Blog #5 Privacy, Online and Off

  

    After watching some of those TED talks, all I can say is...Wow. I never truly thought of what social media sites such as Facebook are really capable of when put in the bad hands. 

    I personally have never been really that bothered by what social media and other websites top behind the scenes, but this really does make me think about the lasting impression of what can happen when you put your private information into a website that can easily be tracked or hacked. I myself would have never posted some stuff on my instagram when I was younger if I knew what could potentially happen. One time I posted my (old) phone number as a way to let people know I got a new iPhone. Little did I know that encryption technology inside could have easily caused problems. I deleted the post only hours after posting it, and nothing bad ever happened but still. If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have posted a couple things on my Intstagram. Especially after learning that it is owned by Facebook and learning more about their history with technology. Whatever you post can come back and haunt so it is important to be smart what you post or send to someone. 

    Now I am smarter about what I post, so I am less concerned about myself, but still worried about my family. Especially my grandparents who are so easily tempted to click the links of every email they receive. 

When it comes to surveilling phone calls, text messages, and search histories, I do understand why big law companies track them. It's in order to find major criminals and terrorists and bring them tom justice. The amount of crime that happens on the World Wide Web now can cause a lot of damage and nobody can be too careful. I don't necessarily have a problem with this particular, what makes me concerned is that hardly anyone knows about this. Only major tech heavy or political heavy people are the ones that seem to really be caring and that is unfortunate. So many people are just blind to what is happening to them, and these trackers and technologies are to blame for this as well. Yes it is important to educate yourself about what you post and search on different we browsers, but I think that if these web browsers and internet companies are going to continue to track and put surveillance on people, they just need to come out and be up front about it. Don't briefly mention it in a 20 page Terms and Conditions contract. Just let the leaders of the company, well, have a little leadership and tell the truth. That way people can know the truth about the web. 

Same with the government. If we are much more honest about what we are doing, there would be a lot more effort for people to be careful what they post and there wouldn't be as many conspiracy theories about what the internet is doing with malware. There would be those people outraged and would refuse to apply to this but at the very least it would give everyone the honest choice to do what they are comfortable with doing on the internet.

We must be careful what we post, as anyone could potentially see it. We should ask ourselves "Would this come back to haunt be in 5 weeks?" "Or months?" "Or years?" It really can be scary once you realize how much information social media and internet sites have on you. Stuff that they could use against you at any given chance. To feel like you are always being watched. I wish the government and these sites would at least be more honest, as now we live in a world where the internet is a necessity for day-to-day life. It can feel like FaceBook and other powerful sites will always know you more than you know yourself. However with that, there are still some things we can do to try to stay one step ahead from them

Blog #3 Eight Values of Free Expression

The idea of the freedom of speech has been around as long as the United States has been declared its own country.  

Out of all Six First Amendments Theories, the one that resonates with me the best and is constantly making me think is the idea of individual Self-Fulfillment. It's about how "free speech enables individuals to express and thereby create their own identity, and in the process perhaps, find kindred spirits. Freedom of speech thus becomes an aspect of human dignity, human agency and autonomy." So essentially you do have the right to say what ever you want with no consequences right? Well yes, but there are limitations that people have to abide by.

For example, you can't just go into a crowded movie theater and yell FIRE! And then expect there to be now consequences for your actions. We all know that you can't say ANYTHING under the amendment of freedom of speech. But where does it start and where does it end? 

This amendment resonates with me the most because not only out of all the amendments, this one feels like its the most talked about the most and used in modern day, but it also feels like the one that has been both evolving and devolving at the same time. We now live in a digital age where anything you say or do in a post can come back and haunt you. Ideas about cancel culture have been thrown about lately and has become a hot subject to talk about. 

For me personally, I believe that people should be free to say what they want, as long as they know what they will say will always have consequences. There are instances where people say things that are not perceived well that end up costing them career opportunities. While not unconstitutional, people say is ethically wrong and that people should be free to say whatever they want. 

