Final Post

    I am someone who deeply values a sense of self-awareness. I enjoy cultivating mindfulness habits into my daily life, ones that improve my mental, spiritual, emotional, and physical health as well as ones that improve the relationships in my life. I enjoy putting energy into my romantic relationship, my friendships, my family relationships to make them the happiest and healthiest they can be. I also enjoy putting time into improving my relationship with faith, exercise, and money. Technology is an area I don’t often reflect on. Although, this class has definitely made me reflect on and rethink my personal relationship with technology. 

    Overall, I would say my relationship with technology is pretty healthy actually. I honestly enjoy my days the most when I can put down my phone and spend quality time with my loved ones and in nature or pursing activities and hobbies I enjoy. I enjoy my technology-free days to unwind and spend time with myself. And when I do enjoy the benefits of technology, it is usually for the right reasons. I use my laptop of course for schoolwork and use the plethora of information available to be to broaden my horizons and make my world a bigger place. Or, at the end of a long day, I enjoy snuggling up with my dog and watching a good movie. Social media is an area that I would say I need to work on. Honestly, the only platforms I use are Instagram and Snapchat. I have a Facebook profile, but I only really use it for business as I post babysitting and dog sitting jobs on there. Even with social media, I regularly go on cleanses where I delete the apps for a few days, weeks, or even months just to get out of the rut of endless and mindless scrolling. I cannot even tell you how many times I have spoken with friends that are asked what they did that day and all they can respond with is “went on TikTok.” It is upsetting and such a waste of time! Time is the only thing we have in this life and it is precious! We have to life every moment and day to the fullest!

 

    While I do have a healthier relationship with technology, I still think it is misleading and giving me unreliable information often. As I wrote in my first post, I don’t often go out of my way to find reliable sources because I feel helpless in doing anything about what I hear. So, as a result, I find out about a lot of current events through social media. That is something that this class has helped inspire me to change as I don’t want to believe the narrative that society is telling me. Rather, I want to use the blessings technology has to offer to find out the story for myself and form my own opinions. 

 

    The issues I’ve discussed are something that I personally do worry about, however I also think these are things an accepted part of society. A lot of this class and of our posts have related to the invasion of privacy technology poses on our life. Before this class, I just accepted the fact that the government was keeping tabs on me and it was just what it was. Now, I feel encouraged to at least take the steps that are in my power to protect my privacy. 

 

    As far as my friends and family’s relationship with technology, it varies a lot by generation honestly. My grandpa doesn’t even have a cell phone which today is basically unheard of. My grandma has one, but it is a flip phone so she really only uses it for calls.  My 14-year-old sister on the other hand, she spends probably 10 hours a day on her phone. She is definitely addicted to TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, all of it. And when she’s not on those platforms, she is binge-watching Netflix. It saddens me to watch her grow up that way and let social media tell her how she should feel about herself, how she should look and act. It makes me grateful that I grew up right before the era of 8-year-olds having phones. 

 

    There are indeed positives of having technology in my relationships. When my boyfriend and I live 8 hours away from each other over the summer, we’re able to FaceTime and text all the time to stay connected. I am able to call my grandma to keep close with her in her old age. When I am at school, I am able to call and Facetime my family. I am able to meet friends and keep in touch with what they’re up to via social media. I am able to snuggle up with my family and spend time together watching a movie. 

 

    On the other hand, technology wedges us apart sometimes too. We opt to binge-watch our own show instead of spending time together. We opt for playing online games instead of a card game at the dinner table. Times are indeed changing. 

 

    If you haven’t noticed, my name is spelled a bit unique and therefore my online footprint is very easy to find. The first four links that come up are of course social medias. I will say the first one is LinkedIn which is a good one to start with as you can see my professional bio right away. LinkedIn is followed by Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. After the social medias, the next link is a link to the student profiles for the honors scholars program at HPU which is something I am proud of and am sure my employers would be happy to see. The next link is one that mentions that I served as a resident assistant for HPU which again I am proud of and am sure my employers would be happy to see. The next two links feature articles in which I was awarded grants and scholarships in high school for “serving as an example to her classmates for her drive, love of learning, and unending optimism.” The link of my online footprint mentions how “resident assistants work to maintain excitement of college life” in HPU’s campus chronicle. The rest of my links are related to other members of my family with the Frankunas last name. Overall, I am honestly impressed with my online footprint and would be proud if a future employer looked me up online!  

Bye, Alexa!

    

    We live in the age of artificial intelligence, in the age of technology and automation. We live in a world where we can make friends from all over the world and see what they are doing with the opening of an app or liking of a post. We live in a world where you no longer need someone to help you order your food, but rather you can go up to a screen and order it yourself. We live in a world where the knowledge of the ages is at the tip of our fingers. We live in an age where you can pay for goods with the tap of a plastic card or phone.
 
