MY RELATIONSHIP WITH TECHNOLOGY

I know overall technology has its pros and cons, good and bad, and you could debate about whether it is good or evil all day long. However, I love technology. I think overall it has a positive impact as a whole in my life. My two primary interests in my life are music and sports (mostly college and pro basketball, although I have a lesser interest in college football and the NFL). I spend time watching endless hours of live sports, watching replays of sports, watching endless commentary by broadcasters about sports, and watching athletes recall plays from their sports. I have a podcast with my friends about the NBA. None of this would be possible without technology.

 I also spend hours everyday listening to music and reading things in the music world. Without technology I would not have music services like Apple Music and Spotify that have brought every song or album I could ever want right to my fingertips. I would also argue that, without the invention of technology, a lot of artists I listen to wouldn’t even be artists. The reason I say that is because in the old days to be a good musician you had to be a good singer or be good at playing an instrument. Today that is not the case. Technology has allowed people who are not good at singing to use autotune to make themselves sound good. It has also allowed people who sound good to sound even better with new technology. I love Apple Music and Spotify and follow all of my favorite artists on every conceivable platform and know every song they drop and every bit of news or gossip about how they wrote their songs or when their next song or album will drop. Technology has also made me not want to spend money to go to concerts. I can watch live music straight from my computer.

Now, let me talk about my digital footprint. Even though I said earlier in this post that I love technology, I am not a social media fan. I do not have a large presence on any social media platforms. The only social media platform I use regularly is Instagram. However, even on Instagram I do not have a single post up for the outside world to see. I am aware and hesitant to put too much information online. This course has made me extremely wary of my online presence and guarding my personal privacy as much as possible.

In terms of the information regarding the final post prompt, the writings about television when it began in the 1950s promised that it would bring us together as a country, would expose us to all that was good in the world, and that we would watch Shakespearian plays and symphonies perform classical music all day long. Has some good come from television-of course! Has it been all good? Of course not. 

In the same way, modern technology and the internet are neither all bad nor all good. Yes, the first video (click here- '64-65 NY World's Fair FUTURAMA Ride Video - if you want to watch!) we had to watch for this post about the 1964-65 World’s Fair shows us many wondrous things that HAVE come to pass in the last 60 years. The vehicles on the moon were very similar to what NASA actually produced for the moon launches. There really are space stations. Many more people do live in the desert now and we have found ways to pump water to them. But many more items they promised in the video have not resulted. We do not go stay at underwater hotels often and there are no submarines harvesting food or bringing up barrels of oil from the depths of the ocean. We do not have combination laser beam and paving trucks that pave a road in the jungle in minutes in one step.

The truth of the good or bad of technology lies somewhere in between. The other video we had to watch to create this post, titled the Mad World video (click here to watch - Mad World Remix of Moby Video Are You Lost In The World Like Me - if you interested in the video!) is a wake up call to our entire society. While the internet provides us immediate access to information and entertainment, when we become addicted to the point that we ignore the people and events that go on around us or attempt to be something we are not (putting on filters so it look like we live in a mansion when we live in a tent), we are damaging our very souls and are embracing a lie instead of the beautiful things in life. The Steve Cutts video from 2012 we also had to watch for this post (click here to watch - MAN - if you are interested in the video!) reminds us that we only have one world to live in, and as we destroy it, we destroy ourselves and our children (even if aliens are not the final authority on whether we live or die). 

Let me close this post by talking about artificial intelligence and online privacy. Artificial Intelligence will change the world. It will change how we retrieve and share information. ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot, will allow anyone to prepare a high school level paper on any subject in a matter of minutes. It will change the job market and transform entire industries. There will be many blue collar jobs that will be eliminated because of artificial intelligence. AI will not get sick or have family troubles or not want to be at work. AI will work 24/7 365 without errors. 

AI will result in autonomous vehicles (Tesla) that will change driving and traffic and transportation forever. There will be robot tutors who will assist teachers and enhance the quality of education. There will be a huge impact in health care. Robots will increase the perfection of surgery and will also streamline the communication and scheduling process. In terms of policing drones will allow police to have more information about criminals and perhaps save lives in standoff or ongoing crime situations. In terms of wars drones will continue to be used in wars and dramatically change what a war looks like, hopefully reducing blood shed.

