Privacy

     

    As a nation, we have come so far with the technological advancements we have made. Things have been created few thought possible a few decades ago. There are new ways for people to communicate over the internet. We use it as a way to market ourselves and purchase items over the internet. Unfortunately, there are downsides to these advancements. Privacy has become a major concern as companies and individuals are able to gain access to our own private information. What we send to people in private can be broadcast to the whole world if it falls into the wrong hands. 

    In her TED Talk, Darieth Chisolm explains how she was the victim of a man who leaked her private pictures on the internet after they broke up. She referred to it as "revenge porn" when someone leaks your private explicit content without your consent. Chisolm had her privacy interfered with since the boyfriend took the pictures of her while she was asleep and posted them without her consent. If technology had never advanced to the point where we have a state of the arc camera on our phones, Chisolm's boyfriend would not have had the ability to take pictures of her. He would not have even thought of such an extreme way to seek revenge. Technology has given the opportunity for Chisolm to communicate over the internet but unfortunately led to her private information being communicated without her consent.

    Juan Enriquez discusses how our online presence is like a tattoo, it does not go away. He says that when you get a tattoo sometimes it is an in-the-moment decision and you can come to regret it shortly after receiving it. However, it is very hard and painful to get rid of it. Like a tattoo, what you post on social media has lasting consequences. You might not have meant to post something hurtful or offensive online, but once it is put out there it is very hard to get rid of. What you post online will stick with you and follow you in every aspect of your life. 

    These issues affect all of us. We can be like Darieth and have a partner seek revenge on us over social media. All of us can make a mistake and post something online that we will regret. The internet is an invasion of privacy. When we get on it we are giving up the right to our private information. The only way to avoid this completely is to not be on social media and to limit how much we use the internet. However, this is not very practical. According to statists, there are 4.66 billion active users of the internet worldwide. If you were to get off of the internet, it would be very hard to keep up with what is going on in the world. You would cut off communication with other people and the ability to buy things online. Companies have made it to where we need the internet in order to survive. We are in a quid pro quo with these companies. They provide access to their services to us for free and in exchange, they access our information in order to market to us. There is no incentive to protect our privacy. The government wants our information as well. They are not going to step in and stop these companies from taking our information. I would argue that we should not even want the government to interfere and make policies to protect us. We need less government involvement in our lives, not more. It is in our best interest to limit the government’s involvement in protecting our privacy. The best thing we can do is limit the amount of information we put on the internet and try our best to be careful with what we put on social media. There will always be risks when you use the internet and we have to take those risks in order to access the good services the internet provides us. 

Links to the videos:

Darieth Chisolm

Juan Enriquez

EOTO Takeaways

    One technology that I learned about during the EOTO presentations was Netflix. Everyone knows Netflix as the streaming empire that it is today, but Netflix was around long before House of Cards premiered on the service. Netflix was created by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in 1997. Their business model was to sell and rent out DVDs through the mail. They were trying to compete with Blockbuster, who was the DVD rental giant at the time. Hastings and Randolph wanted to create a version of Blockbuster that could be sold by mail. This business model of having things sent to you instead of you having to go out to the store to get it yourself has expanded rapidly since Netflix started sending out videos. When Netflix got into the DVD business it was a robust market recording 16.4 billion dollars in 2005. However,  DVDs have been in decline ever since this and that is directly because of Netflix.

   

   In 2007, Netflix began a streaming service called "Watch Now".  This gave consumers the ability to watch content at home on their television and computers. Netflix made deals to with systems such as the XBOX 360 and Playstation 3 to put the service on their devices, which helped Netflix grow faster. This move by Netflix helped render DVDs obsolete as it is much more convenient to play a video on your Apple Tv compared to having to put a disc in a player to watch the video. In 2013 Netflix began creating original series, with the debut of House of Cards. Since 2013, Netflix has created hundreds of shows and films. They have forced studios such as Disney and Warner Brothers to create their own streaming service to keep up with the changing times. Netflix has given creates opportunities to make films and shows in a way that traditional cable and film studios would not allow. Netflix has caused people to develop addictions to their phones. According to the person who gave the presentation class, people watching Netflix spend an average of 3.2 hours a day watching Netflix. Because it is so convenient to watch Netflix, people are doing it at an unhealthy rate when they should be going outside or meeting new people. While there have been some unfortunate side effects of Netflix, their streaming service is one of the most important technological advancements of the twenty-first century. 

