Final Blog Post

Relationship with Technology

As a 20-year-old who was born in a period when technology was starting to play a big role in our everyday lives, I feel like my relationship with technology is healthier than my other people may have with technology. For the early days of elementary school, I was thought everything the "old-fashioned way" with pen and paper but since I had learning disabilities I was introduced to technology a lot earlier than my peers were.

As technology has become more prominent in everyone's life it has played a big part in mine. I use technology for everything. I use it to enhance my life. all or most of my documents are stored somewhere that I can access with technology, I use the calendar on my phone and computer to keep track of important dates, communicate through text messages, and rarely do I ever pick up the phone anymore. If I can use technology instead of doing something "old-fashioned" heck yes I am going to do it. I do not consider technology revolving around my daily life as an aspect of which I need to judge whether it is healthy or not because it personal preference of how I want to keep my life organized and I choose to use technology to help.

Where I see the unhealthy relationship with technology is when social media started to gain popularity among teenagers. My parents always told me to stay off of social media which at the time they referred to social media as Facebook. I joined Instagram in 2012 because my friends were joining it and I didn't want to miss out on all the excitement. I also joined Snapchat for a short time also because my friends started to use it but then I quickly deleted the app after my dad told me about an incident with Snapchat in the neighboring town. Since then I thought about redownloading Snapchat because it's the new way of dating as the kids of this generation would say. Instagram throughout the years has left a somewhat nasty feeling inside of me ever since people started making finsta's. Every time I go onto Instagram I get overwhelmed and my brain automatically thinks of sexual thoughts (there are actually quite a few studies on this but I choose to include a link to an article) because I spend long random periods of time alone by myself scrolling through Instagram like I'm a loser with no life. I felt like deleting Instagram a couple of times knowing it's owned by Facebook Which I do not and will not ever use but I can't justify all the useful information I would lose if I deleted the app.

If it wasn't for social media coming into my life I would have a healthy relationship with technology but as technology improves my relationship may get better or worse depending on how I go about the situation currently. Do I want to be cool and take part in the latest tech trends or do I want to limit myself due to the negative social effects it may cause me?

Technology in My Life

I can definitely say that over the years my time on technology can be thought of as a bell curve. Technology didn't start coming into the picture until around 2012 and at that time I mostly used it at home for games and when I was out I would use it as a mobile communications device to contact people. From 2015 to 2018 I was at the peak with technology spending way too much time on it but not as much as my brother did playing video games. from 2018 on I started to change my habits and focus on how technology can benefit my everyday life and play a more active role and I've started to limit myself to the average time spent a day on certain apps. My goal as of now is to try and spend under 5 hours of my time on technology on things that can be addicting (social Media, Youtube, etc.).

Informing or Misleading

While I do think technology is informing me there have been statistics that show technology has caused a decline in the smarts (OK, the first link shows the complete opposite). Personally, I do not like the word smart because smart can be used out of context. You can be smart by getting an A in the class or you can be smart and find a way to get out of completing assignments as seen in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I like to use the word genius to compare myself. While I may not be a genius according to the dictionary definition I am utilizing technology in ways I could not previously to enhance my geniusfication (to be more like a genius (not sure if that's a word or not.)).

Do I think the technology might be misleading or giving me unreliable information? In aspects yes like how Apple plagues my devices with the Apple Plague in order to convince me to upgrade when I don't want to. If we are talking more so about the news I receive from technology I think that the person who clicks public or sends to alert me is the one who is allowing me to see the unreliable or misleading information on technology which is a human error. I've only seen a few times in my daily life when I use technology that it has become unreliable like when my Mac was acting funny the day macOS Big Sur was released. Also when sites go down that I desperately need or annoying bugs/glitches appear when I just want everything to work.

As the nature of who I am, I worry about these things but I try not to let them bother me. Not as much as others do. I don't cry over what I see on social media like people may do or obsess overusing technology as people may do. I'm the person who gets frustrated when technology does not work or they are seeming trying to get me to upgrade behind the scenes when I AM NOT WILLING TO UPGRADE APPLE!!! At the end of the day, I've accepted all of this into my life because I have to and some days will be better than others. Like my dad says "you're too young to not learn about new and upcoming technology because it is and will be part of your world whereas I am already halfway through my years and don't have the time nor do I care about this stuff anymore as I am too old for it."