With all of these changes we need to be concerned about our privacy and online security. How much does Amazon know about what goes on in our homes or what we talk about or search for on our cell phones?  If we consciously share the information, that is one thing, but if Alexa “hears”  that we are going to buy a new TV and then sends us 50 ads on Facebook about Tvs to buy, that is something different. Most importantly, Alexa knowing what we say in our homes matters because it is a small step to what the government knows about us, our thoughts and our plans. 

WHISTLEBLOWING

 The term whistleblower has existed for over one hundred years (referring to using a whistle to alert police that a crime was being committed) but it came into popular use with consumer protection advocate Ralph Nader in the 1970s. It is (a) someone who reports waste, fraud, abuse, corruption, or dangers to public health and safety to (b) someone who is in the position to correct the wrongdoing. Sometimes a whistleblower works inside of the organization where the wrongdoing is taking place (whether that is a company or the government); but being an agency or company insider is not essential to serving as a whistleblower. Many whistleblowers get their information from someone they know-a spouse, family member or friend-who is an insider. What matters is that the individual discloses information about wrongdoing that otherwise would not be known.

It was whistleblowers who exposed the Watergate crimes and the atrocities of the Vietnam War;  who exposed the massive accounting fraud that brought down Enron in the early 2000s and who exposed the health dangers of nicotine in tobacco products. In the United States, there are dozens of federal, state and local laws that offer protections and rewards for whistleblowers.

Whistleblower laws are complex and aim to reduce corruption and to protect the public from dangerous products. A key protection in most of these laws is the right of whistleblowers to keep their identities confidential when providing evidence of wrongdoing to the proper authorities. Preventing those accused of wrongdoing from learning the identities of whistleblowers is the best way of ensuring that the whistleblowers will not be retaliated against for disclosures that benefit society. Whistleblower programs provide critical safeguards of whistleblowers’ identities. A variety of powerful U.S. laws also provide financial incentives for whistleblowers to report evidence of wrongdoing, with the amount of rewards tied to how much the whistleblower contributed to the success of prosecutions.

Since 2011, law enforcement agencies implementing these programs have collected a staggering $43.4 billion for the benefit of taxpayers and investors and paid nearly $6.7 billion in rewards to whistleblowers(read the report here-Whistleblower Protections and Rewards- if you want to learn more). Many whistleblower laws provide detailed reporting procedures for whistleblowers to ensure that their claims of abuse of power are heard and addressed by a neutral arbiter.  Timely and meaningful action by unbiased decision makers is critical to the success of any whistleblower statute. 

When an individual or organization learns the identity of a whistleblower reporting evidence of their wrongdoing, they often take retaliatory actions to discredit or punish the whistleblower. This is common when the accused has leverage over the whistleblower in the workplace. To deter these reprisals, whistleblower laws offer a variety of remedies once retaliation has been proven, including: Back pay (wages and benefits lost as a result of being unlawfully terminated); Reinstatement to the whistleblower’s former job; Damages for pain and suffering; Punitive damages; and Attorney’s fees and court costs. Unfortunately, many of these damages can be won only through lawsuits in a federal or state court, requiring the whistleblower to retain an attorney. Given the gaps in many whistleblower protection laws, whistleblowers are often unable to secure a fair remedy despite providing evidence of reprisals, and those who inflict reprisals often are allowed to stay in their jobs with no adverse consequences.  Stronger protections are needed to provide justice for whistleblowers who have been retaliated against and to ensure that retaliation is deterred in the future.

THE AGE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

 I watched the Frontline program for the entire 2nd hour and all of the dialogue was frightening. The program can be summed up as two equally scary topics: (1) China and the USA are in a two way race to see who will control AI. There is also a chance for a third outcome that instead of one country winning, that the world will split into two parts like the Cold War-where countries either support China or the USA-they will either support individual freedom or government control. China is doing a lot to strengthen its hand by providing the “Old Silk Road/Belt and Road Initiative ''–aid to poor countries around the world (building soccer stadiums, roads and office buildings) and with that, providing them with surveillance technology which will further allow those nations to control their citizens.