Anti-War Websites

    

     The United States has been involved in unnecessary, endless wars for decades. Ever since the tragedy that happened on September 11, 2001, it seems like we are getting into a new war every other week. America is interfering in other countries' affairs when a lot of time it is not our job to be involved. On the surface, it appears we are trying to help other countries achieve peace and prosperity. You hear individuals in the Biden Administration say that the adults are back in the room. This applies to their thoughts on how business was conducted during the Trump Administration, but it can also apply to their thoughts on the rest of the world. America, especially the ruling class thinks they are smarter than other countries. They want to lecture other countries about the "right thing to do." This makes them feel like they should get involved in conflicts for virtually no reason. It's an opportunity to virtue signal.

         The opportunity to help other countries is not the only reason America gets involved in wars. The main reason we get involved is, for one thing, money. Fighting in wars is good for the bottom line. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, President Biden is requesting 715 billion dollars for the defense budget. War sells. People make money off of it. Right now there is no reason for us to be spending this much money on war. We are in no conflicts that are that important that we need to add more money to the national debt. Then you look at the companies profiting the most off of the war. They are making billions of dollars off selling weapons. These companies have no incentive to want wars to stop happening. There is money to be made by being involved in wars. 

    The mainstream media have no desire to cover these pointless wars. They are shills for the ruling class and the global elitists, willing to say that the sky is green if they were told to by Big Brother. Since politicians and the people controlling politicians do not want wars to stop because of special interests, the media will not properly cover these wars. Children and innocent people are being bombed in other countries and most people do not know about it. That is why it is so important that some people in the media be willing to speak up about the mistreatment we are causing. Two of the sites committed to the anti-war agenda are antiwar.com and The American Conservative. They are committed to exposing the horrors of these wars. However, it is really hard to hear about these sites. I would not know who they were if Professor Smith had not told us to look at the sites. Antiwar.com does not look like a professional site, as it relies on funding from the community to stay active. This is sad because they are putting important information out there, but will not gain the following they should. They are not going to become more well-known because they refuse to conform to the narrative. Since they will not do what they are told the mainstream media will bury them. These sites will be called conspiracy theorists or not promoted at all. Since it is clear the mainstream media will not call out what is going on around the war, that free speech activists from both sides of the political aisle promote websites like these. If the goal of the media is to keep citizens informed, these people must step up in so that democracy truly will not "die in the dark."

Anti-war websites:

antiwar.com

The American Conservative

The Technology of Motion Pictures

   

    Throughout human history, we have seen how people are constantly coming up with new ideas and technologies that have changed and continue to change the world forever. One of the biggest inventions of the 19th century was the photograph and the camera. Up until this point, the only way to document history was by being at the scene and reporting what happened second-hand accounts of events, and portraits and paintings. Because of this, we have no visual proof of what happened at some of the most important events in world history. That changed when the first photograph was taken in 1826. Now people were able to document history in a visual medium. Photogrpahs became a way for people to express themselves creatively. Portaits, architecture, and Civil War battles were some of the images documented by the camera. While the camera was an extremely important invention, it had its limitations. The cameras were so heavy that it was almost impossible to move around. It took a lot of time to take even one photo. While photography was a massive technological advancement, only so much could be learned from a photo. The ability of a photograph to educate and entertain audiences was limited to the still image. Eventaully it became easier to take photos when investors came up with the zoetrope, "a simple toy that made it possible for a series of pictures to be viewed in rapid succession, creating the illusion of motion." The creation of the zoetrope led to photos being taken at an exceptionally quicker rate than before. Photographer Eadweard Muybridge took the zoetrope and like most great inventors expanded upon it. Muybridge set up several cameras to film a horse running a race track. Mubridge took these photos and put them in a zoopraxiscope. This zoopraxiscope caused the still images to change at such a rapid pace that it appeared the horse was actually moving. So in 1888 a running horse changed the world forever and motion pictures were born. 

