Blog post #5 | Privacy

Privacy in technology has become a concern over the last two to three decades. As technology advances, so does personalization and tracking. Your iPhone has been tailored to track data from scrolling or looking at products. For example, if I was looking up Star Wars helmets on Safari one day, the very next day I could be scrolling through Instagram and find advertisements trying to sell me Star Wars helmets or other Star Wars products. Until recently, that was the case across the board with handheld devices. Apple recently released an update to their Apple products which requires apps to ask if they can track your data. This is a big win in terms of individuals protecting themselves from being profiled and put in databases of information. 

The issue of technology progressing enough to violate my privacy has become my concern as I have gotten older. As a kid, I did not have to worry about this stuff because I did not have a phone, or at least my mom's phone wasn't really my phone. Anyhow, as I got older, I was given access to technology, like an iPhone in my name & a laptop for college which I could utilize to download games, create an account on Instagram, connect with people across the world, and surf the web to find things that might make my day-to-day a little easier. What's concerning about this is that for most of these activities, they take my data and store it somewhere to be more personal to me; to make it easier to sell or appeal to me. For instance, Instagram determines the watch time of every reel I watch and if I watch one reel longer than the rest, it throws me more reels that may have the same captions or the same semantics as the reel I watched longer before. 

The government should help corporations when they try to protect our privacy. Recently the FBI encouraged iPhone & Android users to stop using their traditional texting apps and move to encrypted texting platforms, like WhatsApp. The FBI doing this is a good example of what the government should be doing but should be doing, and what they do doesn't exactly line up all the time. Federal employees aren't even safe from this, with the Trump Administration wanting to set up an email system that is designed to send emails to all Federal employees' inboxes. At the forefront, this seems innocent, but if it is hacked then that hacker has the name and more information of every Federal government employee. It is seeing backlash thankfully, but if it were to follow through that could be a serious potential breach of privacy for all employees in the government. 

Data collection is something my family should be concerned about, my friends should be concerned about, and I should be concerned about. We should not be fond of the fact an entity, which could turn against any human at any point, that knows exactly who we are and what we would do. While I do understand this is for security's sake, this is not how you ensure people remain safe. Who I am & what I do should not be anyone's business unless I opt for it to be. When I post on Instagram, I am opting for the world & Instagram to know what I have been up to lately, and that's fine. If Instagram were to take my interests and try to market them though, that would be a breach of my trust and security. 

Something we can do about protecting ourselves from entities that collect our data can be simple or just a little harder than simple. Simple is deleting the account and opting to have that data not be tracked one hundred percent anymore. This is not ideal, so I recommend going with the second option, which is utilizing the "Limit Data Settings" functions on the apps you use that could track data. By taking the time to limit the data an app or internet thing could collect, you make your life more private and make it harder for an entity to figure out how to exploit you. 

Blog Post #6 | EOTO reaction post

No one knows when pigeons or birds were trained to deliver mail. Seems to go back to the Egyptians or the Romans. It was utilized for the wealthy during those times though if they wanted something to get somewhere faster than the horseback mail system. In modern times, pigeon racing became a phenomenon and they were used during World War One and World War Two. 

The first electronic television system was showcased in 1927. The public introduction came with BBC's regular broadcast in 1936, also featured in the 1939 New York World Fair on behalf of RCA. Television became a mainstream form of receiving media and revolutionized the entertainment industry allowing people to watch things without being present. 

Bluetooth was invented in 1994 by Dr. Jaap Haartsen while working on short-range radio connections. The first version was realized in 1999, focusing on wireless data connection. It is an innovation made for the benefit of convenience and accessories. 

The idea of the telegraph was first claimed in 1798. Samuel Morse created his version of a working electrical telegraph by 1832. The first message ever sent was "What hath God wrought?". It was a growing industry leading into the 20th century. By 1934, it had gained enough attention to have governments pass legislation to monitor it. It was an amazing innovation because messages would travel quickly (same day) whereas the mail system would take multiple days, if not weeks.

Paper was invented in ancient China by Cai Lun. By mixing fibers and plants, the paper could be made and written on. It was spread throughout the world via the Silk Road. It was revolutionary in the sense of communicating with people across distances and preserving it. It is the primary form of communication used to teach the masses about religion, natural sciences, liberal arts, etc. 

The email was invented in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson. He came about it during his spare time while figuring out how to transfer files from one computer to the next. Tomlinson figured it would be a "neat thing to do" and it wouldn't become popular until 1988. There are 7.9 billion email accounts worldwide, and 5.6 billion are active. Gmail is the largest email provider, having 1.8 billion active user accounts. 

