Post 10: EOTO 2 Learning

 What has fascinated me the most about Media Law and Literacy is how much is kept from the American people. A lot of information is kept secret from us, and we can only gain access through obscure means. Our own government has a history of exploiting the rules of the Constitution to make things convenient for themselves rather the citizens. However in the second EOTO, I was able to learn a lot more that they do against their people. Group 1's presentation was about Awareness and how that is exploited. Disinformation is the act of purposefully giving the people false information about an event, not to misunderstood with misinformation which is accidental. It was a shock to hear that this happens within our country. People will get into large disputes about what's happening in the world and that can sometimes lead to violence. False flags are about the government doing something awful and pinning it on another party. This bleeds into Disinformation. From the beginning, America was supposed to be the country for their citizens to place all of their trust in. Nowadays, it feels like they are abusing their power of influence to get they want out of the people. 

Post 9: The Bell Curve of TIme

Rogers; Diffusion of Innovations (or Ideas) has a bell curve about how new inventions and concepts become part of society. Time uses the X-axis and Penetration uses the Y-axis. During the experimental phase, presence stays a bit static. Early adopters sends it into a steep rise with it peaking at the Early majority. The peak is the Critical Mass. Late adopter start the slow decline until it steeply drops with Laggards coming after it was popular indefinitely. 

In the Video Game Industry, we see this pattern with every Generation. For context, console Generations change when more powerful and upgraded systems hit the market. We are currently transitioning from the 8th Generation to the 9th with the PlayStation 4 to the PlayStation 5. At the beginning of these, we will see prototypes of new hardware at conferences like E3. Some game demos will be shown off and some will be playable. There will be die hard fans who will preorder these systems to get Day 1. I would say our Early Adopters to Early Majority depends on the system. It takes about 1 to 3 years for most systems to peak and sales rise around Christmas. Late adopters come near or during the announcement of the next upgrade. Laggards are usually people who don't care too much about video games, can't afford the latest system, or are collectors. The indefinite period of Laggards fits the collection hobby really well because game companies will stop manufacturing these systems after a while and small communities will keep supporting their favorite systems. What keeps game companies afloat are how they announce the upgrade around the Critical Mass. Players will eventually get tired of the same system after a while so making the graphics better and adding a few innovations will give them a new start with the bell curve. 

For me, I have grown tired of this cycle, so I have moved to playing video games on PC. This platform leaves upgrades up to the customer allowing for more freedom with the system. If your computer can handle the game, you can play it. Learning of the Diffusion of Innovations theory is making me wonder if home consoles like the PlayStation will die out. I am getting tired of my games becoming obsolete in less than 5 years and being locked out of playing older Generation games on the newer systems. Everything dies out eventually. 

Post 8: EOTO 2

Media Consolidation is the process of fewer and fewer corporations gaining ownership of news sources. It has a lot to do with the quality and accountability of American journalism. There are only six companies that have a hold of all of the TV networks. They are Comcast, Newscorp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS. According to the chart below, they make up 90% of the media we watch and read today. Back in 1983, there used to be about 50 networks controlling all the media, but since the Telecommunications Act from 1996, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) loosened their regulations on cross-ownership. It is a monopolization on news outlets, specifically an anticompetitive monopolization for it absorbing all of them. It is in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act from 1890 (federal antitrust law) yet it seems that networks are able to get away with it Scott free. As a result, this has created a disconnect with people's opinions and the news broadcasted. This is because the business leaders are choosing what stories to broadcast rather than the journalists. There are only six angles to current events that will be televised. Like what I covered in my fifth post, certain stories just get overlooked entirely and pushed away into obscure locations. With sites like Anti-War and The American Conservative, it seems like even Google is working with them to keep this information away from the people. It is almost like they are trying to brainwash people and they are able to get away with it. 

