Sunday, December 8, 2019

Privacy

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Privacy is a huge part of everyday life in the sense that we want privacy.  The difference between wanting privacy and actually having privacy is a big one.  Take changing for example or going to the bathroom, everyone wants privacy when we do these things and in the U.S. that is actually given to us, there are laws in place making sure that we get our privacy when we are in those vulnerable positions.  We want privacy for certain things when we use technology and that is where the "creepy" stuff starts to happen, when we are talking about something we want and our phone is in our pocket and then google pops an add up showing you that product right after.  or when you post or email something that you want to be private and then more ads pop up showing similar things.  That is without a doubt an invasion of privacy.

The Ted talk about privacy with emails really stood out to me.  The reason why is simple the man speaking talked about a real way that you can send emails to anyone you want without having to be a tech genius and know that the person you sent it to is the only person that is able to view it.  This is a great innovation and I can see a lot of people joining just because they don't want companies or the government seeing their personal content.  The website listed below explains that "Email can sometimes feel intimate in the same way a private conversation does, but the reality is that email is anything but private."  This quote doesn't have to be true based on what Andy Yen from the Ted talk is saying, and hopefully in the future we will have a sense of privacy back for all of our online activities.


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Vertical Integration


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The website above says that "Vertical integration is when a company controls more than one stage of the supply chain."  Meaning that a company does the manufacturing and the distribution or any of the other three parts.  Those other three being having the raw material doing the retail aspect as well as the after sale services.  As long as a company is in charge of two or more of the five parts they are vertically integrated.  This process can be extremely helpful to a company but it does have it's negatives as well

The pro's and con's of  vertical integration are that this can help a company cut out the middleman and be more dependent on themselves and their employees but this can also be quite expensive.  There is a potential to gain access to other big businesses but this process could also split the focus on how to be the most efficient in each of the businesses as well as reduce flexibility all together.  This process can work and has worked for a lot of businesses but it may not be the most effective for all businesses.  Netflix is one of the more recent companies that fit this description because they provide a way to stream TV shows and movies made by other companies as well as make their own Netflix original series and movies. 

Media Consolidation


Media is an ever growing thing but there is not much growth in how many companies control the media. According to the website above "Media consolidation is the concentration of ownership of our news sources into the hands of fewer and fewer corporations."  When media really started to take off the government had to create a way to regulate it and that is why the FCC was developed in 1934.  After the FCC was founded they did a relatively good job at regulating how much control companies are allowed to have over the media and that was incredibly smart since you want to be able to have some trust in the media but in the 1980's, everything changed.  

The number of companies that were controlling 90% of everything we heard and saw in the media was now down to fifty.  Fifty companies were able to control the way the we stay up to date on what is happening in the world and in our country.  As of 2011 that same percentage had dropped down to six companies controlling everything we see and hear in the media.  In my personal opinion that is terrifying because we can't trust the media anymore.  Companies like these are now money making machines and are not going to want to do and say things that will loose rating and loose them money even if it is important.

My Online Footprint


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Personally I would say that my online digital footprint is relatively small, I don't really use social media the only accounts I have are for Snapchat and Google Plus which I don't really use at all.  The website linked above says "A digital footprint is all of the information online about a person wither posted by the person or others, intentionally or unintentionally."  That can be a very scary thought when you really think about it.  Its not that I don't like social media but I just don't have all that much that would be worth posting about, and I have no interest in being like the people that post their meals so that every one can know what they had for lunch.  Social Media is a great tool for so many people but I see it as nothing but a way for me to get myself in trouble and not even realize it.

I have thought about joining other social media platforms before but when I do I again realize that this would be a waste of time since I have nothing that would be worth posting.  The only time I really post anything on snapchat anymore is when I go on vacation and I would take a picture of the lake we go to in Maine just so people can see how great the underrated state of Maine really is.  I am not sure whether linkedin is considered social media or more of a job search engine but I do have an account for that which every once and a while I will get an email saying that there are some jobs that I should look at and apply through the site which is helpful and I am glad that I have that account to help get my name out in the world in a professional way.

Diffusion of Innovations


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When I read about diffusion of innovations the first thing I thought about was Facebook.  Not to say that Facebook was a failure, that couldn't be further from the truth but with the way the site was used when it first came out compared to now there has definitely been decay in their sites users.  At first this was the innovation that rally jump started the social media trend that we live with now but most of their younger audience have packed up and moved on leaving just the older adults that mainly joined so that they could keep an eye on what their children were doing online.  

Facebook used to be used for everything social media but with the newer innovations of Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat this older site became obsolete to their original audience.  Everett Rogers who popularized the theory of diffusion of innovations argued that "diffusion is the process by which an innovation is communicated over time among the participants in a social system."  With that said I could clearly see that over time the communication among the original participants started to fade as they had started to move on to newer and "more interesting" social media platforms.  Facebook will probably be around for quite a while but will inevitably continue to fade in numbers of users.


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Values of Free Expression

                                          Promoting Tolerance
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The value that stood out to me the most is the value of promoting tolerance.  Promoting tolerance is a huge part of what this country is supposed to stand for and I truly believe that this is the most important of the eight values of free expression because if we can not tolerate our fellow citizens then what chance do we have in tolerating others outside our country.  This is also underrated because most people believe that they are extremely tolerant until something is said that they really don't like making them lose it a little bit.

Irina Bokova said in 2014 "Respect and tolerance are liberating acts, where by the differences of others are recognized as the same as our own and whereby the riches of other cultures are taken as the wealth of all."  This quote is an incredible inspiration showing us that others choices and beliefs do not have to be seen as confrontational but as a way for us to look deeper into who they are and learn to accept.  This value truly is the most meaningful to me because I try my hardest everyday to hear others opinions and accept them for who they are and what they believe in weather I agree with them or not.

Sunday, October 13, 2019

Telegraph

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The Telegraph was the first real way to communicate through long distances.  Developed through the 1830's and 1840's Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail created this way of communication and on May 24, 1844 the first transmission went through saying "What Hath God Wrought", this signal went from Washington D.C. to Baltimore.  This was revolutionary using cables to send and receive long distant Messages.  It didn't take long to get the wireless telegraph and lay cables from America to Europe making it possible for people to communicate on different sides of the Atlantic as well as in the middle of the ocean.

The way that This communication worked was with a code created by Samuel Morse that would be called Morse Code.  This code used dots and dashes to translate into letters of the Alphabet making it easy to send codes back and forth that others couldn't understand.  This invention was the greatest discovery in Military communication basically until the telephone was created.  The code that most people remember is ...---... which means S.O.S or help.  I don't know if this was originally created as a military device but the Military defiantly had a greater use for this than any other random citizen would.  The Telegraph may not be used today but it is still a huge part of history that lead to other incredible creations nothing will ever change that fact.

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