Friends and Family

As I mentioned my family has a completely different take on technology than I do with my enthusiasm for it. My parents feel like they are too darn old to know how to use technology but are still in the loop and stay up to date as much as they can be as my grandparents are so out of it because they've been retired for so many years that they have started to become outdated. When COVID hit and people moved to Zoom my grandpa could not go to his monthly complex meeting where he lives because he did not know how to use Zoom or even know what Zoom was. All he can really do is pick up the phone and do telehealth. On the other side of things, my brother is very lazy and will not speak up unless he is telling you something. When we all updated our phones and he did not he insisted his phone did not work as expected and demanded a new phone. He didn't care if he had to switch to Samsung or keep with the Apple phone but he just wanted a new phone and he got one. He is quick to complain a lot about technology when it does not work. My sister who is the first girl in the family ever was born into technology. She's your average girl who likes to do TikTok while she is not allowed on any other social media. It's hard to believe but she is should be the most tech-savvy out of all of us since she is the youngest but she either knows more than you think or knows not much. She didn't even know how to work Gmail to download images and print them out which I had to help her with.

Positive or Negative

I want to say that technology is a positive part of their lives but from the aspects, I see it doesn't seem like it is. It is only making their lives harder as they have to try and learn it on their own.

Technology in Relationships

Technology plays a big role in my relationships. More of it is bad. People often use text messaging and social media like Snapchat to communicate and have changed the way relationships have traditionally been. I myself find it really hard to find someone to be in a relationship with and while technology and social media have made it easier to see into people's lives It has also limited me by the apps I choose and refuse to use.

Online Footprint

In the last 3 or 4 years, I have reduced my digital footprint with all the privacy allegations. I've decided to take a more private approach to my digital footprint as I do not want it publically out there or sold on the dark web. I praise Apple for the privacy measure they have implemented as it has made lessened my digital footprint but also made it harder to navigate the web. You have to choose between being more private or having access to more information that may exploit your privacy on the web.

What I am hoping is that everything that once was on the internet (which I took off or down) is no longer visible to them. I try to freely express myself as the person who I am under my name and when I do not feel like it is appropriate to share under my name I will go under a pseudonym If I can not go anonymous.

Online Presents

I am pretty surprised after Googling myself what I saw. I saw much less than I hoped I'd see. What surprised me the most is that the first link that showed up was Ethan Menzel - Stephen F. Austin State University - LinkedIn which is not me as I go to High Point University (obviously I'm in your class). I'm the second sub-link under the first one which is actually me. You get an Instagram page for @ethan_menz which is two letters off from mine. Still, on that first page, you get some Facebook accounts trying to be me which isn't (I get those a lot), and my youtube which I do not post to, and then my all trails at the bottom. On Google Images you get my LinkedIn profile picture and banner and then a photo someone took of me during my Eagle Scout Ceremony. The Eagle Scout Ceremony is interesting because I do not have control over it being posted except for giving content to it being posted to certain locations which I'm fine with. Other images aren't directly of me but link to sites that use my name which is actually me like my local Boy Scout's site that showcases me a lot. There's a Boy Scout camp I went to that took a random picture of me I remember when it happened but do not remember them taking the picture and every time you google the camp you will end up coming across a picture of me. I understand that every time I sign up for a site I am giving content for them to share my info but I do not like that real people are able to take or use a picture with me in it and upload it to the internet without specifically using my name. Wish they'd ask permission. I'd say yes 99.9% of the time. I also do not like people taking pictures of me because they then have pictures of me and they can do whatever they want with them and some of them will delete the pictures after they are done with them or will just store them. It's creepy because my friends act very childish sometimes and take pictures of me and turn them into mean memes without my content which I will say no to.

I tried to make a personal website a few times using Wix for my digital art and photography but I ended up deleting it because I didn't like it. I try to delete my traces if I am certain I am no longer going to use the site anymore so they do not send me junk emails and I am not sold. The downside of the digital age is that when you no longer utilize a service, site, or platform they will delete it after days of inactivity. It's also stored on servers you have no access to.