    While there are countless blessings that come with this technology and automation, there are of course curses that come with living in the age of AI. Nothing is private anymore. Wherever you go, whatever you do, you generate a cloud of data. This data is tracking where you are, what you are purchasing, how long you’re there and who you’re with. All of the clouds of data formed wherever you go are gathered to form intimate detailed understanding of your personality. The data can predict your thoughts, desires, dreams; it knows your friends, families, and co-workers. It can predict your next behavior and beyond. A powerful quote from the video touched on this: “What surveillance capitalism claims is private human experience is claimed as a free source of raw material fabricated into predictions of human behavior.”
 
    Companies that offer “free” products like Google and Facebook are actually in the business of mining the data of your life. These companies may start with the good intentions of using your data to personalize the world to you, to adapt the world to you. However, in this age of AI, things have taken a turn for the worse as instead of using social media, social media is using us. Instead of searching Google, Google is searching us. It’s crazy to me because they do all of this with our permission. A leader at Google quoted: “We know where you are, where you’ve been, and more or less can predict what you’re thinking, all with your permission.” These companies have capitalized on a trust that we had built with technology. We trusted based on history that technology would always make life better and easier. 
 
    Overall, my research has definitely frightened me and creeped me out. I don’t like the idea of being watched like we’re all in a Big Brother simulation or something. However, it also encouraged me to take extra precautions and to be careful every time I hit “I accept” or “I agree” and I am thankful for that! And after watching I certainly will never ever buy an Alexa.

The Overton Window

    The Overton Window is a theory I was curious to learn more about. The Overton Window is a model for understanding how ideas in society change over time and how they influence politics. Imagine there is a scale from no government regulation to total government control. The Overton Window is the range of ideas in the middle of those two extremes that the public is willing to consider and accept in society. Ideas inside the Overton window are ideas that are politically safe; they are ideas that the public is ready to accept. Ideas outside this window are ideas that might be too radical for the public to accept. 

    This idea was first developed in the mid-1990s by Joseph Overton. He was the senior vice president at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. The Mackinac Center for Public Policy is a nonpartisan research and educational institute in Michigan. In other words, they are a think tank. Think tanks are important in the discussion of the Overton window because they have the potential to shift it. Anything that gets ideas out in the open so that it can be discussed and debated has the potential to shift the overton window. Think tanks do this by creating social and intellectual settings that force people to argue and become aware of their own biases. Think tanks also channel knowledge between scholars, policy makers, and civil society and convert theory into insights and recommendations. Other forces that have the potential to shift the overton window include the media, entertainment, crises, and historical events. Sometimes, politicians can even move the window themselves by endorsing a policy outside the window although this is rare.

    This idea of the Overton window affects society as a whole because politicians are limited in what policy ideas they can support. If they support ideas that are outside of the window, they risk losing or not getting reelected. They are going to pursue policies that society will accept as legitimate options for policies. It tells a lot about politicians themselves because they will not always support policies they truly believe in, but rather policies that will not hurt their electoral chances.

    The range of policy options available to a politician are shaped by ideas, social movements, and shared norms and values within a society. What this means for us is that it’s really up to us to ultimately determine the types of policies that politicians will get behind. Joseph Lehman was a colleague of Joseph Overton who further developed the idea of the Overton window after Overton died. Lehman said in an interview, “The most common misconception is that lawmakers themselves are in the business of shifting the Overton window. That is absolutely false. Lawmakers are actually in the business of detecting where the window is, and moving to be in accordance with it.” This means that our social institutions are more impactful in shaping our politics than we think. This means that our workplaces, our media, our schools, our charities, and our families are more important in shaping politics than we give them credit for. 

    This is something that gives me hope. I often get discouraged when policies are passed that I do not support or am aligned with because I feel like I have no power and cannot really do anything about it. A thought that runs through my mind is, ‘What else can I do besides vote?” Starting the movement in our own communities is what we can do. We can contribute to social movements in more ways than protesting in the streets. We can start by supporting them in our very own homes.

Main Source can be visited here.

Revolutionizing Entertainment Consumption

    The Diffusion of Innovations Theory is the theory of how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread. Being in the midst of the dog days of summer, Netflix has been a source of entertainment lately and so I thought this would be a fitting widespread innovation to analyze. 

