Technology:How it has affected me

 In 2022, it feels like technology seems to follow me wherever I go. Whether I am at the house, library, or even the coffee shop, there are very few places you can go where you will see no technology, and obviously, this is wrong and good. Technology has positively and negatively impacted me in many ways. I hope you can learn from my mistakes and live a better life by reading this.

Now my journey with technology, I would say, was not the traditional one. I was one of the last people in my circle to get a cell phone, but I still had a footprint. When I was younger, I would love to go to my cousin's or godparents' house because that meant I could use their phones to either play Minecraft or some of the apps already loaded on their phones. My memory is obviously fuzzy for some of these parts, but I remember it was Christmas 2009 when I got my first device, and it was an iPod. Obviously, not knowing the difference between an iPod and iPhone, I was very excited; it was an all-orange iPod, and I loved that thing. I downloaded so many games onto it. Since I could not text on an iPod, I gave everyone my email, which at the time did not seem weird but looking back on it I was using email like it was a text service, which is very weird. This is all obviously very boring, so I will speed up the history a bit. I got my next device, a kindle, in 2011 because my parents wanted me to read more, but in all honestly, I also used that for games. Then finally, I was able to get my first phone in 2014, which would make me around ten years old, and I would be in fifth grade then. I feel like to this day, I was sort of young to have a phone; obviously, I was excited and could text all my friends, but immediate access to the internet from such a young age is very troubling.

In all honesty, I was never addicted to my phone or laptop; the piece of technology that caught my eye was gaming systems. The first system I ever got was a DS, and I would play that all the time; it got to the point where my parents would limit my time on it. I feel, however, that limiting it for me made me really want it more the time I had to play with it felt valuable, and I remember some nights I would sneak into my parents' room to steal it at night. This addiction eventually transferred over to my Xbox and Playstation.  Xbox was the first time I could play with my friends and other people, and I loved it. I stayed up late countless nights to play with them, even at the risk of school and other activities. I loved to play with them.  A part of this addiction is playing games felt like an escape from stress, school, and practice; no matter what was happening in the world, it all kind of felt like nothing else mattered except for having a good time and playing with my friends. I would rationalize this behavior usually by saying I am getting good grades and still performing well in other areas of my life, so it cannot be too bad.  Unlike most addiction stories, there was no significant moment where I decided to turn my life around and stop playing games; it was more or less a moment of self-realization. Before I ever touched a system, I was a very avid reader. I loved books; people would always gift me books for Christmas and my birthday, and I wanted to return to that because now games took up all of my free time.  While I still play games in my free time, it is not as nearly as much as I once did. I try to do more productive stuff in my free time, like reading and getting ahead of homework, but every once in a while I will fall back in and play some games.

The effects that technology has on young people are highly detrimental. Nowadays, it feels like social media is more of a requirement rather than optional to have some of these apps.  At least 75% of teens (13-17) have at least one social media app. I say it feels forced because if you are not on social media, you will feel left out from your friends or might even struggle to make friends. This dynamic is very concerning because, on the one hand, if you do not have social media, you will have a hard time fitting in but on the other hand, having social media opens you up to bullying and harassment.  37% of people between the ages of 12 and 17 have been cyberbullied, and while that seems like a small number, many of these kids can fall into depression and even suicide because of these rude comments.

A significant point I want to discuss in this day and age is your digital footprint and presence. When we first brought this up in class, I really was not worried about my online presence or trail I use social media apps, but I never post on them I mainly use them to see what is going on and to talk with my friends. So when I look up my name, I'm not surprised that many of the sites that popped up were mostly pertaining to my athletic career since I used to be a swimmer and cross-country runner.  Then some sites were about my dad, but since they mentioned me, it popped up as a result for me. After seeing those results, I was curious about my digital footprint, and I was eager to find a site that would let me see where my email has been I eventually found one. I will link the site right here. This site lets you input your email, and it lets you know how many sites have your email. At the beginning of the process, it makes you guess how many sites might have your email, and I thought no way it was over 100, and when it showed me, it was over 300 sites that have my email on file. The best thing about this site, however, is not that it only tells you how many sites it helps you email these sites to reclaim your data, and it has a bar you can fill up to 100% if you complete each data claim which for me will take a while. I invite anyone reading this to try this site out and see how many sites own their information.

As I stated earlier, it is impossible to not live with technology in this day and age; it is sometimes a blessing and a curse. I, for one, am happy with my technology journey; while it has its setbacks, it has allowed me to talk to my grandma and make friends from all around the globe. I know everything can't be perfect, but I hope for everyone's sake, technology has helped make their lives better. I know most people do not say this, but sometimes it is ok to just unplug from the web and have a few moments of peace; while it probably will not last long never prioritize anything over your mental health; I hope you had a blast reading this and all my other blogs and I wish you the best luck in any future endeavors.

