Technology's Relationship

Over the past couple of years I have seriously evaluated the relationships in my life and wondered about how healthy they were for me and what impacts they may have. I’ve ended friendships and romantic relationships and I have even talked with my parents about the relationship that we have with each other, so looking at the relationship I have with technology seems to be within that theme. I don’t think my relationship with technology is technically the most healthy thing but neither is the relationship I sustain with reading books, I find a book, I obsess over it, and once it is over I have to find another book or I end up entering a small depressive phase. I know that social media can influence someone’s mental health in disastrous ways if allowed and I know that sometimes social media and technology just aren’t the cause of it. In my senior year of high school I had to do the senior exit project, there was a 6 to 8 page paper written in junior year and then finally a presentation at some point during your senior year, you could pick any topic of interest and I decided to write and present about mental illnesses. I learned a significant amount about how social media influences the brain and while there is some influence technology isn’t the only thing that affects mental health. While the things you learn on the internet are not all true there are good things too, like being able to connect to family and friends from extreme distances, which is especially nice during times like we are facing currently. I have a significant number of worries regarding the information available on the internet but I always remind myself the technology has bettered our lives. I do believe there is a certain amount we should allow to affect our lives.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/digital-world-real-world/202002/anxiety-and-social-media-use

Five Eyes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement 

Five Eyes: “The United Kingdom – United States of America Agreement (UKUSA, is a multilateral agreement for cooperation in signals intelligence between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Emerging from an informal agreement related to the 1941 Atlantic Charter, the secret treaty was renewed with the passage of the 1943 BRUSA Agreement, before being officially enacted on 5 March 1946 by the United Kingdom and the United States. In the following years, it was extended to encompass Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Other countries, known as "third parties", such as West Germany, the Philippines, and several Nordic countries, also joined the UKUSA community in associate capacities, although they are not part of mechanism for automatic sharing of intelligence that exists between the Five Eyes.”
The intelligence group could be a good thing as it allows multiple countries to share information with each other more easily but other countries who are not included within the group will be left in the dark and might feel ostracized.
Society might feel mistrustful of the government because for a while this group was kept secret and only select few knew about it. People already don’t trust the government to not invade their personal lives but to know that there was a secret organization dedicated to gathering information would cause a more significant amount of distrust.
My generation may become significantly more paranoid about the information that they share online or otherwise due to knowing that there can be secret organizations who are compiling information.

Self Audit

My online footprint consists of mostly social media like Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook, I don’t have a personal website and don’t plan to create one. I mostly use each to connect with people whom I may not be in close proximity with such as some of my extended family and in times such as not being able to be close to people at the current moment it is how I update people as to what I currently have going on. Facebook is the social media I use to keep my grandparents and distant relations privy to what is going on in my life, at least while I am at school and not close enough to inform them myself. I also use it to see what they are busy doing and what is going on in their lives. Instagram and Snapchat are used to keep up with the people in my life who are more considered peers and are around my age, snapchat is primarily talking to friends in the same way that I would text or call them as it is just another option and instagram is where I look for videos and or memes to entertain myself. Anyone who visits my social media would be able to tell that I have two cats whom i love very much and best friends and family who I would do anything for, beyond that there is no terrible important things to be seen, just that I have a tattoo, some piercings and enjoy dying my hair rather fun colors. I think that social media can have an affect on mental health but that doesn't mean it is necessarily a negative impact, I myself have allowed it to have a negative impact in the past. Following pages that do nothing but talk of sad situations or flaunt their “riches” can easily bring a person down but finding people and pages that do the opposite, post encouraging messages and work to promote self acceptance and the like, can create a sense of purpose and allow for free expression.

Stable Change

3. Stable Change ( aka Safety Valve) — see Benedict Spinoza, Tractatus-Theologico Politicus
     It has been suggested that a society in which angry and alienated citizens are allowed to speak their mind, or "vent," will be more stable, as people will be less likely to resort to violence.  It has also been pointed out that allowing the alienated and discontented to speak freely enables the government to better monitor potentially dangerous groups who would otherwise act more clandestinely. Ultimately, it is in the government's own self-interest to allow such venting.

