen time that matters. I often feel like everything I do is on my computer. Schoolwork is done almost exclusively on my computer, and my hobbies like art (mostly digital) and video games are also on a computer. It's really hard to find things to do that don't require a device in some way or another. 

The matter of technology's place in our lives is also made more complicated by my major of Game Design, a field that quite literally wouldn't exist without modern technology. Not only in the technical capabilities of computers themselves, but the internet has also changed the scene a lot. Platforms like YouTube and Udemy have made learning game design far more accessible, social media allows never-before-seen ease in marketing, building a fanbase, and even crowdfunding, and platforms like Steam or Itch.io allow for people to publish games digitally, which is far more attainable and resource-light for small developers than trying to publish physical copies of games onto store shelves.

These reasons are why I believe that, although I have some bad habits and don't always use technology in ways I should, I have a better relationship with technology than average. Especially considering my interests and career path demand high technology use, it's paramount for me to build good, responsible habits around it. 

In The Age of AI

Stopping to write at about the 15-minute mark and, so far, this documentary hasn't said much yet that I didn't already know. I feel like most people are aware of how all these tech companies are using their data today, but this documentary is treating it like this is completely new information (although the documentary is 5 years old, so maybe at the time this was all very new information). One thing I did find kind of funny was that Google's earliest motto was "don't be evil", considering everything tech companies do nowadays. 

About 20 minutes in, one question the whole Alexa/Google Home segment raised for me is, where is all that data being stored? Storing such ridiculous quantities of data can't be cheap, but the companies must have some way of deciding it's worth it since they do so anyway.  

Pausing again at the 30-minute mark, Mactaggart's efforts were remarkable, and I'm curious how well they hold up today. The concept of a browser-wide "do not sell my information" option was not something that I've heard of before, but after this I'll look more into that, since going on every website and having to reject cookies manually is really annoying. 

45 minutes in, although China's security system probably does a lot of good in preventing crime, it comes at a heavy cost to personal privacy, especially since, as the documentary shows, it's being blatantly used for discrimination.

AI as it's defined in the video seems to not have much benefit to the average person, being really only helpful to the tech companies and governments that run them.  Generative AI, something that the documentary doesn't cover because it was before its time, is something that I have similar feelings towards. It may have small innocuous uses like helping to write an email, but it also comes with the costs of things like academic integrity, critical thought, jobs, to say nothing of the environmental impact of these technologies. I try not to be anti-technology and development, but I truly feel very little optimism about these industries.

EOTO 2 Reaction

I chose to react to disinformation as my EOTO reaction, since it is pretty similar to and has some overlap with my own topic of echo chambers. Disinformation is the willing spread of wrong information to serve some purpose, unlike misinformation which is the unintentional spread of wrong information. 

I learned that some of the "good" effects of disinformation can include bringing people together over their beliefs, it can cause people to feel vindicated and empowered for their beliefs and can provide explanations to the unexplainable. 

However, disinformation also damages trust in people and information sources, creates division, and often manipulates people's emotions causing anger and bitterness. It can also be dangerous and harmful in more direct ways, like a child dying of a treatable disease because of anti-vaccine disinformation.

Lastly, I learned that fighting disinformation involves looking deeper into authors and sources, checking personal biases, checking publication dates to make sure information isn't outdated, and when in doubt, consulting with someone more educated on the topic (like a college professor). Even check to make sure the source isn't satire since, as ridiculous as it sounds, I actually have heard of people quoting The Onion and other similar platforms thinking they were legitimate.

Like echo chambers, disinformation relies a lot on confirmation bias to spread. People are more likely to not question misinformation if it's what they want to hear, and will be more scrutinous of (or outright disregarding of) information that challenges their beliefs. Thus, for both topics, having an awareness of personal bias is paramount to avoiding the manipulation that comes with these things. 

I'd say the biggest difference between the two topics is that, while they're not good, echo chambers aren't inherently malicious like disinformation. They do have pretty similar ways of being avoided, in checking your sources of information, taking time to get educated, and confronting personal biases, especially about controversial topics. 

EOTO 2: Echo Chambers

An echo chamber occurs when a person is only exposed to information that they themselves agree with. These can happen in real life or online, although they more widely occur in online spaces, thanks to things like algorithms. 

Wanting to be among like-minded people isn't inherently a bad thing, but echo chambers can become dangerous because they can distort a person's perception of reality, like by convincing a person that "everyone" believes what they believe. It also makes people less open to different ideas, since the person's existing beliefs get so thoroughly cemented through the constant affirmation these spaces provide. 

A couple of concepts that tie in with echo chambers include confirmation bias and filter bubbles. Confirmation bias is people's inclination to believe things that affirm their beliefs over things that don't. Echo chambers are pretty much founded on confirmation bias, since people will naturally follow the things that they agree with and want to see more of it. 

Filter bubbles occur when digital algorithms filter people's online content into what it believes they will want to see, hiding anything that the user hasn't shown interest in. This isn't inherently a bad thing- there's so much content available on the internet, why shouldn't platforms just focus on showing me things I actually want to see? But like echo chambers, these can also cause people to be uninformed on certain topics and less open to new ideas. The main difference between filter bubbles and echo chambers seems to be that echo chambers may be formed naturally, whereas filter bubbles are always curated by an algorithm for the specific purpose of creating more engagement.  