Take the instance with Gina Carano. After she made some comments about comparing the modern day right-leaning individual to Jew in a Holocaust among other statements throughout the years. These comments ultimately got her let go from playing the character Cara Dune on Disney's The Mandalorian. Some were outraged that the fact that she was fired from the project for simply speaking her mind, while others seemed it was justified. We must keep in mind that Disney meeting Gina go is not unconstitutional, as they are a private company not a form of government firing her or taking away her rights. It's just that what she said, is not what Disney want to be in their image. And after wanting her several times, finally released her from the upcoming projects she was assigned to be in. Which as a private company, are well within their rights to dismiss her. Some could argue that it's not right Disney like a lot of entertainment companies is a lot more leftist, which is a fair criticism, but I think that as a company if they want to let a person go if they have said things that don't reflect the companies best interest. She made a choice on posting something, and that choice has consequences. 

Another instance was again earlier this year with Donald Trump getting banned on Twitter. Some people were outraged by this saying he can't get taken down, since it goes against the idea of Freedom of Speech and that Twitter and Cancel Culture is silencing a voice. A voice that many people do look up to. You must keep in mind thought that this was around early 2021, where Donald Trump was still leading people on saying that he rightfully won the election and the whole thing was rigged. I still remember reading some of his posts and practically every single one got a fact check next to it. This would cloud the minds of many people who would believe what he says and nothing else, that would lead to the Capitol Riot and Raid on January 6th. He led people to have this dangerous mindset, which caused him to get banned from continuing it in the end. 

I do think about what freedom of speech mean everyday, as it seems a lot of people are still learning the details of it as well. It feels personal to me because as we are moving into a digital world where everything you say can be cemented in stone, I try to be cautious in what I post to prevent consequences like these to come back and bite me in the butt. Some say that cancel culture and all of this can be toxic and can ruin people for the rest of their lives and that they should be free tp say what they want. And that is true, it can harm people who have said statements years ago and have soon evolved past saying dumb stuff. But I also think that people should still be held accountable for their actions even after so much time has past. The Freedom of Speech I have seen in action the most, and even if it is evolving, I am still proud to live in a world where we people are allowed to speak about what they want and not have to worry about legal consequences! 

Sources: 

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/the-mandalorian-star-gina-carano-fired-amid-social-media-controversy-4131168/

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/what-was-trump-s-role-during-capitol-riot-house-democrats-ncna1277758

Blog #4: The History of CDs

 If there is one device that had a strong hold on the music and audio business for the longest time, it would have to be the compact disc. Otherwise known as the CD. These little discs once took the world by storm and became THE way to listen to music, but have since fallen irrelevant. Let's talk about their history.

Before CD's became the standard for listening to audio such as music, cassette tapes were the defined way to do so. They were very much portable and easy to walk around with. Especially if you had a Sony Walkmen and a pair of headphones, as that was the typical way one listened to mesic on the go. Remember that scene at the beginning of Guardians of the Galaxy where Chris Pratt was dancing around the alien planet listening to Redbone's Come and Get Your Love? Well, he was using a Walkman while doing it!

Going into the beginning of the CD, Inventor James Russel was the first to officially work on the project. He started off in his garage by creating many different forms for digital music to play. His goal was to was to make some trendy version of vinyl. He wasn't the only one with the ice though. Countries very into technology such as Japan has similar plans This would eventually get the attention of companies like Sony and Phillips to stop the productions of the Walkmen and Cassette album. These companies would market a thin 5 inch wide disc that would play music given the same technology that Thomas Edison made with the phonograph 100 years ago. They decided to make it out of a laser encoded disc, made from the same material as bullet proof glass, these are made to last about more 100 years. 

They started off experimenting with only a couple of albums to see how they would do, such as Billy Joel's “52nd Street" and Bruce Springstein's "Born in the USA" these took off immediately, as audiophiles would practically throw away all of the vinyl and cassette tapes to get their music on the all new CD! In only a few years, CD sales would overshadow vinyl sales and left the cassette business in the 

Around 1982, Sony launched its CDP-101. The first commercialized CD player in 1982. It was first offered by an electronics company in Japan, they accepted, and the CD player made it to the U.S. around 1983 for the prices around $1000. Now imagine how much a CD player would go for now, given you can still find one at BestBuy. It's like when Apple released the first iPhone for a lot of money and they would inevitably get a little cheap as the technology advanced!

CD's started being made in large factories. They began to make a lot of money and sold worldwide. Many bands and cover artists started using them to record and sell their music to masses worldwide. 