    "Motion pictures, also called film, cinema or movies, are a series of images, recorded on strips of film, that create the illusion of continuous motion ." This defines what motion pictures are. After Muybridge's horse running video became public inventors became fascinated with advancing this new medium. Thomas Edison created the Kinetogrpah, the first camera to use celluiod film which had been developed by George Eastman. This new camera inspired The Lumiére brothers Louis Nicholas and Louis Jean who invented the Cinématographe, a camera used to record, develop, and project films. The Cinématographe became the first affective film camera. The brothers were responsible for making the first film ever Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory (1895). In the film we see workers leaving the brothers factory. This film is important because it showed it was possible to tell a story through "moving images" and it focused on the struggles of everyday people, which films throughout history have done. 

    

    Over the next several decades creators were trying to understand what do with this groundbreaking new medium. Films were very short and did not have much of a story, opting instead to please audiences who were just so surprised to see images moving. This was known as the "Cinema of Attraction" era. As time moved on artists began to experiment with film to try to make something more then just moving images. The first feature length film was released in 1906 called The Story of the Kelly Gang.  People began to edit films, runtimes were longer, there was a focus on how a shot looked, and special effects were added to wow an audience in a different ways. In 1926 the first film to feature talking was released The Jazz Singer. This led to one of the most important aspects of motion pictures, meaning. Art is a big way our wold changes. It creates commonality, introduced us to other cultures, and changes our perceptions for how we see the world. Film is an educational tool. If we did not have filmmakers who were willing to push the boundaries of what the medium could accomplish, I do not think the world would be as understanding and technologically advanced as it is today. Because of this people around the world have the ability to watch films from different countries. We learn about other society's cultures and America has the ability to educate people about our culture. FIlm changed how people communicate. Two people who have nothing in common can start talking on a bench about The  Lord of the Rings and feel like they have been friends for years. Film communicates social and political ideas they want the audience to hear. The Suicide Squad can be viewed as a mindlessly fun superhero film, or you can look deeper into the message that the director is trying to portray about the danger of the government creating weapons to control people and covering it up so we do not hear about it. Another way the technology of film communicates is through visual rhetoric. What this means is that every shot of a film is trying to communicate something to the viewer. The way the cinematographer chooses to compose a shot, the colors used, and how the scene is edited are ways directors communicate through visual rhetoric.

    

    Motion pictures are one of the most important technological advancements ever. Without motion pictures there would be no television, sports, video games, and internet . However, it would be disingenuous to not point out a few of the negatives that arose with this medium. The film business, like any other business, is trying to make money. The studio system arose in the 1900's to consolidate the new technologies and create new ways to make money. This led to a monopoly as it gave certain people the power to choose who was allowed to make films. Women and African Americans were almost universally excluded from picture making. Films made in America were made by white men for white men. There was almost no way to get different people's perspectives. One of the major problems with motion pictures that arose in the studio system and still is somewhat prominent today was censorship. Hollywood was facing pressure from the government to monitor what was being put into films to avoid content that was deemed offensive or explicit like in The Birth of a Nation. The studios created The Hays Code which were self-imposed rules that films had to follow in order the get released. Language, graphic violence, and sexual content was banned from being shown. Censorship stimied creativity. It forced people into a box that made them compromise what they wanted to make in order to get the film released. Just like in any other aspect of live when someone gets involved to try to stop you from expressing yourself creativity falters. If motion pictures are supposed to be a tool for education, that is hard for them to do if they have to fit into specific guidelines. Today studios are so obsessed with finding the next billion dollar franchise that it seems like films that are exquisitely made and have something to say about the world are either made for no money or not made at all. If we want this artform to continue to prosper we need the studios to financially support new creators and new ideas. The invention of motion pictures is one of the most important technologies ever. They created new forms of communication and entertainment. Without motion pictures the world would be a very different place.