Social Media Presents

You pervert I am not going to give you my social media but I use some of the big ones and then some smaller and even unknown by a majority of people. I can tell you I do not use Facebook because my Grandpa uses it and it's more for old people. One day my grandpa inquired about Instagram and tried to learn about it and said "one day I will get into it". If he ever uses Instagram and I'm still on it I'm leaving because old people have now landed foot on Instagram.

My LinkedIn is pretty self-explanatory if they are able to access it (not sure how LinkedIn works). On most of my other social media, you can tell that I'm an avid tech enthusiast and maybe the school abbreviation such as HPU and then the expected year I graduate because many of my friends are doing it so I do it too to be cool. Sometimes I'll add I'm an Eagle scout where I feel necessary and will advocate on behalf of it any day because it's my life achievement. Without it, I'm not the person I am today.

Private Information

I forgot if you said this or If I read it online but spam calls have been growing since people are giving their cell phone numbers away instead of using a landline which not many people use. My parents still have one but I rarely use it and I prefer texting to calling in general because you are actually talking to a human whereas with texting you are hidden behind a screen and don't see or hear the person face to face. I also hate picking up calls I do not know so If it's not in my contacts I'm probably not going to pick it up and block it. Emails, I've had a Verizon email address my dad created for our family since I was born, and recently they have moved their email service to AOL which made my email go downhill ever since. I read you should never use emails that come from your service providers as they are often shitty. Ever since Apple came out with the hide my email feature I started using it. Wish they offered to hide my phone. I've always felt that filling in. all the boxes makes me feel more complete but too much can be bad. I started giving away my approximate location when It asks for it as many sites do not even need your precise location anyway.

How Does Social Media Make People Feel

There are two different ways to look at this. Scrolling through content on social media and posting to social media. Scrolling through social media can make people depressed as people see what their peers post and often feel jealous. Posting on social media is a fabrication of their reality that is one-sided and only shows their most happy times. Posting to social media can be either stressful or rewarding to some people depending on who you ask. If and when I post to social media It's more just to get it out there so I will sometimes post something instantly and then feel regret.

Blog # 10

During this round of EOTO presentations, I learned much more since these were concepts rather than pieces of technology. I thought that alternative and mainstream media were completely different than how the presenter presented them. I originally thought that mainstream media was the big news companies like ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and CNN which are the main news sources that we all think of. With these companies bing big on TV I thought television was part of mainstream media. For alternative media, I thought that it was an alternative to getting news from TV primarily through the channels mentioned. I thought that some lesser-known media companies like Newsweek, Huffington Post, The Atlantic, etc. that many people would not usually see on TV would have to get through the internet or some other form of media. Interesting to learn that there are actually companies that are specifically for alternative media such as Signs of the Times, Truthdig, The Empire Files and so many more. Never heard of these alternative media sources before the presentation.

I knew what Echo chambers were mostly from the extensive WWII stuff I was thought in school. Whistleblowers I've been learning more about since it has been appearing in the news more recently. I never knew that a whistle blower's job was to control your brain/brainwashing to try to convince you a certain way. I thought a whistleblower was someone who was trying to leak information or one of Trump's phony names he made up.

It's funny how today's society thinks of online influencers vs what others think. I think when I see the word online influencers someone who tries to influence you online in a certain way more or less to buy a particular product similar to ads but in a more live and expressive way not done by AI. Interesting how online influencers have evolved into celebrities posting content to get likes, comments, and views on their social media posts. I find it really interesting how some online influencers act on social media just to get views where they are a totally different person if it wasn't for other content they were posting onto social media. People do not realize the struggles I go through in my educational path with my challenges but people tell me that you're going to do great things in life and that they back me up. I look up to the "geniuses " of the world and not to the online influencers because they are doing it for the money whereas "geniuses" are doing it because they are smart enough to do it. This makes me a little unique because I do not like what society and trends tell me to like. I like Classical music and prefer not to drink and have a party-filled college experience because people like Steve Wozniak stayed in their dorm all day and tried to invent the next big thing. I'm trying to accomplish that goal or something close to it while living my best life to its fullest potential. To me, online influencers are money grabbers just like hookers are looking for sex.