 This AI race between the two countries is between freedom and 1984-like control through government surveillance. (2) Before we pat ourselves on the back and think this is like the race to the moon against Russia and we are the “good guys”-look who is playing on our team. Google, Facebook, Microsoft and the other tech giants promoting AI in the West care ONLY about massive corporate profits in the short term and have no interest in our freedom unless it improves their bottom line. They have used all of their expertise toward “surveillance capitalism”, to mine our web experience for data that they can sell. Their data predicts what we will think and do next-not to make our lives easier but to sell that data to advertisers.

As one speaker put it in the Age of AI documentary (click to watch, it is very fascinating!), we thought we were using Google (Facebook, Microsoft, etc.) when, in fact, they are using us! By predicting our dreams, thoughts and actions through data, they have true power over our lives. Furthermore, there is valid concern that the same data allows the purchaser (Cambridge Analytica) to influence voters and the outcome of elections, especially when our country is already so closely divided and sharply partisan. 

It is humbling to hear that AI in the form of automation will impact 50% of current jobs and most of those are entry level jobs which disproportionately impact women.  While there is evidence that AI can replace/automate some routine actions (who wouldn’t want an automatic vacuum that cleans your home with no work on your part-until you realize that now Amazon knows every inch of your home and its square footage), there are many entry level jobs (fast food cashier, bagger for Amazon online orders) which will be completely replaced by AI. The AI machines will work 24/7 and 365 without complaint, tardiness, illness, family crises or mental health issues. There will be an entire social class of people left behind financially, inequality will continue to rise, and the rich will continue to get richer.

The local UAW (United Auto Workers) President interviewed said he was scared that the end result will be that there will be no middle class. This will be the ultimate Marxian battle between capital and labor. AI will exacerbate the inequality that is already a huge problem for our nation. Without thoughtful care (in short supply in Washington, D.C.) of the moral considerations and the bedrock principles of our democracy, it will lead to social unrest, as a larger percentage of the country sees absolutely no way to improve their income and future prospects. Social unrest could give an even stronger voice to government control through surveillance, as advocated by the Chinese. While AI will offer us some convenience, it will come with a real threat to our freedoms and way of life, and we will likely be too apathetic to challenge the changes. 

DEEPFAKES

 Deepfakes are media that are synthetic and have been altered digitally to replace a person’s likeness with that of another very convincingly. Why should you and I care about deepfakes? In this article from WIRED UK (read it here- The problem with deepfakes - if you are interested), the author, Rachel Botsman, talks about the biggest problem with deepfakes is that people don't care what's real. She uses her son as an example. She talks about how he came home from school one day and asked her what a deepfake was. He was eight years old when this happened. Since this was in 2019 there were a lot of Donald Trump videos going around with Trump saying things he didn’t actually say that everyone that was on the internet saw. Rachel had to explain to her son that just because you see a video of someone saying something these days, does not mean they actually said it. 

That type of logic is very difficult for an eight year old to understand and frankly, they don’t care. The sad part is that the average human being doesn’t care. Many people if they see a video of someone saying something will always hold on to the belief that that person actually said it, even if it is proven to them that that person did in fact not say what was said in the video. While the idea of making fake content is not new, deepfakes use very effective and powerful techniques from artificial intelligence and machine learning to manipulate or change visual and audio content so that it can more easily deceive the average human brain.

Rachel goes on in her article to talk about this idea that fake content is not new. She uses Photoshop (National Geographic and other magazines change images so that they fit the cover better than the actual picture that was taken) and consumer-generated imagery (Tom Hanks meeting meeting President Kennedy in Forrest Gump, as we all know that didn’t actually happen in real life) as examples of how it has always been hard to tell what is real and what is not real online. 

