My Presence on Social Media

    

    I use social media to keep myself updated on things that are important to me: my friends; what they’re doing, new movies, new music, and major events. The social media apps that I use are Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter; I use all of them in different ways. Instagram is the place I post pictures of myself and major events in my life. It is the platform that helps me stay connected with childhood friends; I wish them happy birthday. I also post songs that I enjoy in addition to motivational quotes that are thought provoking. On Snapchat, I have streaks with over 10 people and my highest streak is 635 days. I post videos of what I’m currently doing with friends, along with sharing my thoughts on important events. Snapchat is a more personal platform because I post quotes and thoughts that are going through my mind everyday and I get my followers to reach out to me and they appreciate the content I put out. I prefer to post on Snapchat a lot more because the videos are only made available to see for 24 hours. Finally, I use Twitter to tweet out my thoughts on subjects that interest me the most. Twitter has a news section on the main page, which is how I catch up on the top news of the day. I personally like Twitter a lot because there is an algorithm to it every time when people tweet things out. In all of these apps, I keep in mind with all of the information that I’m putting out there because it will put me in greater risk of identity theft, stalking and harassment.

    The value that social media has for me is that I’m able to share my life and meet new people that I don’t even know. I’m able to start up conversations even if I don’t know much about them. Social media helps me build more confidence in myself by sharing things that I’m doing with friends on Snapchat. I can also share my thoughts on major events through all of the other social media apps that I use and I can start up 7-8 hour conversations with someone who is very interested in the topic. The importance of social media is in the way it connects people all across the world. Also, to talk about my relationship with technology further, despite me being on it for an excessive amount, I still feel my relationship with social media is healthy because I’m able to limit my time on it and I try to not let it consume me.

    Overall, if I were to apply for a job an employer would look me up online, they would find that I portray a very clean, not to mention charming image on the pictures I post on my accounts. The older I get, the more safely I use social media by limiting the stuff I post and not give any of my personal information because just like tattoos, the internet is forever. It’s better to leave a positive footprint than a negative footprint.

Values of Free Expression

 

8 Values of Free Expression

                    

The 2 out of the 8 Values of Free Expression that resonated with me the most were number 3, which relates to “Stable Change” (aka Safety Value), and number 6, which relates to the idea of “Promoting Tolerance.” For number 3, the reason why it’s important to me is because Spinoza’s TTP is similar to freedom of expression because it emphasizes and takes seriously the dangers when it comes to religious leaders meddling in politics. According to the TTP, it specifically states, “Religion leaders should not meddle into politics.” It has additionally been identified that granting the disaffected and disgruntled the ability to speak candidly implements the government to effectively keep an eye on possibly threatening organizations. Stable change is an example of wanting change for a certain issue that affects the wide majority of citizens in our society. A real world example of wanting stable change around a certain issue would be the Black Lives Matter Movement. The way that it seeks stable change is by acquiring justice for those black lives who have tragically passed away due to police brutality and all other racially motivated violence against black people. I support the meaning and purpose behind the Black Lives Matter Movement, and I want to educate myself and listen to what is really going on with the police department and why they don’t investigate why “bad apples” (bad cops) have intentions to become cops if some can’t even control an abrasive, exotic, and intense situation the correct way.

Aside from the Black Lives Matter Movement, I also want to start a club during my time at High Point University that advocates for better health for college students, and my club is going to encourage them to stop smoking and drinking. Also, I want to encourage the people who participate in my club to not fall under the peer-pressure of others and be their own person. This reminds me of the quote, “Don’t let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace,” because you can’t let unnecessary and negative energy towards you get you discouraged; it’s just not worth it. This can be tied to what type of friends people hang out with when those friends force them to do things like drive them places because they don’t have a car, and they pressure others to take shots at a party when they don’t feel comfortable doing so. Changing these is an example of stable change that can be implemented on the HPU campus.

For number 6, the reason why it’s important to me is that we as a people in today’s America want to be seen as the country where everyone is treated equally. This is fundamental to our identity as a tolerant people. Even though hate speech is protected under the First Amendment, it is still being argued about amongst scholars. One of the reasons why I want to start the club at High Point University mentioned above is that I want people to feel like they can finally break free from the bad habits they may have developed due to the fact that some people couldn’t tolerate them because of their identity and or their different beliefs.

 It’s all about identity (the identity of us as a people--America) and not wanting to draw a line that might cause us to no longer be tolerant, even if that tolerance is of extreme ideas.

Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing 

Cloud Computing enables the delivery of internet-based computer services, such as storage and processing, typically on a prepaid basis. The “cloud” takes your information from your devices. Rather than creating their own computing framework or data centers, businesses can enter into a lease to store forms, financial information, and other important data in the cloud. One good thing about using cloud computing is that firms can avoid the upfront cost and complexity of owning and maintaining their own IT infrastructure. 

As a service, cloud computing has the capability to alter a huge chunk of the IT industry, making operating systems much more efficient (Ranger, 2018). Builders with contemporary concepts for advanced internet maintenance once required huge central locations to house the necessary hardware to expand their business in addition to a massive budget to handle its operation. Some benefits of cloud computing are that it consolidates your data and makes syncing data non-essential. Another benefit is that it defends against disaster. When a company loses vast amounts of data, it can result in nothing but disaster no matter the size of the company. Cloud-based storage is much more secure than operating an on-site data center. Organizations that store their data on the premises see 51 percent more security incidents than those that use cloud storage (“Pros and Cons of Cloud Computing,” 2019). The disadvantages of cloud computing are understanding the costs. While storing data in the cloud can help reduce costs in some areas, it is critical to put an appropriate plan in place and focus on all systems inside the company--which can be expensive. The trick is to do an examination of the networks and batch them into two ranks. Another disadvantage is limited control because the base of the cloud is owned by another company.  

Cloud computing is critical for businesses. It allows them to have a low-cost option to on-demand capabilities such as providing them with remote servers, storage, databases, networks software, analytics, speed, productivity, and performance. Internet companies do not have to have an IT infrastructure, they can simply pay for a service that offers them everything they need when they need it. For example, companies such as streaming services use cloud computing to run their services. I think cloud computing will be essentially beneficial, especially now during the pandemic. The cloud and it’s vast data processing capabilities serves an integral part in the development of vaccines in a timely manner. As we continue on this path, companies and/or individuals are going to continue to use cloud computing to carry on with using remote servers to collect data that is being updated constantly.

https://www.morefield.com/blog/pros-and-cons-of-cloud-computing/ 

EOTO #2: Terms & Concepts

  “The 2020 Election Was Stolen”

 

 

 

An echo chamber refers to situations in which beliefs are amplified or reinforced by communication and repetition inside a closed system that does not allow external ideas to penetrate. An echo chamber that was started with COVID was when Donald Trump kept denying that the virus was dangerous and claimed that, “it would be gone in no time, it's like the flu.” The majority of Trump supporters didn’t wear their mask after that, and they believed everything that came out of his mouth. The virus was a big challenge for Trump because it had taken more lives than in all of the World Wars and 9/11 combined, and he still said it was fake. Many workers lost their jobs and everyone had to be put on a stay-at-home order to remain safe from the virus.  Since the beginning of the pandemic on March 11, 2020 to now, there have been over 141 million cases and 3.01 million deaths, and while Trump called it a hoax, he ended up getting COVID-19 himself as a result of not wearing a mask or following social distancing rules. Many people who were Trump supporters started becoming divided on the idea of wearing a mask as an everyday need, and they felt that it was a “political issue.” What happened was that Trump’s words were an encouragement to his supporters to not take the coronavirus too seriously. This idea was taken forward and put as an essential belief for Trump supporters.

Millions of Americans became even more divided when the 2020 United States Presidential Election came around. President Joe Biden won by 7,052,770 more votes than former-president Donald Trump. It was a very close race, and it was nothing like anyone had ever seen before, especially since the entire nation was still feeling the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump and his supporters thought the election was a hoax, solely due to the fact that he didn’t win. Also, they were accusing the voting sites of throwing away the voting ballots that were going towards Trump. Ideas about voter fraud were circulated in this group and magnified by the echo-chamber effect.

Trump also had to deal with the racial injustice that would rock the world to its core when George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police officers, including Officer Derek Chauvin who kneeled on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. After that, millions of people around the world started contributing to the Black Lives Matter movement, and they were demanding justice for not just George Floyd but also for Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and the countless other precious black lives lost to police brutality. The echo chamber with George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter Movement was when President Trump accused the protestors of being affiliated with a group called Antifa, a left-wing anti-fascist and anti-racist political movement. While Trump was busy taking pictures in front of a church and holding a bible upside down and as a prop, the George Floyd video caused an uproar of grief, and everyone around the world wanted to share their anger about the video and other African Americans killed by police. He also said that white people are more likely to die in the hands of police than black people. People of color were tired of seeing their own getting brutally murdered for senseless reasons and wanted justice. The black community felt like that would come into fruition just based on the response to George Floyd and after years of murder after murder. As a result of all of the major events of 2020, it's what caused Trump to lose the election and his position as President. People were tired of seeing the President not taking the virus seriously. But remember, Trump continued to be politically applicable until close to the end of his presidency. 