Of the eight values of free expression the one that I find the most value in is “Stable Change” as this suggests that venting allows for a society to prevent violence as a result of angry or alienated citizens. It is the most important because it allows for safe expression of these things that might make a person angry, violence in my opinion is something that can be easily prevented and it is my belief that everything should be done in order to prevent violence from occurring. I often tell my friends that any secret they tell me will be safe with me unless someone is going to harm another person or themselves. Though I can understand the reasons for acting out of anger or frustration but the actions of violence themselves are something I refuse to validate in order to reduce the amount that those around me resort to violence. Being safe is something that I put a lot of value in, I am a rather anxious person and coming up with scenarios which could be the result of risky behavior is something i am rather good at, so being safe is one of the things I care about because I know of all the potentially harmful things that could be a result of not being safe.

Carrier Pigeons & World War Two

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/carrier-pigeons-wwii.html 

Carrier Pigeons are homing pigeons, which means that they are able to find their nest from a good distance away. One of the biggest advantages of the pigeons is that there is significantly less chance of any invasion of privacy due to the fact that pigeons cannot read these letters and such. They can also travel considerably faster than anyone might suspect, fifty miles per hour and an occasional burst of speed, which could be considered the bird version of sprinting after jogging for a while, which can hit around ninety miles per hour. These pigeons had a significant impact on the world wars but the biggest effect was during world war two once American and British bird keepers donated their birds to this operation before a stable breeding program was set up. The birds were placed in little wooden boxes and air dropped into the proper country, parachutes would prevent the crate or birds inside from hitting the ground too hard. Many of the birds flew around four-hundred miles to deliver secret messages and the locations of the German soldiers around Europe. There were complications in using the carrier pigeons as well because for one they were not at the top of the food chain and would be killed by hawks or other birds of prey, weather posed an issue was well and there were even records of sympathizers within Europe capturing the birds to help further the Nazi cause. 

Cassette Tapes

Cassette Tapes were created in 1962 by the company known as Philips, which was an appliance building company, in Belgium. Not long after it was created Philips licensed it as to decrease the amount of competition that they would have in selling the tapes. As the technology developed further there was a huge boom in adopting the cassette tapes and people began selling these tapes with information already loaded on to them and they were given the name musicassettes. The popularity of this technology was because of the high quality recording and playback capabilities, of course lining up with the "high quality' technologies of the era and their advancements compared to today. With the lack of ability to compete, other technology companies such as Sony, the Walkman was created as a means to jump on this new trend that was appearing to slowly gain a lot of traction. People were able to take music on the go, as it had just become portable and they could even record anywhere as well. Anyone could suddenly make recordings without any of the technical skills that were needed to work a reel-to-reel. Over the life of this technology significant innovations were made to give people better quality recordings and better playbacks for music, these features included noise reduction and more tape formats to name a few. Pocket recorders were introduced not long after which had a significant impact on journalism as it became easier to record an interview or something of the kind. Unfortunately the popularity of Cassette Tapes did not last forever and its downfall was brought about through Compact Discs or CD’s. The abilities of the CD’s far out shined those of the Cassette tapes and lead to people leaving them behind for features such as laser data reading and more data storage.
History of Cassette Tapes

Kentucky School Bans Fortnite

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/esports/2020/01/29/fortnite-kentucky-ban-high-schools/ 

In this article from the Washington Post, a Kentucky school has banned its Esports team from playing the game , claiming that the game portrays too much gun violence. There has been a lot of controversy on whether the school has the proper grounds to ban game as it shows no gore and it is strictly cartoon animations that show deaths in the game. The school claims there is no room for shooter games in schools but this begs the question of if there is an actual effect on the students. There is no actual evidence that violence in video games supports violence in teens or kids therefore no grounds for the school to ban these games from their Esports team. Along with this is the ideal that Fortnite is more of a social media platform than an actual game as it is available to all ages and does not cost anything. As I understand it this posses some issues due to the huge age range of players that can communicate through the game, there are adults playing with middle schoolers and saying what they want without being scencorded or limited, which goes both ways. The first amendment protects our right to say whatever we want but in the circumstances there might need to be a limit as to what the players are allowed to say.