This wonderful article by Rachel Botsman I keep referencing I found when I was doing my research for my presentation for this class for deepfakes. It taught me so many things about deepfakes that I really did not know about before. However, I thought the most interesting thing was how Mrs. Botsman talked about the problem with deepfakes is really not all the technology stuff. It is more about the human aspect of the whole thing. As people, our brains are created to see what we want to see or believe. This idea is essentially the desirability bias. We believe something and then go look for how to prove that belief to others. It is exactly like writing a paper taking a side in an argument and then looking for sources that you can talk about in your paper that back up your claim.

Deepfake technology has been developed by researchers at certain academic institutions beginning in the late 1990s. The Video Rewrite Program in 1997 was the first program to alter existing video footage to create footage of someone saying or doing something they didn’t do previously. Deep fakes have later more recently been developed by amateurs in online communities such as Reddit. Recently the methods of deep fakes have been adopted by industry and we are seeing a lot more of artificial intelligence in our everyday lives.

LOOKING AT SNAPCHAT THROUGH THE LENS OF THE DIFFUSION THEORY

What is the diffusion theory? Often referred to as the DOI (Diffusion of Innovation Theory), this idea is an old social science theory that was first developed by a man named Everett Rogers in the early sixties (click on this link-Behavioral Change Models-to read more about the Diffusion of Innovation Theory). The idea of diffusion theory is that it is a theory that explains to the typical human how a product gains momentum and spreads through a specific population or social system. The end result of this theory is that through communication, new users adopt the new idea or product. For example, when Amazon was first blowing up as a company many people were hesitant to buy from the company. People were hesitant because no one had heard of them before and no one believed two day shipping (and sometimes even one day shipping) was possible.

We normally look at companies from an outsider's viewpoint. However, I think it is a very interesting concept to look at a company through the lens of the diffusion theory. What I mean is that we need to imagine we are on the inside of a company and by looking at the company through the lens of the diffusion theory we can figure out how something got caught by people in society and how it spread.

Let’s use Snapchat as an example. Snapchat was founded in 2011 by Evan Siegel. For those of you who don’t know Snapchat is a very commonly used form of social media. However, compared to other social media many people would say that Snapchat is very different. The reason for this can be summed up in one word: temporary. The reason a lot of people don’t like social media is that if you post something on Facebook or Instagram unless you take it down it is on the internet FOREVER. Evan Siegel wanted to create a photo/video heavy platform where people could send each other photos and videos. That’s not totally different from other social media platforms. What is different is that if you don’t save the photo or video when you open it, it disappears.

If you were to walk in a college classroom today there is not a single student who does not have Snapchat and if they don’t there peers would think they are very strange. Snapchat has become so popular that many teenagers and millennials use it to text their friend and family, rather than using iMessage on their Iphone. Today, roughly 150 million people use Snapchat. Snapchat consumes more than 800 hours of video per second (read more about Snapchat here -A Brief History of Snapchat- if you wanna know more about it).

Why has Snapchat become so popular? If I am looking at the app through the lens of the diffusion theory what has made so many people download this social media? It really just comes down to the fact that Snapchat is different. There was a void to be filled for the younger generation that Mr. Siegel saw when he was making the company and he filled it. Snapchat is a wonderful place where young people can say things or send things that they wouldn’t want the whole world to see on Facebook and Instagram. In other words, they can be themselves. 

THE HISTORY AND IMPACT OF THE RADIO

Before the internet or television, there was radio. Like those later media types, radio forever changed the world. It allowed widespread, instant communication for the first time. Presidents and Kings could now speak directly to their people. President Franklin Roosevelt changed the trajectory of our nation by his radio Fireside Chats, which convinced Americans that they have “nothing to fear but fear itself”(National Archives). While the idea of radio had existed among scientists since the late 1800s, the first commercial radio station (KDKA)-(PBS)-began in Wilkinsburg, PA in 1920. The golden age of radio was from the late 1920s until the early 1950s (when it began to be pushed out by the rise of television).