Five Eyes

 Today's presentation that really sparked my thinking was the one on the Five Eyes that Maddie gave.  So the Five Eyes is an agreement between five countries Australia, Canada,  New Zealand, United Kingdom, and America. In this agreement, these five countries agreed to share almost all their data with each other to keep their "eyes" on countries and people at risk. Usually, surveillance on this level would really not be a problem plenty of countries keep eye on people of risks for the safety of everyday people and their country. The problem with the Five Eyes is how secretive and intrusive they were. Maddie mentioned a program they used called ECHELON, and this allowed them to hack and infiltrate Soviet satellite signals, which in turn allowed them to infiltrate call, fax, and email signals all around the world. In essence, no one's information is secret. I did some of my own research to see more about what else the Five Eyes did. A major one I found is that the Five Eyes tapped Princess Diana's phone for years; more specifically, the USA did this. Currently, the US is said to have more than 1000 pages on the conversations Princess Diana had. What scares me most about this is if a substantial political figure like Princess Diana can get her phone tapped by a government that is not hers, what is stopping someone from one of the other five eyes countries from tapping one of our phones, just regular citizens.  This use of technology should not be in the hands of anyone; it directly violates the civil liberties we have in America and the basic human rights we hold. The people of the Five Eyes organization have no shame or dignity just spying on people for their own personal ends.

The future of AI

What I Learned

As soon as the video started, it opened up to a very familiar game for me: Go. While Go is very popular in Asian countries, I learned it from my grandfather, who lived in the Philippines for a couple of years. While I was never good at it, and he would constantly beat me, it was interesting to see such an obscure game here in the states on the screen. So now, back to the video, this primary thing was teaching me the considerable impact Go had on the AI scene. It really makes you wonder, if Lee Sedol were to win that match, what would the future of AI look like. On the other hand, however, I feel like this Lee Sedol match was inevitable; even if he did win, that would only push humans to make a more advanced AI that would eventually be able to match a human. Also, later in the video Kai Fuli makes a quote saying, "So, in the age of AI where data is the new oil, China is the new Saudi Arabia." This quote stood out to me because it is so true in this new digital age; every country that has the most data on its people, or people, in general, will make money the quickest. We see this now with companies in America; Facebook and Google are so rich because they can profit off the data their millions of users give it.

What Frightened/ Suprised me

The reason I chose to combine these two questions is that throughout the length of this video, it seemed that almost every little thing that surprised me also gave me a little bit of fright. The biggest and most obvious one is China and how they abuse the powers of AI. Looking at China, it sort of gives me hope that things in America might someday have a lot of those technological advances that are so readily available in China that it seems just not very well implemented here in the states. The problem with looking at China is that they obviously have crossed a line with their AI functions. The huge one is using AI to harass and torture the Uighur population. When I saw that segment, I was absolutely stunned by how they use QR codes to brand certain people effectively. They essentially have all of their phones tapped. On the wrong side, China is showing an efficient blueprint on how to spy on your citizens; they have no limits on what they will invade, while on the flip side, it can also show other countries what lines not to cross when trying to implement AI into the everyday population.

Pro/Cons

While watching this video, some excellent pros stood out, including the advent of self-driving cars. One of the guys in the video said that around 90% of all accidents involve a human driver and I feel like if we can make self-driving safe and reliable, we can save so many lives.  On top of that, AI does make lives more accessible and more seamless for the general population; it will help lines move quicker and maybe even assist in some areas of government someday. While this all sounds like a utopia AI will obviously take away a lot of jobs from people, it is said by 2025, AI might replace 85 million jobs. On the flip side, AI will also create some new jobs, but the jobs they create will require expert knowledge in specific areas that the people in the jobs they are replacing most likely will not have.

Conclusion

In the end, just like all great inventions, AI will have its triumphs and its downfalls. We as a people know how to use something for good but also, sadly, how to exploit something for evil. While I hope the latter does not happen just with everything, the worse does seem to come to pass, but let us hope with this invention can really help change the world and make us better people. 

Why You Are Always Right

Step back a minute and think of all times when you feel you honestly lost a debate, whether it was sports, educational, or even political; when was the last time you actually lost, and you either changed your way of thinking or at least took a better look into why you think that way. For a lot of us, I feel it will be very hard for a lot of us to think about a moment like that, especially if it is such an open-ended question with so many answers like whether abortion should be legal, is democracy the best form of government, and who is the GOAT (It's LeBron by the way)?