Privacy, On and Off

 Privacy, On and Off

 

 

    Since technology has evolved from the telephone in 1876, the start of radio in 1894, the TV in 1927, the first iPhone in 2007 to today’s technology that is known as Alexa, it has become disturbingly easier to find out where your friends are. We feel as if we need to know more about people and what they are doing because we feel insecure. The expanding acclaim of social media has fascinated a tremendous number of people that all seek to compete with one another on a daily basis to show that their life is better than someone else’s. Social media can be a really toxic space at times. This info provides opportunities for analysts and access providers to investigate and better perceive customers’ attitudes. However, publishing user-generated data risks exposing individuals' privacy. Users’ privacy in social media is an emerging issue and has attracted increasing attention in recent years.

New research has shown the vulnerability of user-generated data against the two general styles of cyber attack: identity disclosure and attribute disclosure. These privacy issues mandate that social media data publishers safeguard users' privacy by sanitizing user-generated data before publishing it. Consequently, various protection techniques have been proposed to anonymize user-generated social media data. There's an enormous amount of literature on issues relating to the privacy of users in social media from many perspectives. In the article, “Privacy in Social Media: Identification, Mitigation and Applications,” the authors survey the key achievements of user privacy in social media. They discuss open problems and future research directions for user privacy issues in social media. An extensive compilation of human conduct data by associations severely boosts privacy concerns. Tracking behavior is a crucial part of the big-data economy, which enables corporations and industries to sector, portray, and grasp their users in progressively greater detail. It has been confirmed that representing the background and interests of users has various commercial advantages. People who randomly follow you could potentially be just a fake account that wants to try and get as much information out of you as possible by sending you links to a website through Instagram Direct Message that can hack into your phone. Large organizations as well as different users want to accumulate data on individuals for various reasons and can do so effectively due to the absence of protection on social media. People want to take advantage of others when they don’t give them the respect that they want. An example I can give is in the video, “Darieth Chisolm: How Revenge Porn Turns Lives Upside Down.” Darieth Chisholms' manipulative, jealous, stalker ex-boyfriend posted a website with her name on it and included nude photos of her while she was living with him in Jamaica. A few months prior to that, he had threatened to kill her and stab her in the heart. This is what’s called ‘Digital Domestic Violence.’ It typically starts when someone that can’t take rejection and can’t physically touch the person they want to harm uses electronic weapons (IPhones, laptops, cameras, etc.). They are able to find information about others that leaks online, and they can edit and post it whenever they feel like. That’s why many people say, “you have to be careful what you post on social media,” because anything that causes controversy spreads like wildfire, and it can do damage to someone’s reputation based on the severity of the situation.

Diffusion of Innovations

The Evolution of the iPhone

                   

When the iPhone was released on June 29, 2007, it was the product that would place Apple on its ongoing track as a leading technology corporation. The iPhone is the merchandise line that both sells the most and is the most beneficial to the company’s essence and financial health. The first generation iPhone was very different from the phones we see today. For one thing, it was small by comparison with the newest iPhone (iPhone 12) launched in 2020. The device was the start of the touchscreen. The smartphones before the iPhone had physical keyboards attached to them and a very small screen. The launch of the iPhone was met with mixed reception at first. For example, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said in an interview at the time that the iPhone, wouldn’t be able to take over the smartphone market. Many technology companies were skeptical, but the iconic phone was able to find a way to make a difference in most people’s lives. The iPhone made it easier to gain access to the apps people enjoyed. People also loved the way Apple designed their phones to be touchscreens. For people who had previously used a Blackberry or the Nokia E61, it was good for them because they could finally text people without constantly getting the words in their text wrong.