Almost every American family had a radio in their living room and they gathered around it together to hear comedies, dramas, popular music, and news. It also united every American with the good or bad news of events in World War II. It changed Americans’ lives in a new way, who became used to turning on their radios at a particular time each week to hear their favorite programs. Popular sporting events like the World Series or heavyweight boxing could be heard live by millions at the same time.

Even with the rise of television and the transfer of the weekly comedies and dramas to television in the mid 1950s (some like Superman and the Lone Ranger made the leap), radio remained vital until recently. In a 1998 arbitron report (PBS) , 95% of Americans listened to the radio at least once a week, most while traveling in their cars or in their bathrooms getting ready for work in the morning. They used it for popular music (could rock and roll have become an American icon without radio?), sports (because it was able to offer so many more options than television) and up to the minute news.

With the rise of the internet and cell phones over the past twenty years, the influence of radio has changed. There are tens of thousands of internet options for news, sports and entertainment that can be played by bluetooth in your car or watched on your TV or cell phone at home. Even XM radio (which sought to bring all that is good about radio under one umbrella) is dwarfed by all of the options that the internet provides. Nothing in radio can compete with Spotify, YouTube or Apple Music’s ability to bring all published music in the world directly to you in the order and manner you want it. The quality of the sound, even on a good FM radio, does not compete with cell phones.

You can have a Drake music channel through Apple Music and listen to nothing but Drake, 24/7, wherever you go. TV is also available to car passengers now through cell phones. Radio personalities are no longer limited to just radio and can branch out through podcasts or youtube directly to their fans. It may be that Rush Limbaugh (who died in 2021) will be considered the last radio star, whose popularity was primarily linked to his radio program and not to other media. While my parents still listen to XM Radio and individual radio stations like NPR, my generation is not using commercial radio at all. Influencers today are using Youtube and Podcasts to reach their fans, and not radio.

THE PROGRESSIVE ERA

 While Americans value the freedoms of their press, we live in a rapidly fragmenting nation. First, almost all major news outlets are “liberal," with the exception of the Wall Street Journal and Fox News, which would be classified as “conservative." Each side of this liberal/conservative media debate tilts their coverage to please their audience. There is not a single unbiased new source in the United States-it is only a question of how biased the source is. Anyone who turns on Fox News or reads coverage on their website knows how they will tilt their reporting. I would argue that NPR and the New York Times tilt their coverage in the opposite direction (perhaps not to the same degree) and are not the unbiased sources they claim to be. Most Americans now self-select into one of these two ideological “camps” and are increasingly oblivious to the arguments and perspective of the other side. 

The two sources you mention in the prompt, Antiwar.com and The American Conservative, are such small players in the media landscape that they get very few clicks or attention. Antiwar.com ranks #34,739 in domestic clicks per month and American Conservative similarly ranks #13,596 (similarweb.com). So 34,738 websites get more Americans to view their content each month than Antiwar.com! I had never even heard of Antiwar.com before this assignment. It is amazing how Antiwar.com segments news about every single military conflict, all over the globe.

There is also a more sinister component to the issue of not hearing antiwar voices in the major news outlets. The military industrial complex (that is, the weapons money-making machine) benefits every single state and congressional district. America sells military weapons, vehicles and aircraft all over the world, frequently to both sides in a war! There is war in every corner of the world, right now! Whether you are a Democrat or Republican, a liberal or conservative, you want to be known as the politician who brought new, well-paying jobs to your district. New jobs mean families and money moving into your district, many new support jobs (for example, an aircraft manufacturer is going to require a tire manufacturer to be located close by) and all of those new, well-paying jobs result in all of the commerce that makes a town prosperous (new restaurants, grocery stores, neighborhood construction, etc.).

While there is a valid national security interest in having weapons and equipment made in the USA (we can’t have China make our bombs when we might need those plans and manufacturing process to defend ourselves from China), there is very little incentive to decrease what we spend each year on our military, which will result in fewer jobs and will make the resident politician the bad guy or girl when funding is decreased (and no politician wants to be known as the one who lost the military base or weapons jobs for their district). We don’t hear antiwar voices in the mainstream media because there is too much money to be made by too many people and too many politicians are involved for it to be any other way.