Posts

This Is The End, Or Are We Just Getting Started!!!!!

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It’s a bitter sweet end to the semester, sweet because well it’s the end of the semester and we’ll have a bit longer of a break until next semester. Bitter because well I had fun in the class, I learned that we have a lot of resources at our disposal to reach millions of people at the stoke of the keys on a keyboard or in the palm of our hands. This class gave me some self esteem to put my ideas out there in the world wide web for other people to dissect. In our group we chose to create our module on YouTube, we chose it because everything else was taken hahaha just kidding. We chose it because we all agreed on doing the module on YouTube It is an interesting way to connect to the world by uploading and sharing your daily life, hobbies, and even learning things. I have used YouTube as my personal math tutor it has helped me a lot in that area.   I think we all wanted to learn a bit more about YouTube. It was covered in class, but I think it needed a little more time o...

READY SET TWEET

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READY SET TWEET The Twitter competition, what can I say it was a slight failure. I tried my best to get as many followers as possible but only managed to get 20 followers. I stared to tweet about things that interested me hoping to find people that would follow me. First, I began getting followers through classmates, I think that is where I got the most followers from. I followed them they followed me. Then I started with posting pics of my truck which I started working on about two weeks ago. That got me a couple of followers but not that many. Then I started retweeting headlines from news stations across the country but that didn’t yield much better results. I got some random followers that were a little strange to say the least. One of my follower’s tweets, I can’t even understand what he is saying because it’s in a different language!!! but @Alvitoe78 does have 1,299 followers. I also tried using catchy phrases and hashtags, and that did not seem to work either. Not eve...

Shame On You

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Cyber shaming / bullying is by far easier than ever to do. We now have access to numerous social media platforms, platforms that can reach millions of people at the click of a button. Jon Ronson discusses two separate incidents that occurred. First, he discussed what had happened to Jonah Lehrer which he himself was caught plagiarizing and faking quotes. While giving a speech at a foundation trying to restore his credentials he was publicly shamed in front of his audience through Twitter.   When you have the world at your fingertips and at the stroke of a few keys, you seem invincible, you’re on top of the world with nothing to hide and nothing to hold you back. People sit behind a computer screen or hold devices in their hands shame people that they do not even know. They make a judgment call on the persons words not knowing what they are trying to say. Instead they are quick to judge and shame a person hiding behind a screen waiting for other people to join in.  ...

Will The Real News Please Stand Up

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Where do most of us get our news from? Chances are you and I go to Facebook. Although when we get our news from Facebook it is most likely tailored to us from behind the scenes. Facebook has created entertainment news, news that is click bait. Homepage hits have dropped drastically like the article states Thompson 2014. In the last twelve months, traffic from home pages has dropped significantly across many websites while social media's share of clicks has more than doubled, according to a 2013 review of the BuzzFeed Partner Network, a conglomeration of popular sites including BuzzFeed, the New York Times, and Thought Catalog. Audiences get new stories from all sorts of outlets, the local news on tv, news app on our smartphones, newspapers, and tabloids. While the news we get on television is mostly accurate, you can bet some of the news on the internet has some false information inserted into it. But chances are that we see these headlines that interest us while we shop...

Cell Phone Love

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So, you want your brain connected to your phone? Well according to Forbes there is such a thing. It’s not connected to our phone yet, but it is connected to a computer. The user wears a mobile EEG device that is connected to a computer. The users brain waves are sent to the computer where a program deciphers the waves with a special program. “What will enable that interactivity is, of course, our smartphones. Imagine having an app on your phone that dials up other peoples’ brains, and maybe your brain will be in their contact lists”. “Whoa” like Neo says in the Matrix. Hey what’s the name of that place we got recommended to go to? I don’t know let me get my phone and google it. That is what we hear daily “let me get my phone”, I can’t be without my phone, my phone is my life. A while back I witnessed the Mail Man deliver our phonebook to our house. I thought to myself why even bother printing these books anymore and why waste the Mail Mans time in him delivering it. I cann...

The Google Father

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In the video Andreas Ekstrom asked people why they used Google as a search engine. People answered because it works, they didn’t know of any other alternatives, and lastly because it provided unbiased search results.   Well If Mr. Ekstrom would have asked me the same question I probably would have answered the same.   I don’t think there can be any unbiased searches in today’s world. There are simply too many variables that one must go through to get a truly unbiased answer from a search engine. You must be specific in what the subject is being searched and  multiple search platforms should be used. I use google because It has worked for many years and I have never needed to change my search engine. As of right now google is the top search engine used, followed by Bing, and then Yahoo.   We always here the term just “google it”, it’s a catchy phrase. You don’t hear people say, “Bing it” or just “Yahoo it” it doesn’t sound the same. Almost everything that is po...

Social Media: Mind Control?

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In the video How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day, Triston Harris discusses how these companies can change our minds without us even thinking about it. We are in a day and age that the thing that mostly controls us is the size of a 3x5 card, can be carried almost anywhere, and never more than an arm’s reach. Yes, our cell phones some costing up to $1000 and as low as $20 whatever the case maybe they let you connect to the world wide web and connect to millions of people via social media. These companies have control rooms full of people all seeking one goal, and that is to keep you on the site for as long as possible and for us to click on the most ads. All while Mr. Mark Zuckerberg collects his billions of dollars. After all its not about you it’s about them getting their millions while we click our valuable time away. What these social media companies do is that they are keeping us glued to their company. Say for instance Facebook, when you fir...