Final Blog Post

                                                          My Relationship With Technology

We live in a world surrounded by technology left and right, you can't go a day without using or at least looking at some sort of technology. Some of my oldest memories of technology are going to movie theaters to see movies, using a VHS and DVD player, or using my Dad's Blackberry to play Brick Breaker on it. Brick Baker is a game where you would control a ball and try to break bricks. Heck even using computers in school for work or playing Cool Math. In my lifetime technology has evolved right in front of my eyes as I have gotten older technology has also evolved. 

Because of college and the career I want to pursue which is directing and writing movies I can't really avoid technology it is at the center and it is always evolving when it comes to the film industry. I find it extremely fascinating watching the technology evolve, look back to the early 2000s when the Lord Of The Rings movie came out which revolutionized the art of storytelling and technology when they brought the character of Gollum to life from a motion-capture performance by Andy Serkis who would crawl around like Gollum and create all his mannerisms on set and then they would take his performance and transform him to look like the character of Gollum that you see in the movies. Another prime example of technological advancement is Disney's and Lucasfilm's Star Wars show The Mandalorian on Disney+  which moved away from the typical green screen you see in Hollywood to The Volume. The Volume is a soundstage combined with StageCraft that would create fully render environments for the actors and crew to shoot in and the background renders in real-time so wherever the camera would move the screens would change based on what the cameras are looking at.  A little movie released on December 18, 2009, directed and written by James Cameron with a budget of $237 million called Avatar which revolutionized 3D technology and became the highest-grossing movie of all time with a whopping $ 2,847,379,794 this smashing success spawned five sequels with the sequel called Avatar: The Way Of Water coming out December 16, 2022. Twelve years later, according to James Cameron, he has been saying for years that the sequels keep getting pushed because he is waiting for technology to catch up with what he wants to do and finally 12 years later, it has.  

In its Avatar: Way of Water the movie takes place mostly underwater and to bring the movie to life a 900,000 gallon and they used a sort of underwater mo-cap that had never been used before. Finally after years of delay and not really showing much to the public, well finally at Cinema Con 2022 and the wait was well worth it because it astonished everyone. The audience mouths dropped to floor according to reports and that even if you think you know what you are in for it's not. So with that being the field I hope to enter it's going to be hard to avoid technology because you are kind of at the heart of technology advancement. If you google my name my Instagram comes up so that is part of my digital footprint I don't check it as much because I have been busy I only look at it when I have free time or if I am by myself.

EOTO #2 Response

CBDC

I enjoyed every group's EOTO presentation but one of the concepts that I found interesting during the EOTO presentation, was the presentation about CBDC which is something I don't really know anything about, that is why I found it so interesting.  CBDC is short for Central Bank Digital Currency. CBDC is an electronic CB money that can be acquired more broadly than reserves. It is basically Bitcoin controlled by the government. A prime example of where CBDC is used is China it is a very controversial concept because just like anything else in this world CBDC has a lot of pros and cons.

Some of the pros of CBDC are that it could push us toward a cash-free society, which would be great for the environment, interest rates could improve, and the regulation of payment systems could improve. But there are also a lot of cons when it comes to CBDC and some of those are that government can access your money so you have less privacy when it comes to your money and another con is that commercial and private banks can be affected due digital currency. Other countries also use CBDC and some of those countries are Russia, India, and the Bahamas, with China becoming the world's first-ever large economy that tests a digital currency. This is why everyone uses China as an example when talking about CBDC. But more countries hope to follow moving to a cashless future. Another thing that I learned was how CBDC could potentially improve our day-to-day life which is something that isn't really talked about that much because whenever anyone thinks of CBDC they think of China and automatically tie it to communism. CBDC could make life easier and simpler because you wouldn't have to worry about cash anymore and it would improve cross-border payments. If we go to a CBDC future then that means major tech companies would be in charge of keeping our financial data safe and they have proved in the past that some of them have horrible security.

EOTO #2 DEEP FAKE

                                                                          Deep Fake

  

What is deep fake you may be wondering well? Deep fake is a face swap you either can make someone look younger or older. Or you could swap someone's face out for another one. The origin of deep fakes dates back to 2017 on Reddit when a user by the same name, deep fake created videos where the faces of celebrities primarily female celebrities like Scarlett Johansson, Gal Gadot, and others were swapped onto female adult film star in pornographic videos and images without the celebrities consent. 