    Netflix is a company that has had incredible success and has revolutionized the way the world consumes television and movie entertainment. Although it wasn’t quite the company we know and love today, Netflix started in 1997 as a video-rental company by our very own Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings. In 1999, Netflix began offering an online subscription service through the internet in which subscribers chose movie and television titles from their website and then were shipped those titles in DVD form with prepaid return envelopes. Customers rented for a flat monthly fee as many movies as they wished. In 2007, Netflix started the infamous streaming option where subscribers could stream some of their movies and TV shows directly to their homes via the internet. In 2010, Netflix offered a streaming only subscription and by 2016 it was available in more than 190 countries. (Source)

    Netflix caught on and spread in the beginning because they focused on convenience. You picked the movies, they shipped it and had pre-paid envelopes so you just shipped them right back all for one monthly fee. When they introduced streaming, they caught on and spread for the same reason: convenience. Viewers had access to an archive of movies and shows to watch all from the convenience of their living rooms. While Netflix wasn’t the first company to create streaming, they were the first company to find real success in this area and that is why they had so many early adopters. Another reason Netflix found so much success was because they were the first communication technology to offer whole seasons of shows rather than one episode at a time which introduced the world to binge-watching. 

    Some people were late adopters because they weren’t as familiar with the internet and streaming and were loyal fans to their cable TV. But today, with more than 251 million subscribers, there aren’t many who consider Netflix a non-essential.  Netflix’s closest competitor, Hulu, has only 44 million subscribers. Some don’t adopt the idea at all because maybe they do not prefer to have the option of binge-watching readily available at all times. 

    The cons of a platform like Netflix is like most technologies now, they have an opportunity to learn about you through data collection. Netflix knows your viewing history which helps them predict your future viewing preferences. They know when and how long you watch for and which devices you watch from. Although it ultimately did not go through, there was even a campaign for Netflix socks that would detect when you fell asleep so that Netflix could pause the show or movie you were watching. A major con of consuming this service is absolutely the lack of privacy. 

    For most, it seems the positive of endless entertainment outweighs the con of lack of privacy. With communication technology, it seems that the cost-benefit analysis is mostly based on personal values and preferences. 

We Deserve the Whole Story!

    When people think about why America is the greatest country in the world, the first answer that often comes to mind is freedom. Namely, the freedoms that come from our first amendment right which include freedom from religion, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom to petition the government. 

    It is evident through the Sedition Acts of both 1798 and 1918 that the government has a history of silencing voices that speak out against the government. Through exploring Antiwar.com and TheAmericanConservative.com it is also evident that this issue is still happening today. It may not be to the extent that it was back then as it is not a crime to criticize the government, but these voices are absolutely silenced. 

    The government has a hand in basically everything we do today as technology is so interwoven into our lives. With this ability, the government has the power to tell the narrative that it wishes by controlling to some degree most of the ways we get our news including news networks, newspapers, and even social media. 

    This is scary because it means that we the people are unable to make decisions for ourselves. In an ideal world, all of the information about an issue would be presented to us from both sides of the equation. Then, we could make a decision for ourselves about opinions we hold on the issue. However, with the great use of agenda setting by the government that is going on today, we are only fed one side of the story. We are only told the facts and information they want us to know. 

    How are we supposed to form different opinions with only half of the equation? We are forced to find obscure websites and news sources like Antiwar.com and TheAmericanConservative.com. These websites have so much content and information about what is going on in our world that the mainstream news does not tell us. There are tons of stories that even contradict what the mainstream news is telling us. This should make us angry. We deserve the whole story! 

    Exploring these websites has definitely encouraged me to keep digging and find more information before forming my opinion on certain political issues. These websites are an awesome start and resource and I will definitely be visiting them again!

How the Radio Changed the World

Listening to country radio with the windows down in the car is absolutely one of my favorite things about the summertime. This is what inspired me to explore the history of the radio and how it revolutionized communication. 

The radio was first discovered when Heinrich Hertz first detected and produced radio waves in 1888. Then, a man named Guglielmo Marconi was able to build the first radio equipment in 1894 and was patented in 1896. In 1901, he was able to successfully transmit radio signals across the Atlantic Ocean. He called his idea for the radio “the wireless telegraph” as the telegraph was the biggest innovation in communication up to this point. The issue with the telegraph is that it required knowledge of morse code and infrastructures to receive messages. This is the problem that radio was ultimately able to solve. 

 
Before this time, the radio was primarily used to contact ships that were out to sea and it was especially helpful to them in emergency situations, like the sinking of the Titanic. In fact, if there was no radio, there would have been no survivors on the Titanic. The radio became an increasingly valuable tool during World War I to send and receive messages to the armed forces. 
 
The 1920s is when the radio became streamlined among civilians. It had totally changed the world of mass broadcasting. This incredible innovation was able to easily transmit important information from across the globe making spreading news and crucial developments easy and widespread. The radio became the main source of news and it now easier than ever to access information from other parts of the world including important wartime news as well as current events. 
 