When it comes to learning new information, I am very easy to persuade. I am probably the easiest man to mislead and I will get passionate about opinions I form, whether they are right or wrong. I would say this generation tends to flock towards popular opinions these days. In video games, it seems like one video making of a game will deter thousands from even giving it a try with "Videogamedunkey" being a popular example of a content creator. I have taken steps to look at both sides of an argument so I can my own opinions. I have been learning a lot about the world in my Philosophy class like the processes needed to create our smartphones. Kids in third world countries are essential enslaved and forced to mine for materials like titanium. That is something I just happened to learn in school. I will find so many interesting stories on YouTube, but something like that never shows up. We are consumers in the smartphone market where there are new phones released every year. A story like that would likely hurt that market, so taking measures to block that content makes sense. It just is not right to keep so many people out of the loop on topics like that though. It is like they know how people will react, so they hold out on the truth. With Media Consolidation, we are kept from the most important information of all, what is currently happening in our governments. From the start of America, citizens were encouraged to have the government working with us. However, throughout our history, it has felt like they have been trying to find exploits anywhere that it is convenient. Protest is a way we get our voices to them. To maintain their power, they have to keep valuable information from us so they don't have to make any changes they don't want to. 

Links Used:

Media Consolidation Meaning and Affect: https://billmoyers.com/story/media-consolidation-should-anyone-care/

Monopoly Law: https://www.classlawgroup.com/antitrust/unlawful-practices/monopoly/ 

Telecommunication Law: https://tacomacc.libguides.com/c.php?g=599051&p=4586162

Post 7: Privacy Online

 The internet plays a large role in our lives today. We're in an era where Google is where many of us go to find reliable information. We communicate online with other people on social media sites like Twitter, Snapchat, and Discord. As of late with the pandemic, a lot of people are doing most of their shopping online with Amazon and other sites. With everything we do online, companies find and keep our information and sell them to advertisers.  They make assumptions about who we are and this leads to us getting certain ads. For every app you download or social media you join, they have lengthy contracts talking about how they will use your information. Most people do not read them and the terms of conditions change often. Amazon's Alexia records you even when you aren't talking to it. The videos we talked about this described it as an electronic tattoo. Once we do something online, it is up there forever. 

I remember when I turned 18, I got a lot of provocative ads on YouTube. It felt like they were waiting for the right time to get me involved in sex. I remember back in high school I would make a lot of sex jokes with my friends and these ads crossed the line for me. I didn't mean much of the stuff I would say, but whoever was listening assumed I was serious. That doesn't make me comfortable, having everything I say being recorded and planted on me forever. After hearing about Google Chrome and how it gets ahold of my info with cookies, I downloaded Opera. It's a bit early to say it has yielded great results in protecting me, but I feel safer. 

Post 6: EOTO

 The EOTO (Each One Teach One) assignment was an opportunity to learn about a lot of technology and their origins. I am a Game and Interactive Media Design major so I have a lot of experience with video games. I have been fascinated with its history for years and the EOTO taught me something I didn't know. The general consensus for the 1st video game ever made has fluctuated over the years. First, it was Pong, an two-player table tennis type game released in arcades in 1972. This was believed because of its commercial success. Until the presentation, I believed it was a game called Space War that was created on computers by MIT students in 1962. It didn't make it to the market. It turns out that the first game was Table Tennis for Two, a home computer game from 1958. It was surprising to hear about this hardware that predates those other two games but was the most accessible being released as a system playable at home. Yet another game from the 1st Generation. There is a lot of history in the Video Game Industry to learn about. It seems like we are constantly uncovering new information about game development, obscure hardware, and the people involved. I remember in my freshmen year, I was doing a research assignment on Nintendo history. Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was a very influential game that released alongside the system. The game has its copyright year in the game marked as 1985. I always had the assumption that this is when our region got the game. After further research, I would learn that it would take until 1987 before it would hit the mainstream market. This was because it was a game made in Japan and the localization process was slow to get systems out in most areas. It's difficult to gauge what an era in time was like from before you were born, so it's always better to do more research rather than make assumptions.