The VCR was invented in the 1950s but wasn't popular until the 1970s-2000s. VHS and Betamax were tracks put into VCRs to play videos. Using magnetic tapes, you could playback videos. It allowed for technological advancements with television and led to the rise of direct-to-video films convenient for home-watching. 

Cloud computing is the delivery of storage and software over the internet, allowing people to access and manage their data remotely instead of relying on physical technology, like the USB drive. The first version was created in 1969, but the computing system wouldn't gain traction until 2006 with the Amazon Web Service or Google Docs/Services. It faces challenges with cybersecurity and cost management. Sixty percent of the world's corporate data is stored in the cloud.

Compact Discs were patented in 1970. The prototype was revealed in 1979 and had a commercial release in 1982-1983. Sony & Phillips licensed the CD for recording in 1988. From 1988 to 2007, over 200 billion CDs were bought worldwide. CD's descent in popularity occurred in 2008 when Spotify launched. If all the CDs in the world were piled up, they would circle the Earth six times. The best-selling CD of all time sold over 38 million copies. 

Blog post #4 | The Cassette Tape

The music industry became what it is today due to the invention of the cassette tape. A cassette tape is an audio recording in a rectangular container composed of lightweight materials, making it ideal to carry around and record things. It can do this through a magnetic tape. The magnetic tape was also designed as an advancement where you could replay audio. 

To record audio for a cassette, someone would place it in a recorder and immediately prepares itself to be recorded. When they were done recording, their voice would have been converted into electrical waves and imprinted onto the magnetic tape. People could play this audio back and the recorder would take the electrical waves and convert them back into sound waves through the use of magnetic power. 

Lou Ottens invented the cassette tape as a more affordable, portable way of listening to music. Before Ottens, there were larger versions of the magnetic tape that were incredibly clunky and inconvenient for everyday use. He took on the challenge of shrinking tapes when he became head of product development for Philips Technology in Belgium.

Something that I believe is cool about history, especially when it comes to technology, as tech advances it becomes more available to the people. Look at Electric Vehicles for example, when they first hit the market, like the Tesla Roadster in 2012, they were priced so only high-income citizens could buy them. As time passed, more companies would innovate and offer that technology to the human population, which people would buy because it was no longer an exclusive product. 

Before Ottens, if someone wanted to record something they would have needed a recorder from Ampex. During World War Two, the Germans invented a recorder using magnetic reel tapes. The Americans found out about these recorders and started sending parts home until someone figured out how to replicate them and make them better. This recorder would drive Ottens to innovate the cassette tape.

Ottens's motivation derived from how he wanted a high-quality reel-to-reel tape without clunkiness or expansiveness. He had competition though. Phillips Technology had two teams working on the cassette. One team, the Vienna team, would manufacture the single-hole cassette. Ottens's team, the Berlin team, manufactured the two-hole cassette, which drew inspiration from a previous failed product. Phillips Tech picked the cassette tape they would mass manufacture. With the help of Sony, Phillips was able to surpass their competitors and establish the cassette worldwide. Sony basically forced Phillips to license the format of the cassette tape for free. 

Ottens's dream was realized and the audio-listening industry was revolutionized because music on the go became a reality. This is comedic considering how Ottens did not design it for the music industry, but just for recording things people had said. The cassette tape inspired companies to innovate and create products like the Sony Walkman & the Boombox. I believe that the cassette tape prompted these inventions, and these inventions walked so that wireless headphones and Bluetooth speakers could run. 

The Sony Walkman was pivotal in that sense because it overtook vinyl records. The records were still preferred for home use, but the Walkman sold better because it could be used in more situations despite how it was more expensive. Another pro to the cassette tapes would be that they could play up to three hours of music or radio.

The cassette tape was also revolutionary because it made recording things simple & easy, yet it carried emotional weight through how it could carry a familiar face's voice. In 1967, Phillips Technology invented the Typ EL 3302, a recorder allowing anyone to record audio onto blank cassette tapes. This created an emotional appeal because anyone's voice could be recorded, which would have been extremely difficult to do prior unless you had the money for it.

The cassette tape would be overtaken by the CD player. CD players had the same benefits as cassette tapes by being portable. It was a slow process to get music & audio tracks onto CD players, but it was possible through tech like the CD-R & CD-RW via mp3 files. A downside to the cassette tape would be that you could not just download an mp3 file like you could with a CD disk. Someone could also buy CDs in mass whereas cassette tapes would be more expensive and not as space efficient.