After using radio in WWI, the military was well aware of how important radio communication would be for WWII. The radio was the source of success of massive operations during the war. It allowed faster communication channels between the varied corps and ensured that any decision made by the higher commands could be immediately communicated to the ground forces for the most efficient and rapid execution. The need for faster communication during the war led to great improvisions of radio technology.

 
Not only did the radio transform the way people accessed information, but it also changed the way the accessed everyday things. Business and social structures adapted to the new medium as universities began to offer radio-based classes and churches began to broadcasting their services. It changed the way they consumed entertainment as listeners enjoyed hearing comedy routines, sports broadcasts, comedies and dramas, live bands, and especially music. 
 
A great contribution of the radio was its development of music and establishing the music industry. One of the reasons we have “timeless” artists like Elvis Presley is because of the radio spreading their music so widely and allowing families to stream their voices all over the world. If it weren’t for the radio, we might not know these voices today. 
 

As a strategic communications major, it was interesting for me to explore how this communication technology changed the world of advertising and marketing. AT&T was the first company to release a radio advertisement in 1923. This would soon spark a movement of companies buying radio advertising licenses that would change the world of advertising and how companies marketed their products. 

Values of Free Expression

    The First Amendment states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” 

    With this amendment comes a shield of protection and freedom: A protection from religion and of religion – a freedom of conscience; A protection of speech and press – a freedom to interact with the world; A protection of assembly and petition – a freedom to act upon the world.  

    With this amendment also comes the 8 values or theories of free expression: 

1. Marketplace of Ideas

2. Participation in Self-Government 

3. Stable Change 

4. Individual Self-Fulfillment 

5. Check on Governmental Power

6. Promote Tolerance

7. Promote Innovation

8. Protect Dissent

   

    What the first amendment means to me is that it ensures that I have a platform to share my beliefs and use my freedoms to stand up for what I believe in. It is something that empowers me and gives me the ability to empower others around me by advocating for them. Not only this, but another important aspect of the first amendment to me personally is the right to access information and the right to seek, receive, and communicate that information freely. This is why the first value of free expression, the Marketplace of Ideas, resonates the most with me.

    The Marketplace of Ideas theory is also known as the Discovery of Truth. It was first suggested by John Milton who was one of England’s foremost political philosophers. His Areopagitica was an appeal to Parliament in 1644 arguing that the press should be unlicensed, and ideas should be judged in the marketplace of ideas. In other words, when truth and falsehood are allowed to freely grapple, truth will win and become even stronger. Even bad and crazy ideas should be allowed in the marketplace of ideas as they will serve to further strengthen the truth. 

    As an former English major with a great appreciation for creatively crafted metaphors, I had to share this quote from Milton’s Areopagitica: 

“For who knows not that Truth is strong next to the Almighty; she needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings to make her victorious, those are the shifts and the defenses that error uses against her power: give her but room, & do not bind her when she sleeps, for then she speaks not true, as the old Proteus did, who spake oracles only when he was caught & bound, but then rather she turns herself into all shapes, except her own, and perhaps tunes her voice according to the time, as Micaiah did before Ahab, until she be adjourned into her own likeness. Yet is it not impossible that she may have more shapes than one.” 

    Another article from The First Amendment Encyclopedia defines the marketplace of ideas as "the belief that the test of the truth or acceptance of ideas depends on their competition with one another and not on the opinion of a censor, whether one provided by the government or by some other authority.”  

    When people are allowed to freely share their ideas, truth will prevail because people will argue and disagree which leads for a hunger for the truth. They will continue to seek, searching for data and proof, until there is no answer but one...the truth. People deserve this basic thing. 

    And yet, the government finds itself taking that right away by restricting people’s rights to freely share. Social media censorship has been a major issue in our society today and directly relates to our First Amendment rights. Helen Norton, a free-speech scholar, explains: “Once the government chooses a platform that permits public comment, it has created a type of forum for nongovernmental parties’ speech, and it is now bound by traditional First Amendment principles when regulating the speech of the commenters on the problem.” 

    Of course, government officials have the right to share their beliefs freely on social media and advocate for their own causes. However, that expression becomes the speech of the government under the government speech doctrine. This is when First Amendment controversies arise, especially when these officials try to shut down or silence opposing viewpoints. 

    It also is an issue when we see the government getting involved in the censorship of certain social media accounts. According to Desert News, top-ranking Biden administration officials appear to have pressured Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms to censor content that the federal government considered misinformation. The lawsuit’s discovery revealed 45 federal officials who communicated with social media executives on what information to censor, especially in regards to Covid-19. 

    This is what makes me righteously angry. I, along with many fellow Americans, would like to hear all the information and come to an informed decision myself rather than have the government filter what information is available to me. 

    With all of this in mind, it stands to reason that, along with the value of the marketplace of ideas, the fifth value of expression protecting a check on governmental power and the eighth value of protecting dissent are also very important today.