Never knew confirmation theory was a thing. I only thought it was something you just had. I have confirmation theory all the time. I think oh I side with this and then think oh wait but I'm more learning this way so I should not believe in this. Sometimes I get the ah-ha moment where my beliefs totally change.

Bog # 8: Propaganda

Propaganda is seen in two different ways. The bad way "ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause" and the good way "the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person". Most people would consider the word to be a bad due to the real word situations in which the word was used.

The word propaganda goes back long before world war 1 as we may commonly freer to it as. Propaganda started in Athens. Citizen groups were formed by the Greeks and included people with different religious and political ideas which is how propaganda and counter propaganda formed. What started propaganda among the the citizen groups was lack of common interest when forming these groups.

In the 16th century propaganda more like we use it today was organized by Philip II of Spain and Queen Elizabeth of England during the Spanish Armada during the 1588.

Even though we American's commonly know the term from World War 1 Europeans know the term from the missionary activities of the Roman Catholic Church. 

Both World War 1 and 2 are the worlds most well-known use of propaganda. From the newspapers to the radio to the movies to books any and everything was used to create propaganda during this time. 

More modern forms of propaganda can be seen during the segregation era and the Black Lives Matter protests. Protests and marches are both forms of propaganda as they speak ideas and information by stepping up and speaking out. During the segregation movement Rosa Parks politely refusing to sit in the back of the bus can be propaganda as she furthered her view on why she thought it wisen;t right for her to have to sit on the back of the bus. The Marches during the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 used propaganda as people were sitting on highways trying to cause major change as well as posters being put up and held during the marches. 

Propaganda is done on a large scale whether it is state wide, country wide or world wide Propaganda can quickly form to be something big. When the police officer killed George Floyd it quickly went from Minneapolis, Minnesota to the entire United States with the help of the media publicizing the event. People say that the new is considered propaganda but in the United States the news is inly trying to tell the truth as much as it can while in North Korea it could be seen as propaganda. 

Propaganda mostly occurs in Young Adults and middle aged adults. Children aren't going to take part in any propaganda because they are taught in school that propaganda is bad and not to do it. Older adults over the age of 50 aren't going to take part in propaganda because some say they are too old for this kind of stuff and lived through other propaganda where they had the chance to speak up and out. Mostly young and middle adults are taking part in propaganda because they are the people who are going to shape the future of the world. 

As I've seen in the the world anyone who stands out and is "different" from the rest of us most likely going to be involved in propaganda. LGBTQ+ groups have been singled out and made fun of resulting in propaganda, Mexicans with the boarder crisis have been singled out and so have Black and colored people and even disabled people too. Society has a stigma on people who aren't the same as them resulting in propaganda.

As we can see propaganda comes in many forms. Within our history Propaganda has been seen in Dr. Seuss books, Popeye, Disney Movies and so much more that you can not escape it. 

Blog: The Age of AI

 

In class we watched the an episode of the PBS Frontline titled The Age of AI. This film wisen;t new news to me even though it came out in 2019 and may or may not still be relevant to me. I'm anti-Google and hate all these smart-speakers that want to invade my privacy and know every word I say. I cannot find the exact article to back up my information but I remember reading that if the police ask for the recordings in your smart speaker Your required to give it to them if you own a Amazon Alexa or a Google Home but not if you have a Apple HomePod. I'm not sure exactly why this is but I think it's because of apple's privacy focused measures and so I think they delete their recordings after 7 days I think. (wish I found the article.) I've always hated these speakers because of this. I'm a big fan of Apple and their privacy measures which is why I always go to Apple. I occasionally go to Microsoft if I need things to work cross platform but I do not like Google's privacy measures and how they sell user's data so I will no longer use Google Search and Google chrome unless I must. It's hard to not use google products and services when the rest of the world does but I deal with it.

My parents got an Alexa Echo by upgrading their Sirius XM subscription plan. I don't use it because everything I can do with the echo I can o with my phone with Siri or by hand. my parents mostly use it to play music. My dad can't even get the Alexa to understand his lingo. He says "Alexa play some tunes" and Alexa's like "here's a playlist I found." I keep telling him Alexa doesn't understand tunes but he still doesn't care but will get angry when it doesn't;t work. I love trolling and disliking all songs on the Alexa so I never hear them. my mom often has dance parties to the Alexa and If a song come on I hate I will dislike it to never hear it again which makes her annoyed.