 The phone was first adopted by younger generations consisting mostly of millennials because they really liked how the phone was sleek and innovative. That's what Steve Jobs, the creator of the iPhone, envisioned it to be like. Over time, the iPhone would go through stages of it either being thinner or even bigger than the previously released iPhone. The iPhone 3G included a camera. When the iPhone 4S was released in October 2011, it introduced the voice-assistant “Siri” for the first time. Apple's goal was to revolutionize the smartphone industry by making the phones look like pieces of art and appear trendy. This is one of the reasons why the technology spread to such a wide audience. It looked a lot more attractive than the Samsung and Android phones, and it was more innovative as well. By being user-friendly, it was able to circulate more widely to different age groups that could all use a variety of apps. Additionally, other Apple devices could be connected, and people could transfer data from their phone to their computer. 

Some people were late adopters because they were not interested in the increased communication aspect of the technology. The iPhone had late adopters that switched for pragmatic concerns (Ogg, 2013). The other group that never bothered to get the iPhone might have avoided it because they prefer other technologies. Some of the late adopters didn’t want to be tracked on their phones or feel constantly insecure about their privacy. They also didn’t like how the iPhone, and text messaging in general, didn’t provide real, face-to-face conversation. The negative consequences of the iPhone are how they disrupt people’s sleep when they use them in bed. They can cause anxiety and depression, and they’re also really dirty and carry more bacteria than a toilet seat. This just goes to show how people don’t take their hygiene into consideration and they let the phone distract them. Apple started adding a Fitness app, AppleTV, for people to watch movies that were exclusively made for streaming services. Once people bought an iPhone or a MacBook, they couldn’t get out of the ecosystem. Apple made the smartphone market highly competitive because the iPhone was more innovative, better-looking than most smartphones, and it supported all of the apps that most people wanted. 

https://gigaom.com/2013/06/03/here-come-the-late-adopters-iphone-popularity-grows-among-first-time-smartphone-owners

The Progressive Era

                                              The Progressive Era

                    
   

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects the right to freedom of faith and freedom of expression from government interference. It was adopted into the Bill of Rights in 1791. The First Amendment has been interpreted by the Supreme Court as applying to the whole federal government, although it's only applicable to Congress. 

Anti-war voices can be considered a dissenting opinion, but even though they might have different views, the First Amendment still protects their rights. One of the articles on Antiwar.com titled “Report: Biden Preparing Major Penalties on Russia” discusses how the Biden Administration is preparing to hit Russia with major penalties. The penalties are coming to light due to a batch of allegations. Many of the allegations, like the claim Russia paid bounties to the Taliban to kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, are denied in the article and considered to be entirely unfounded. Biden hitting Russia with penalties would be an example of the 8th Amendment because there are excessive bails and fines, and while President Biden swiftly attained an accord with Governor Putin of Russia to expand New START, the vital nuclear arms treaty, he has continued an adverse viewpoint towards Moscow. Aside from the hyperbole and constraints of sanctions, the U.S. is also boosting up military enterprise on several fronts to encounter Russia.

One article that I found on the American Conservative website titled “Washington helped ‘liberate’ Egypt. Today It’s An Authoritarian Dystopia” would be problematic in mainstream news. Firstly, the title of the article is something that a lot of people will take offense to because the Sisi regime is extremely harmful to the U.S. However, perhaps the foremost, obvious, and most vital reason for the absence of an outsized and protracted anti-war perspective in the news is the nature of the enemies the US has been fighting since the Fall of 2001. Because of groups like Al-Qaeda and others, the general public feels that these groups could likely do more awful acts like a terrorist attack or a cyber attack. The topics that most anti-war speakers tend to cover are not what most people want to hear. For example, the article found on the American Conservative website titled "Washington helped liberate Egypt. Today It's an Authoritarian Dystopia" is a topic that does not appeal to the general public. These anti-war voices are causing more political divide.  On Antiwar.com, the article "Democrats are as Dangerous as Republicans to Just Peace in Palestine,” is an example of how anti-war voices can increase political division because they are critical of both parties if those parties don’t pursue what the anti-war voices consider to be peaceable.

The First Amendment guarantees freedoms concerning religion, expression, assembly, and the right to petition.  It forbids Congress from both promoting one religion over others and also restricting an individual’s religious practices.  It guarantees freedom of expression by prohibiting Congress from restricting the press or the rights of individuals to speak freely. Even though anti-war ideas are legitimate and guaranteed under the First Amendment, they are not popular and therefore do not make it into mainstream news. They’re not popular because the anti war articles seem to create disagreement with others and unnecessary conflict/controversy.

report-biden-preparing-major-penalties-on-russia