To create a deep fake you need to run thousands of the two people you want to face swap into an encoder, which is an AI algorithm that would adsorb the similarities between the two faces and then begin compressing the images, getting them ready for the next step. The second stage of creating deepfakes is another AI algorithm called a decoder that would take the images or videos from the encoder and start generating the deepfakes. By reconstructing the faces of subject A and subject. The process would like this.

There is a huge debate going on about deep fake and if it is ethical. Government officials and legislatures have debated for years about deepfakes and how they can be used as weapons to slander someone or to spread misinformation about someone or something. Because of that, they are trying to find ways to fight back against deepfakes. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced back in 2019 that deepfakes are on their radar for things they have to look out for. Like most things, the government does, it takes them a while to implement laws or programs, and in 2021 DARPA's  Media Forensics program (MediFor) invented algorithms that are able to detect deepfakes. Now some states deepfakes are illegal if they are being used as slander or to spread misinformation, Texas in 2019 called TX SB751 made it illegal to make a deep fake of a candidate to sabotage them or slander them when they are running in an election. It is a Class A misdemeanor that is punishable by up to a year in jail along with fines up to $4,000. Along with this the law also punishes people for using deepfakes for cyberbullying, extortion, harassment, and revenge porn.  

A place where deep fakes have become extremely popular is Hollywood from movies to tv shows. Some of the most notable films and shows where deep fakes are used is Star Wars. One of the biggest show in the past couple of years is The Mandalorian in the season finale of season 2 used deep fake technology to de-age Mark Hamill, the actor who plays Luke Skywalker, Hamill is now 70 years old, and to make his cameo accurate to the Star Wars lore they had to de-age him so he looked like he did when he was making Star Wars Return of the Jedi. The technology on display blew people away. In the following months, a Star Wars fan by the name of Shammok uploaded an improved version of the deep fake to his Youtube channel. Lucasfilm ended up hiring him to work on deep fakes for the company and they allowed him to add his improvements to the actual into the Disney + show. Deep fake opens a whole new door of possibilities and it will be very interesting what comes out of it. 

Living in the Age of AI

                                                              Living In The Age of AI

We live in a modern digital age where we are surrounded by technology that is changing the world unlike ever seen before. As society advances so does technology and there are more pros and cons for example if it wasn't for technology we wouldn't live as long as we do and a con is that we have lost our privacy.  If that isn't enough, people fear that technology may one day be smarter than us. In a Frontline PBS film, they discuss how in China people don't have to swipe cards or pay in cash all they have to do is put their face up to a camera and it recognizes them and it automatically charges them for whatever they are buying. Then you have Deep Learning that would mimic the neural network of the human brain, when they would test this they had the AI play games of Go and the AI won four of the five games.

As mentioned before when it comes to privacy, it has almost gone away because everyone has a digital footprint that can be traced. Even though some companies like Apple have gotten better at protecting their customers' privacy, they can still be tracked. It is a fine line to balance when it comes to privacy and when is it that you go too far. There have been plenty of stories where the world is run by AI, some good and some bad. When it comes to National Security there already is AI involved in it, governments use algorithms to track threats or to predict where an attack may happen. But who knows what the future holds for us, as society advances so will technology and AI, especially AIs we already have AIs that can act like humans. When it comes to online security and identity theft it is already happening today with how often people are getting hacked or how many robocalls, spam calls, spam texts, or spam emails that try to get your information. Even though we come up with ways to stop it people always seem to find a work around it. It is an ongoing battle that will probably never end.

Privacy, Online & Off

                                                              Privacy, Online, and Offline

We live in a modern world that revolves around technology no matter whether you like it or not. Everyone is connected in some way no matter where you are or what you are doing. The issues that were brought up in the Ted Talks affect everyone from yourself to your friends and family, heck even people you don't know everyone is being tracked even if they don't want to. Yes, some companies like Apple or Facebook have cracked down on privacy and made it harder for the government to access our texts, phone calls, FaceTimes, etc. It is a very divisive and interesting debate when it comes to privacy during the digital age, how far can government push the boundary, it is probably a debate that will never end. Because everyone's opinions are different when it comes to this.  