If your answer to the above question was I have never lost a debate, you might have confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is the tendency to process information by looking for or interpreting information that is consistent with one's existing beliefs. With confirmation bias there are three recognized types of it. The first type of confirmation bias is a biased search for information. This type of confirmation bias explains people's search for evidence in a one-sided way to support their hypotheses or theories. While that might all sound like a mouthful but in all honestly, it is straightforward. What this is essentially saying is when someone is trying to research or look up something that will help with their already pre-existing viewpoint, instead of looking up a question that would invite disagreements, they would style it in a way that the only results that will appear would be from sites that already agree with the same notion as them. An example of this would be if you believe that Star Wars is a better franchise than Star Trek (it is!), then a person trying to confirm this would look up Star Wars as better than Star Trek. A question styled like this would result in an array of sites that would tell you why Star Wars is better, but if you flipped the question, the opposite would be true. I provided some photos to show this example.  

The next type of confirmation bias is biased interpretation. Biased interpretation explains that people interpret evidence with respect to their existing beliefs by typically evaluating confirming evidence differently than evidence that challenges their preconceptions. This type of confirmation is basically when you are looking at information to use for your already preexisting opinions; when you come across sources that contradict your own opinion you are more likely to question everything about it, like who the author is, is the site even credible, and while doing this the convince themselves that the contradicting
evidence is not trustworthy or even credible while on the other side people will take confirming evidence often times at face value and trust it almost immediately. Stanford did a study on this where they gave 48 students two studies; one supported capital punishment, and the other did not. 

When the students finished reading both articles, they both just believed their already preexisting opinions, and when asked about the opposing viewpoint, they considered it inferior to the one with confirming evidence.

The final type of confirmation bias is biased memory.  This is when to confirm their current beliefs, people may remember/recall information selectively.  This type of confirmation bias is very straightforward and, in my opinion, probably the one where people do the most.  It is also more likely for me to remember a fact I really like or agree with me than one that does not. A study was also done on this type of bias where people were shown the profile of a woman named Jane. In this profile, it showed her introverted and extroverted skills. A couple of days later, after they all read her profile, they were asked if Jane would be better suited for a real estate salesperson (extroverted job) or as a research librarian (introverted job). The people that picked sales person more easily recalled all the extroverted traits than they did for the introverted ones, and those that thought she would be a better librarian did the same but with the introverted characteristics.

Through the three types of confirmation bias, one can hopefully identify which one they use often and how to counter it. The problem with confirmation bias today is it is making us as people more polarized and in root with our own opinions. I would say now, with the internet, you can find anyone who agrees with you, and once they start affirming your views, no matter how wrong you are, you will begin to also believe in them more and seek out facts that only support your opinion. Social media knows this and actually use confirmation bias to keep you on the app. Apps like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook use "filter bubbles" software to show you what they think you like or want to see, and most of the time, they are right. Software like this further divides us as people and sort of force people into groups, whether they know it or not.

The Illusion of Privacy

 The use of technology has become like a virus in society today; whereas before, owning a laptop or a smartphone was seen more as a privilege than a necessity, now, if you do not own either, you most likely will have a hard time keeping up with the world.  Watching these videos made me struggle with myself and how far I want the government in my life. On the one hand, I know the government is most likely tracking me and everything I do. While that severely affects my civil liberties, I also understand that the government uses this same technology to arrest terrorists and criminals. That scenario is precisely the problem I am having trouble facing while I do like the safety that the government is providing me, that safety is also infringing on my rights as well. In high school, I had to read a book called 1984 by George Orwell, which takes you to a future where the government can see any aspect of your life. They control the media, they have cameras in your house. Evidently, their biggest weapon is the kids you have because the kids you make are brainwashed in school and become spies for the government. While it has not gotten to that point in the US yet, it seems to be slowly but surely heading there; the government has no power equal to it to tell it, no, and countries like China seem to be already taking the step in this direction with the adoption of their social credit score and the tens and millions of camera already deployed there.

In one of the Ted Talks, Christopher Soghoian brings up how data companies use wiretapping to listen in on your phone calls and read your conversations. This invasion of privacy being done to American Citizens reminds me of another one that happened around three hundred years ago when King George forced the people of the colonies to house British soldiers. When these British soldiers were in your house, they would take up your food, a bed, and maybe your drinks. Most importantly, these soldiers symbolized a governmental overreach; they were forced into your home without your consent. They could also overhear conversations if needed, and while these scenarios are three hundred years apart, the end result is the same. The founding fathers banned the method of quartering with the third amendment because they saw the house as a private domain that should not be forcibly barged into. Nowadays, the government is taking up quarters in your house; this time, it is less evident. There is no soldier in your house to spy on you; instead, it is the laptop or phone you use to read this.