Post 5: Anti-War Websites

Our world is no stranger to warfare, but they seem to like strangers of combat to fight their wars for them. From what I can understand, this is one of the points that Anti-War agendas in America have. It seems like governments responsible for these conflicts resort to violence involving millions of their innocent people. Loved ones die, families are broken apart, and survivors can come back with permanent injuries and/or mental disorders. For those who refuse to go out to war, they can be sent to prison with a dishonorable discharge unless they have a good reason to be exempt. American law traps citizens into being pawns so if we are fighting battles for flawed reasons, people will be quick to critique. There are sites like Anti-War (https://www.antiwar.com) and The American Conservative (https://www.theamericanconservative.com/web-categories/realism-restraint/) that are full of articles about these topics, but how often do they get mainstream attention? These sites have likely been shadow banned by Google because the government doesn't want this information out there. 

I have some theories for why they do this. They don't wish to divide the United States again. I'd assume that a civil dispute would greatly divide our country. If it got to the point where there are frequent riots, America would be easier for other countries to take over as it would cave in on itself. Keeping these articles away from the mainstream will help maintain their image of the American hero; someone patriotic and willing to die for their country. As we have seen in class, the government has always tried to play around the Constitution.  It is very scummy for them to hide this stuff from us and telling us what to believe, but the argument can be made that this is a necessary evil for the country to maintain its strength. America is at a fork in the road similar to citizens to be sent into war; don't fight it and have your reputation ruined, or do what you have to do in the hope of keeping your country alive. Both sides have flaws, but what can you do? We live in a flawed world?

Post 4: Research on Worldwide Web

The World Wide Web was created on top of the Internet to allow for easier access to the information there. That information was available on documents accessible through Uniform Resource Locators (URLs). With the Web, all of these resources are connected with hypermedia (hyperlinks, hypermedia, etc.) that send users to other pages with related information. This design created an easy-to-understand user experience without people needing to learn a lot. With about 2 billion websites out there on the internet today, the World Wide Web is something that has been ingrained in our culture for decades. 

The 1980s were a time when information sharing primarily came from fax machines. The World Wide Web's inventor of the Web was a British scientist named Tim Berners-Lee. He was working at CERN in 1989 when he had the idea of it originally being a way for scientists in institutions and universities to share information on the internet. All of these ideas started with all of the computers at that institute not being able to communicate with each other. Lee would write all of the programs to help CERN become a center of data networks. Come 1989, he found a way to share information with the internet with hypertext. The World Wide Web used the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) that helped its servers connect with clients and it is still used today. What started as a predominantly European system would soon find its way to the United States.  It was put on public domain in 1993 and CERN released it with an open license. That decision helped it grow exponentially. Along with that, CERN would create a web browser called Mosaic. Most personal computers at the time were transitioning from their text-based roots and going into a more visual-based point-and-click control scheme. Mosaic would follow suit and even though more web browsers like Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome would become the go-tos; it set the standard. As the years went on, large companies would all have websites prepared to display information to represent them. The web would have millions of users by the end of the 1990s, marking its place in our technological culture all around the world. Even today, it is the way many of us communicate with others on the internet. 

Without the invention of the World Wide Web, this era we're in where information on everything is so easily accessible would not have started. Innovations like BookLinks' Internet Works implementing multiple tabs, Microsoft's Internet Explorer being built into their operating system, and Apple's Safari working on their mobile devices and having a private browser would bring us to where we are today. With every device on the market, there is an internet browser built off of the World Wide Web. With this much information available almost everywhere, our generation has become very dependent on it. It is arguable that it contributes to a possible addiction to technology. However, the good outweighs the bad. Having this much information is leading them to learn

a lot more out of school than previous generations. 

Links Used:

A Short History Video written by CERN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSqZ_hJu9zA

An Overview of its Origins: https://home.cern/science/computing/birth-web

Another Overview with more Technical Details: https://www.britannica.com/topic/World-Wide-Web