Odds are most people can see both sides of the argument but this is an extremely sensitive issue because you have to find the fine line and not cross it. It is a very tight tip rope that you have to walk. The laws are outdated too when it comes to the worldwide web from copyright, revenge porn, stalking, etc. There are some modern laws to help protect people but most laws are outdated like the copyrights laws. Every Youtuber or makes their living on the internet has faced an issue with the copyright laws. I can't think of one Youtuber I have watched who hasn't complained about the copyright laws in some way.  What I think the government should do is update their laws or reevaluate their laws when it comes to the internet. Also since it's called the world wide web create some laws that apply internationally because you could face a situation with someone who lives in a different country than you. Then when it comes to protecting ourselves you could get a VPN or these bigger tech companies like Apple need to put in better safeguards to protect people. Because most people don't give it a second thought or know how to protect their privacy. 

Diffusion of Innovation

                                                                  Diffusion of Innovation

What is the Diffusion of Innovation it is a theory that forages and it tries to explain how, why, and at what rate new technology and ideas spread into society. The theory was created by Everett Rodgers who was a professor of communication studies and he became popular when he published his book about Diffusion of Innovations in 1962. The theory starts out when someone invents a new piece of then you have the early adopters who are the first people to start using the new piece of technology, who are usually part of a business that incorporates the technology into their workspace. Next is the early majority and that is when your everyday joe starts to use the technology, then soon after them, you have the late majority who are people in society who haven't yet adopted the new tech into their life either because they couldn't afford it or they didn't have a reason to buy it. Then last but not least you have the laggards who are the people left over from the late majority who haven't yet adopted the new piece of technology into their daily lives. 

One of many possible examples of this is Netflix which was created by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph which revolutionized the entertainment business and how we consume media. In 1997 Hastings and Randolph started shipping DVDs by mail and it quickly blew up, Netflix adopted with the times as new technology became available Hasting and Randolph incorporated it into their business in 1998 Netflix had a website and then the following year Netflix started their subscription service. Fun fact in 2000 Blockbuster refused an offer to buy Netflix because they believe that the system was doomed to fail, well we all know how that turned out. Eventually, Netflix turned into what it is today, and now many other companies who are part of the entertainment business and now even companies outside of the entertainment business use some version of a subscription service. Netflix made entertainment way easier to obtain and watch it brought it to your fingertips at one low price which is why Netflix became as big as it is. What is negative about Netflix is that it put a lot of video rental stores out of business which caused a lot of people to lose their jobs. Even as successful as Netflix is at the end of the day it is a company that is bleeding money at an alarming rate which is why they keep bumping up their subscription prices, they are spending more money than they are making. I don't think Netflix is going anywhere anytime soon but if they don't get their act together their future may not be that bright after all. 

EOTO Response

                                                                         The Television 

There were a lot of presentations that I enjoyed and almost everyone I learned something new but the one that I found the most interesting was the one about television. Even though I had to help my parents set up their new TVs over the weekend and I know a decent amount of things about modern televisions but I realized I don't know that much about the origin and history of the television. 

I never really knew who invented the television or that it was three different people who worked together and invented the television, Vladimir Zworkin, Philo Farnsworth, and John Logie Baird. But when the presenter mentioned that there is a debate about who actually invented the television didn't surprise me at all. The other thing that I did guess was the fact that the television was invented so there would be faster communication and also for entertainment. Whenever there is any groundbreaking invention like the television it completely changes society news traveled at speeds that it had never traveled at before and it also made it way more convenient. It also opened a whole world of mass communication and it connected people across the world unlike anything ever seen before. I have always loved learning fun facts about things so I found the fun fact about how it is believed that the television helped John F. Kennedy beat Richard Nixon in the presidential race because the presidential debate between the two of them was televised.   

For as long as I can remember there has been an ongoing debate about television and how it affects someone's mental health or how influential can TV be. Personally, I am torn when it comes to these two debates because I kind of see both sides of the argument. I believe that it is up to each person they are educated on what they are watching or what they are showing to an audience or someone.