The one thing we as a people can do to fight off this wave is to be more conscious of how much we let the internet know about us; by the time you see this, it might be a bit too late, but there are still things we can do to stop the bleeding. One thing that can help is not to use password savers; these can be hacked, and while only 45 million Americans use these sorts of apps, that is still a lot of information floating around in the cloud waiting to be stolen. Also, downloading a virus scanner can significantly help you; while some are expensive, they are very effective. These are two small suggestions that I can find that I think would help people take back some of our privacy. While it is sad that we all will never be private in the growing digital age, at least we can try to take back some of our privacy. 

Diffusion Theory of Bitcoin

Innovators

The first innovator of Bitcoin was Satoshi Nakamoto; people to this day are curious to know if this person is real or not and presume that I might be a pseudonym for one or more creators. In October of 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto released a paper detailing how bitcoin would be used and its existence of an early peer-to-peer network transaction system. The first bitcoin was not mined until January 2009 when Nakamoto mined the "genesis" block, and it produced the first 50 bitcoins.

Early Adopters

After Nakamoto mined the first 50 bitcoins in that January of the same year, the first ever open source bitcoin client was released to the public and hosted at SourceForge. The first-ever bitcoin investor was Hal Finney. He also received the first-ever Bitcoin transaction, which was 10 bitcoins.  The other early investors were Wei Dai and Nick Szabo.

Early Majority

The first people to use Bitcoin were not business and "regular" people; instead, they were many black market sites. It was so used because Bitcoin is not centralized and not controlled or issued by a government, so it is virtually impossible to track who is using this bitcoin, and bitcoin does not need to be laundered as well.  A black market site called Silk Road only used bitcoin for its 30 months of existence.  From 2011-2012 the price of bitcoin was very volatile similar to what it is now. It constantly rose and fell for many months; however, at the start of 2011, it was $0.30, and by the end of 2012, it was $16.41. Then it boomed, and by the end of 2013, it was $770

Late Majority 

At this point, Bitcoin has become incredibly mainstream, and with this has come government regulations. In the US, for example, since bitcoin is an independent currency and a business to a certain extent, multiple branches of the US government overlap to regulate this digital currency. So following this, the Federal Reserve regulates bitcoin only when a bank lists it as an asset, and the SEC looks at the stock market side of bitcoin since it is also a security. There is also business now that accepts bitcoin as a form of payment; for example, the Dallas Mavericks, an NBA team, accepts bitcoin to buy merchandise and ticket, and even AMC, a movie theater company, accepts bitcoin to pay for movie theater tickets.

Laggards

In 2022 it can be said that really most of the world is laggards at this point; only 106 million people in the whole world own a piece of bitcoin. The reason why bitcoin has already hit the laggard stage is that bitcoin has already reached its peak marketing stage; everyone has heard about it; it is just the volatile nature of bitcoin which is making it not very sought after.  If you check the stock market, bitcoin prices have decreased over the last 6 months. While there are some highs in there, it is just so unpredictable people are not willing to take that risk with what little money they already have. A football player named Odell Beckham Junior signed with the Rams during the 2021-2022 football season for a contract worth $750,000; he decided to take the entirety of his contract in bitcoin. So when the bitcoin price plummeted in January 2022, his contract became worth $35,000. While players like Odell have already made an absurd amount of money in their careers, this massive loss of income can happen to anyone who invests in bitcoin, which is people's fear.

 

The Wonders of Emojis

 For as long as I can remember, I have been using emojis to express how I feel when I text. I was kind of surprised by their long history of them when Dylan gave his EOTO presentation on them. A couple of things really surprised me; the first was the use of an emoticon in an 1881 magazine.  When I look at the emoticons that were in this magazine, they obviously are fundamental, but they also follow the same pattern. They all contain six lines but are just contoured a different way. The creators laid a very good framework for the first emojis to emojis because as I look at the joy emoji that was first used, it seems very similar to the happy emoji that is used today. The following fact that really surprised me is that it took almost 100 years from the release of that 1881 magazine for the everyday use of emojis to really take effect. Personally, for me, I would have thought the modern use of emojis would have been built more upon after the release of the first smartphone, which was in 1993, but it is just weird to me how someone was building up this use of emojis with still no way to text someone. Then finally I did not know that was a difference between emoticons and emojis I have heard the word emoticon before but I always thought the two words were interchangeable.