My roommate has an Alexa and recently he has started using it more often and so I can tell when it's on by the blue light that it's recording me. I feel that since we do not get along that it's recording me and he can hear what I'm doing when he's not in the room so I mute the Alexa. When he gets back he always unmutes it which then it records me again which gets me mad because I do not want things recording me without by consent. 

I also do not use Siri or voice activated things because I find it weird doing it in public. I'd rather manually enable it on my phone instead. 

While smart-speakers can help shape the future by yelling turn on the lights or turn on the shower I often find it creepy and prefer manually activating it on my phone rather then doing it by voice or going up to the thing and turning it on or off. My parents only have a few smart things on our house but I tell them my house will be very smart in ways you wish you had now. This is because I love smart appliances and because my parents tell me that this is not your house to make the decisions on. 

Blog # 9: Diffusion Theory

 

The cell phone can easily be one of the longest product adoptions. The cell phone was created by a Motorola engineer named Martin Cooper in 1973 (almost 50 years 49 to be exact). Most if not everyone has used a phone if if it was a cell phone or a landline phone. It's interesting to see that only 97% of people use a cell phone and 85% of people use a smartphone as of 2021. 

I've heard stories from my teachers about their first cell phone. One of my middle school teachers told me that she used to carry the Motorola Dynatac in her car. I also remember a few of the older Middle school teachers I had who did upgrade to an iPhone (iPhone 4 or 4s to be exact) but for some reason were stuck on iOS 6 and told me not to touch a thing or else you'll mess it up like most oder iPhone users would say at the time. I knew 3 teachers that were stuck on iOS 6. One of my High School said that she would never get an iPhone and was one of those laggards that still used a flip phone to it's fullest capabilities. She wanted to make it clear to all her students that she still used a flip phone. She did carry an android smartphone one time I saw her but It was a smartphone I couldn't;t tell the model of. In my senior year that same teacher told me that she got an iPhone 7 from a raffle she won and had switched completely to an iPhone.

When the cell phone first came out only people who could afford a $4000 cell phone would go out and buy one. They were mostly for high end business people who couldn't be away from a phone line. for the Smartphone and it's ever so slightly changes year after year I would say that tech reviewers and product annalysts are among the first to upgrade to the newest model. These are the people who would test out the products and write reviews for the consumer's who are planning on upgrading.

Next comes the early adopters. cell phones at the beginning of their time didn't have many early adopters due to the high price. During the 80's when phones started to come out business men and women were among the first people to have a cell phone as they were out of the house often. Many housewives wanted to make sure that their husbands were safe at all times which is why one member of the family usually the working member carried a cell phone to communicate with the other members of the family via the house phone. The early adopters of the smart phone are the people who can afford to upgrade their phone yearly due to their plan or work. The early innovators are snobs because they like to brag abut being the first person to own x phone. They're in your face about it and I don't like that. They're also the people who are the first to go out and buy the next generation smartphone that has the new features rather than upgrade to a phone that only ads speed improvements. 

The early majority is the group of people what bought a cell phone when they were starting to become popular. The 90's saw a lit of early majorities buying cell phones as many people were out and about and wanted to know where their family members were at all times. The early majority of smartphones happened during the period when apple was selling the iPhone 4 and 4s which was my first phone. I remember everyone who had a iPhone 4. My teacher's and family members all had an iPhone 4. the iPhone 4 was affordable for most people who were ready to upgrade but not for the people who didn't want to learn a new operating system and a new phone. Some people,e in the early majority had the idea that their smartphone would last them as long ad=s their pervious cell phone did. My uncle who travels and lives internationally used an iPhone 4 until 2017 while his partner continuously upgraded his iPhone. He was one of those people who were stuck in the iPhone 4 time period. If you talk to someone about their first smartphone they will probably say that their first smartphone was the iPhone 4 as the newest iPhones remind people of the iPhone 4 days with their squarish body. 