If I had to guess, the demographic most vulnerable to echo chambers are those who, for a multitude of reasons that could cause this, spend more time socializing online than they do in-person. Online spaces are likely to expose you exclusively to like-minded people, whereas in real life, especially in a place like a college campus, I interact with lots of different people with lots of different beliefs on a daily basis. I don't have to be friends with all these people, but it's good to at least encounter a large variety of people and values.

The best way to avoid falling into echo chambers is to make sure to vary your sources of information. Checking multiple news sources of different affiliations is a good place to start, as well as seeking low-bias sources (there really isn't such a thing as no-bias sources, as nice as that would be). Unfortunately, though, the modern internet and algorithms have made doing all this digging a high time investment, potentially more work than the average person can be reasonably expected to do. 

I don't necessarily have a source for this, but as I mentioned earlier, a way I believe people can avoid echo chambers is to make sure real-life interaction is balanced properly with online social interaction. Even still, just being aware that echo chambers exist and constantly checking your assumptions about what "everyone" believes is a great start to avoiding falling into echo chambers.  

Antiwar Media

After taking a brief look into ANTIWAR.COM for a bit, I can see that most of their writings focus on Isreal and Ukraine, two of the most debated topics recently when it comes to American intervention. Isreal and Palestine are especially hot topics, and I myself know plenty of people who vehemently defend one side or the other. Going a little further, there's even news from other countries and continents such as Africa, Asia, India, and even Greenland.

The American Conservative is another website that offers similar anti-war and isolationist views. They seem to encourage a much more reasonable take on conservativism, claiming that "what passed for conservatism in the United States wasn’t conserving much of anything". 

As we learned in class, when America first got involved in World War II, the Espionage Act made anti-war voices outright illegal, and those who helped spread the belief were imprisoned. But today, while the writers for a site like ANTIWAR.COM aren't being thrown in a jail cell for their views, their voices aren't getting properly heard either.

There are usually monetary reasons as to why the US gets involved in foreign warfare. This article claims that one of the reasons for the US getting involved in World War II is because of investments to European countries that would likely never be paid back if they lost the war. Thus, that means financial incentive to make sure that anti-war sentiment spreads as little as possible. I'm not going to get too far into the anti-government conspiracy theory rabbit hole, but it's definitely worth thinking about why sites like these are so hard to come by. 

It's important that people should see and support platforms such as these. The last thing any US (or anywhere, really) citizen should want is being sent off to go die in a foreign war to make a few people richer, yet that seems to be exactly what is happening. 

History of TVs

 I chose to write about the history of the TV, since it ties in very closely with my own subject of the history of video games.

I learned that the earliest precursor of the TV was Paul Nipkow's Electric Telescope in 1884, which used his patented Nipkow Disk to display a series of images.

Next came the Cathode Ray Tube in 1897, which used an electron beam and magnets to project an image onto a screen. They weren't commercialized until the late 1930's but remained popular until the early 2000's when they were replaced by LCD screens. This is relevant to video games as well, since the earliest games were played on primitive CRT screens (with a “Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device” even being patented in 1948 by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle R. Mann), and video games continued to evolve alongside TV technology. 

The Iconoscope, invented in 1923, was another essential part of the history of TV's, being the first portable camera designed specifically for TV broadcasting. 

BBC began incorporating regular TV broadcasts via its new expanded service, the BBC Television Service in 1936, moving away from its previous exclusively radio based service. 

Lastly, I learned TV's impact on the world included great advancements in both news and entertainment, creating a whole new medium that information could be conveyed on. I also learned that it raised concerns over depictions of violence and graphic content, particularly for children. This stood out to me because video games raised (and continue to raise) those exact same concerns, and a lot of research has been done on both topics. These issues were actually addressed at pretty similar times, with the ESRB being established in 1994, and the Telecommunications Act was implemented in 1996, forcing TV shows to have ratings. TV, overall, has had profound effects on both information and entertainment, that was dominant for over half a century before being shaken by the Internet and portable devices. 

Privacy

Privacy is a major issue today, with the amount of information about people readily available to anyone, with a wide variety of intentions.

How do these issues affect you? Your friends and family?

Part of the problem is that, most likely, it won't. People aren't speaking out about these issues not because the information isn't available, but because the average person is not going to be given any reason to care. Like for the license plate issue, millions of Americans are going to have their license plates read and stored every day and are never going to know the difference. It's only when the data gets leaked, used for discrimination, or any other blatant issues that the average person will start caring. There are things people can do, though, as a county in Virginia has already ruled that license plate data can only be stored if it pertains to an ongoing investigation. Others could also follow suit if they took the opportunity.

What should the government be doing about these issues?

This one is interesting because, truth be told, I thought the laws about this were a lot stricter than they actually are. I was really surprised to hear that, for all intents and purposes, revenge porn is perfectly legal. I thought for sure that it would fall under defamation or similar laws. Your only shot at dealing with it is civil suits, which are extremely demanding both time and money wise to pursue, and thus not a route everyone can afford to take. So, I'd definitely agree that passing the law that criminalizes it is a must.

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

There is only so much people can do to protect their privacy online. I could give the generic spiel about being careful about what you post online and what people should have access to sensitive information about you, but that shouldn't be the whole answer either. People should be able to post about what they want online, without having to sanitize their lives out of fear of how that information could be used against them.