The next step companies like Sony and Phillips took was around the late ’90s when they first discovered the CD-R (Compact Disc Recordable). Developed in 1988, the CD-R took flight when PCs and digital recorders began allowing consumers to “rip” discs, preserving the music in low bit-rate files to later be recorded onto CD-Rs to share. It was a slow process to download music, but it was only the beginning of the next big trend that would change the audio business forever, Digital Music.

In fact later on, the CD-RW would overtake the CD-R, where the difference with this one is that it could download music somewhat faster and could store a lot more music! From there you could start to share your digital music with your friends and family. You could start to download album, albeit which will cost money, but as the digital music game increased, the prices for the individual music started to decrease.

 

Around 2000, the new millenium caused a new enemy for CD's. It's as if all their development with digital music opened up a Pandora's box for CD's. Known as Pandora. That and Napster introduced the world to streaming music online and giving us "internet radio. This type of way to upload and download music started a new wave of listing to music. People became obsessed with this type of way to listen to music and it would become the next big thing. From there, it all went downhill. 

Then came computer company Apple's new invention, the iPod. It was told to be this small rectangular touch screen device that could hold thousands upon thousands of songs on. What CD sales once did to Cassette sales, now iTunes sales was now doing to CD sales.

Around the 2010s, more streaming services started to take off even more. the idea that pandora set up with "internet radio service" is what is today's biggest tred, and what one could argue the biggest competitor in the game being Spotify. While still offering fees to join, Spotify is the hottest way to not only stream music but to create your own playlists and will use technology to suggest similar songs to the ones you already listen to. 

Now, CD's have practically come obsolete. You may still have some relatives you have copies of Greatful Dead or Phis. (I know I have some who do) but most places have officially stopped making them. However, it's not uncommon for old things to come back into style. Vinyl is still pretty popular at the moment for old fashioned listening on record players, movies like Guardians of the Galaxy got people to see cassettes and Walkmans back in a new light, and hey the 80s and now 90s are coming back to the mainstream in pop culture, so at any point CD's could come back into how we listen to music. And maybe a day will come where another new form of technology will overtake streaming. Who knows! for now, the CDs will go down in music history as what took the music world by storm, even if every storm will eventually end.

Sources:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/47441962

https://www.digitaltrends.com/features/the-history-of-the-cds-rise-and-fall/

https://www.britannica.com/technology/compact-disc

https://www.philips.com/a-w/research/technologies/cd/beginning.html

Blog #2: The Founding Era

After learning a lot through the many articles and videos presented in my Media Laws and Literacy class, I find myself with so much more knowledge about the Supreme Court than ever before. For starters, one of the most surprising things I would never of even thought about was that before each case/trial every super court justice would shake one another's hand. It was to show a sense of respect and integrity, where even if they would disagree on a major issue presented in the court room, there was always dignity between the justices. 

It astounds me at the beginning, when Justice David H. Souter was talking about how it can take up to three to five years for you to almost forget that you are apart of the Supreme Court. It can often be overwhelming to some people that you are sitting on such a high position, so over much time it starts to calm you and for you to really only focus on the work. It also surprises me that they take the time, to review practically every case submitted to them, and review it, if it's good and valuable enough to be trialed here. It also surprises me that out of all the steps that happen during a case at the Supreme Court, the decision can be the longest. Spanning to four weeks, writing the opinion must be carefully done and only one justice is allowed to do it per case.

What I ultimately took away from the videos was that the Supreme Court was a powerful place to settle disputes and laws. Before then, I only considered it just like any other court or government office, only at a higher and fancier level. I thought they focus mostly in making and changing laws. Which is true but I also know now they deal a lot of time in very human issues in dilemmas. It takes the power of something as strong as the United States constitution, and makes sure to settle the issues of people fairly. Even if it takes some time for it to be fair to people of all race and gender. The lawyers even get 30 minutes of power, who have a captive audience, trying to convince the justices the truth and reality. 

Overall, my view about the Supreme Court feels much more different than before. The videos really show the pristine and intelligence that goes into creating the Supreme Court. Where you learn that each lawyer gets 30 minutes to create an oral argument that will, then be sent to a room where all of the justices will discuss, but only one gets to write an opinion. There is a lot of drama going on, where one man's choice in the Supreme Court could change the verdict entirely. Where everyone would speak once, before anyone would speak twice. There are many small details that highlight the amount of thought went in, and I certainly am curious to learn more about our government system.