The late majority of cell phone users are those who only owned a smartphone and never really felt the need to own a cell phone. The late majority took off big time with the iPhone 6. The iPhone 6 was best seller iPhone to this day as apple sold the most iPhone 6's. My uncles and aunts had one, friends, parents friends and even my parents had one except for me who was fine with my 4 and saw no need to upgrade as it still continued to work and receive updates perfectly fine. many older people in their 60's who were hesitant to buy an iPhone felt confident enough to buy an iPhone at this time. What makes me laugh is that the government was giving away phones in 2014 to anyone who supported Obama. 

The laggards today are the people like my grandparents who still do not have a cell phone. Both my grandmothers do not have a cell phone because one lives in senior living and one can't stand technology and wants to "through it out the windows" if my grandfather ever dies because the does not want to learn it. All she knows is her little plasma TV and her rotary pone. if you try and take those away from her and upgrade them she gets all angry and complains that they do now rock and that they are a piece of shit. There are other laggards in the sense that they they owned a cell phone but never upgraded and now became dated. My grandfather used to work as an electrician the bell telephone company but never owned a cell phone for the longest time because he never felt he needed one. He got a cell phone that he used for the longest time as he felt it did the job but was hesitant to learn new technology and always was afraid to break it. When he upgraded to the iPhone SE 2 in 2021 he often asked for help as he thought every button he pressed would do something and possibly break the phone. He still does not know that anyone can help him with his phone as everyone nows how to use one and does not need to come back to us for help. If you're still a laggard that does not own a cell phone more importantly a smartphone you're behind as cell phone booth are no longer around and their is no way to get in contact with someone without having a cell phone when you are traveling or in public. 

Blog Post # 6: EOTO Technology Presentations

You may or may not know this about me but I'm one of the biggest tech fans out there. I have niches for retro tech, new/future tech, Apple products, and my take on privacy and what I believe is right and wrong and my beliefs. Because I am into technology and have a huge love for it my opinions are quite different then other's. While I may give my own opinions it may not be the best opinion. But when it comes to facts I I mostly know the correct answer and if Not I will look it up or say that I do not know. I hate when people try to outdo me and say that I'm wrong when clearly they're wrong. I had an argument once with a iPhone 6 user who said that his phone had 5G when in theory he might have had a cellular network plan that was capable of offering him 5G but only if he had a 5G capable phone which he did not. he argued that Apple already offers 5G comparable phones and at the time which I believe was 2019 they did not. But he insisted he was right when he wisen't. Pissed me off. he didn't't even back up his argument with information to support his claim or he would have noticed he was wrong.

Now knowing that I'm a big fan of technology It was interesting to see my peer's perspective on technology and to hear some history's of technology that I quite frankly did not know. I did not know that Bluetooth was named after the Danish king Harold "Bluetooth". I originally thought that bluetooth got its name from a tooth or something blue or maybe even a tooth that was blue because I thought of it as a play on words but it was interesting to learn that It was actually created by a 10th century Danish king. 

I'm a huge fan of "tapes" as in VHS and cassette tapes. I think they are superior in every aspect because they are versatile and you can do more with them. I learned from one of my peer's presentations that the Cassette Tape is the most popular format for music (not sure if that's what he exactly said or not but it was something along those lines). I always proved my point of saying that cassette tapes were more popular even though people may not have wanted to believe me and knowing it was true made me happy to hear that. I never got into vinyls/records because they were big and bulky and my parents nor I did not have a record player. My parents had "mix tapes" they had created and radio's that were capable of playing the "mix tapes" so I experimented with them and found them to be more useful then CD's at the time and this was way before streaming music took off. 

Now with the television I know a lot of this stuff already for a few reasons. One is because my grandmother is so anti-technology and is so old fashioned. She likes what she likes and when something breaks she gets angry when she has to upgrade to something more modern. She had a CRT television for as long as I could remember with the limited set of like 4 channels before it stop working and had to upgrade to our plasma TV which they have used ever since. I'm not sure if she knows how to play DVD's or even VHS tapes but she loves to set her schedule around what's on TV. I also know a lot about the Tv because a few years ago I had to take care of someone's house who had a big old TV from the 70's that used to be a be considered furniture. Those really unnecessarily big one's. I did not know that TV shows did not use color until way after movies did I thought that when movies introduced color so did TV's and that people had the option to pay more and buy a color tv or to pay less and stick to black and white. Interesting to learn. I also didn't know that the presenter who presented on the TV's 4th cousin is one of the presidents's. (didn't quite catch what she said because she was talking a big to fast). Everyone was laughing when they said that women votes for JFK because he was the hottest but I wisen;t laughing because I learned about this in high school. With the the Presidential debates between JFK and the other president who was running at the time it was more about looks then what they had to say since it was the first televised debate and so most women choose the hotter of the two to be president and what's how JFK won. So when I heard that and people started laughing I was like "Yeah! You didn't know that." Surprising how many people didn't know that.

