Blog Post #6, Privacy

 

    After watching a couple of Ted Talks on privacy and some further research I can say that I am uncomfortable but at the same time I am not surprised. This is something I have always thought about and heard things about apps like Facebook, and Instagram stalking us and gathering our information. Funny story that relates to that as not too long ago I was in person having a conversation with my dad about getting new sunglasses and about a couple minutes after having that conversation I was scrolling through Instagram and got an ad for sunglasses. So, there you go. The Ted Talk that stood out to me the most was the one with Catherine Crump and in her speech, she talked about how the police departments and government are flat out stalking people which they try to say is for “investigation purposes” although Crump mentions a point that they were tracking someone who had nothing to do with anything illegal. The problem is here that the police and government are allowed to have this information on us like our location and whereabouts, how we interact, our daily lives. The fact that this is being allowed to me is actually insane. Crump also mentioned that the Government can have over 100 photos of you and your daily life, which is just wild to me. It not only makes me uncomfortable but at the same time frustrating that they are just doing this and there is nothing to be done about it. I really see why people do not even want to purchase phones because they are literal trackers at this point, that is why I do not blame Professor Smith for waiting for so long, the class should not of have him the crap they did for that to be fair. Something I do to try to minimize my information from being out there is any of my social accounts are private, because I know 100% the government and police look through people's social media. Another thing I do is not sign up for accounts on every single website or app I go on, therefore less information of mine is available. Also is anyone going to talk about how on the new IOS after you opened any app on your phone it asked if you could allow apps to track data or something, that is simply CRAZY to me. Instantly I said no to all of them as that is not necessary one bit. Overall, privacy is a huge issue and with the technology we have days I would not be surprised if it got even worse.  

Blog Post #5, Anti-War

 

 After spending time reading and looking through Antiwar.com, I found it refreshing to see something like this because I feel as if it is hard to come by these days, and especially because of what has been going on in our world now. I believe it is important to let other people stand up for what they believe in, instead of blocking them out because they disagree with the government or a certain group of people. It is sad to see that this is the stuff that you won't see go mainstream and that is because there are people who do not want it to be seen but at the same time, I think people are also afraid of supporting it in a way. Also, something that I personally pointed out during the Russia-Ukraine war, is that I've seen more people post/tweet/ and share about wanting to help Ukraine and sticking up for the country and no posts about antiwar and wanting to help and spread information about this by posting about it. So that ties into the issue that you just won't see antiwar promotion or websites like this unless you look hard because people are uneducated and get manipulated by the media, or they are nervous about being against what our government believes- (which would be like a news station, so they do not get heat or lose money/viewers). I hope in our future we can promote more anti-war advocates and instead of completely blocking out people's opinions about it, let them freely express that they are against war. People need to be better at that, period.  

Blog Post #4, The Printing Press

     

    The Printing Press was a machine that would give the opportunity of mass production of uniform printed matter, which would apply for books, pamphlets and newspapers. This would change the world for years to come and eventually spark newer ideas and inventions stemming from the original printing press. It is unclear when the first printing press was established but Johannes Gutenberg began working with his invention in 1440, and later fully finished it in 1450. The Gutenberg press was interesting because he used a lot of different materials to help him invent the machine, including using metal over wood, and “a sand-casting system” that had used carved sand to create metal molds according to History.com Editors. Gutenberg also made his own Ink and historians say if he had not done that his invention may have not worked. Gutenberg also had a couple of projects of his own on his printing press. Using this machine, he would be able to print out a bible, where he would use up to 300 individual letter blocks and 50,000 pieces of paper. For me it is interesting to see how our printers now would take a lot less than on the printing press and it is interesting to see how it has transformed into what we have now with printers. Guttenberg's invention would spread around Europe, in places such as Italy and Spain.  

    The Printing Press would obviously change the world forever and ever and impact further inventions and ideas. History. Com writes that from Guttenberg's invention a Global Network had been established , where sailors would go around local ports and print pamphlets where they could take them around the world. So, it is interesting to see the aftereffects of the invention and how people would start using it in those times. Something that stood out to me about the after impact of the invention and something that you can tie to modern times, is how this invention could take jobs away from workers. History. Com states that before the printing press, scribes were very valuable and had a huge want, and there would be these trained artisans to go out and hand copy and illuminate manuscripts. This is super interesting because it's exactly something you will see nowadays, for example: factory workers that are being replaced by all these high-tech and advanced machines. You can look at it as the invention of the printing press had started the replacement of all human work. All of this would lead to a new development of printers which would change the industry forever.  

image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f1/Press_skeen_1872_with_description.png/220px-Press_skeen_1872_with_description.png \

Blog Post #3, Eight Values of Free Expression

 

    Out of the Eight values of freedom, to me personally, #8 Protect Dissent resonates the most with me and is important all around. The eighth value of freedom: Protect Dissent writes that our system is not an ochlocracy and that anyone can have a certain opinion of the government no matter who you are, you indeed have that right to disagree with the government if you choose to and that it is your job in a sense to criticize the government. The reason this one really sticks out to me for two reasons. First, the thing that always surprised me the most was how in other countries this would be really forbidden and un-allowed in a way where to me it is unfair and that always surprised me. A country that I think of most when it comes to being against this the most would be North Korea, a country that is very censored. I did some research on my own and it was funny to find that they were reported to be the 1 most censored country in the world. CPJ explains that North Korea is at the #1 most censored country mainly because of their governments control over everything in the country and how you will only here praise about their leader Kim-Jon-Un inside the country. It just blows my mind the way that these people are just being controlled and not allowed to even have an opinion, to me if our country worked that way, I am not sure how things would be.  

    The second reason is something that still can be looked at today and that is someone being criticized for doing their own criticism of their government or having a different opinion and/or disagreeing with what they do. It is weird if someone were to get upset at another person for that because the question is, how does that concern you? If someone has something to say about the government, for example the US government, then why should they be called things like “un-American” or judged at all? That is something that should not be considered a terrible thing, if someone really does not agree with our government or something they could have done years ago, then they should be able to without being judged as some sort of traitor. This speech value is overall particularly important to look at because especially on what is going on today with the world and what is yet to come, you will have a lot of people questioning what the US government will do and already what they have decided to do, so therefore people will have to prepare themselves for criticism of the government because not everyone is going to agree with it. Also going forward and for the future, it is important that you always can have different perspectives on certain situations so taking away or judging people's opinions is not always the right thing to do and how can you ever have conversations or communicate if everyone is supposed to think the same way? 

Image: https://news.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/styles/full_width/public/images/2021-11/censorship.jpg?itok=zIYr3cPY \