Much of the other presentations I could remember wisen't much new information I have not previously knew but was more or less a simplified presentation on the topic that talked about their tech product. What I did want to note about one of the presentations was specifically about the iPhone presentation. The presenter said that If we didn't have the iPhone we probably wouldn't of had the products like the Apple Watch iPad and Mac but actually that's not all that true because the Mac came before the iPhone as it was released in 1984 so we most likely would have still seen the Mac. For the iPad I'm not sure if we would have seen it the way it is today if we didn't;t have the iPhone because Apple once created the Newton which was in a way the first iPad as it had similar qualities to an iPad but when Steve Jobs came back to Apple he scrapped that project so the iPad may or may not be around without the iPhone. She also didn't;t mention the famous quote from the original iPhone launch "An iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator... these are NOT three separate devices! And we are calling it iPhone!" How can you talk about iPhone without talking about specifics from the original iPhone release event. 

I was very impressed about how much people knew and talked about for their technology EOTO presentations. I'm amazed that people could talk about a piece of technology for a long time. 

Blog Post # 5: Antiwar & American Conservative Websites

Wow! Upon visiting Antiwar.com I was overwhelmed how much information is on the site. I'm not really a fan of how they played out the information on the site but overall it's in order of importance staring with the highlights and breaking news and then general news, viewpoints and spotlights. They also cover other countries which I thought was interesting. The first site I happened to randomly click on was Mariupol Is 'in the Hands' of Russia, Mayor Says which took me to Yahoo news. Most of the information seems to be coming from Antiwar.com but occasionally you will redirected to other sites.

These are multiple reasons why you would not see this kind of news is because it seems to be a independent news company that voices most of their opinions. Like me who heard of this site for the first time I think this site also does not get a lot of views which could have to do with why you do not see it in the mainstream news. Some of the articles redirect you to other sites which already arena the mainstream news that have their own channels like yahoo news does. The other reason why I do not think you would see this site in the mainstream news is because they would get backlash over their news and information where as keeping to an online presents will allow for them to be more open. I'm not exactly sure if the first amendment specifically talks about what you can or can not say online but from experience often times things posted online will never make it to mainstream news because it has gone too the extreme left or right.

The second website The American Conservative I liked a little big more than the first one. It's layout and design was more modern and pleasing to me not being too overwhelming. I've never heard of this site before because I most certianly do not understand the political lingo that much to even know who a conservative is. Without knowing what a conservative is I immediately get turned off by the site. I also feel that some of the mainstream news channels are much bigger the the American Conservative that that they get pushed to the top and is what you would see articles from first on places like Google news or MSN news unless you follow this site specifically. This site compared to the last one isn't as antiwar focused because the first article is when I was on the site was about Nuclear War and after scrolling a bit I found an article titled The Cause of The War. After skimming the article It was more about how the US is involved with "the war" or whatever you want to call it. You'll get references to WWIII and War related news but its using the world war and it's related words to describe how a war could start based on its headline but then when you actually read the article it's the complete opposite. In the article Did Blinken ‘Green-Light’ World War III? the headline suggests war might be upcoming but when you read the article it talks about how war is not really happening based on the the subject of the headline.

Specifically talking about websites on more on a digital sense you will need to seek out the more obscure antiwar sites because they do not want to risk getting flagged down and removed since the first amendment may not apply as much to the online content. I also think that people want to get the news and not so much here about extreme opinions so if you were someone that did you would have to seek out the sites yourself.

Me myself I want to hear the news as it's happening and and get the news based on someone's opinion rather then someone taking the news and skewing it to be completely different then what the news is trying to convey.