Blog #9: Diffusion Theory

 

    

    Throughout time, all products and ideas go through the Diffusion of Innovations theory of the stages they are in their lifecycle of time. When it comes to iPhones, they have been at their peak for so long in the United States, that they have to fight to stay at the top or at Critical Mass. Sales of the product has stayed stagnant since 2015, still fighting to stay on top. Although Apple has released new phones and multiple versions of the same line of product, the 'wow' factor of the iPhone just isn't there anymore.  They will soon probably start going down the maturation slope and get to saturation pretty soon after that. After they get that far, it is highly unlikely they will be able to come back from there. In 2016, the news was released that Apple was purposely slowing down their phones after over a year of use so consumers would buy new phones more frequently.  This slowdown helped to keep the iPhone sales increasing throughout the year. This is why after 2016, the sales weren't increasing as they did years prior because Apple stopped slowing down their phones which made consumers be able to keep their phones for more years. As Apple is still the number one selling phone in America, there's some worry about competition with Teslas' new Pi phone that was released. People are still iffy on the new product as Apple has been a trusted company for many years, but Teslas' new phone is an introduction to the future as the iPhone was back in 2007. Due to that maturation stage of theory coming into full swing soon, Apple is already focusing their iPhones in different parts of the world including China.  In a matter of 2 years, iPhone sales in China have increased dramatically. In 2019 they were at the bottom of the list of top-selling smartphones and in September of 2021, they climbed to be the top-selling phones in the whole country. This shows that iPhones in China have climbed close to the peak, at Critical Mass point of their life. In a few years they will catch up to America and be in the maturation stage and be fighting to stay on top of them game in the phone industry.

Blog #8: Disinformation, Misinformation and Fake News

  

When it comes to disinformation, misinformation, and fake news, there are many similarities that make it hard to tell all three of them apart. Disinformation is false information that is deliberately spread to influence people. It is meant to purposely fool the public and people in general. Misinformation is false news being spread without the intent of it to mislead anyone. This can be accidental in some cases as rumors are spread around about certain topics and each person says the information slightly differently. Fake news is purposely created to invoke emotion and attention that mimics the form of mainstream news. This is used to sway people's opinions about certain topics. All three of these actions are bad because none of it is telling the truth and lying out of tricking people and putting fake information out is the wrong thing to do. All of this has been going on for many years as early as the Spanish-American war in 1898. After the ship called Maine blew up on February 15th, 1898, the papers at the time came up with a story that claimed the ship was hit by a Spanish torpedo, they even showed pictures of an explosion. This story was meant to make people think that the Spanish were the enemy and to spread lies about them to make them look bad. This was both disinformation and fake news because, the story was very much intentional to be spread and the papers wanted a reaction out of people and since it was from the papers reporting news, it was more likely to be believable since it was mimicking a trusted news source. This obviously affects society greatly as people want to trick people into thinking what they believe is right which can start major fights and problems. This can cause trusted news sources to not become trusted anymore and anger will cause people to do stupid things and divide as a whole which isn’t a good thing. 

  

 In more recent times, disinformation, misinformation, and fake news are still a huge part of the headlines. Especially in President Donald Trumps' presidency, he spoke about these topics greatly in an open manner. During the 2016 presidential election, there were claims being made that Trump was colluding with Russia and just involved with them in general. He kept claiming ‘fake news’ about the whole topic and said he did nothing of the sort. This ended up being true and the Steel Dossier got in trouble for lying to the FBI by claiming Trump was involved with Russia and that they had compromising material against Trump. This is disinformation and fake news due to the nature that people were spreading false information about President Trump to make him look bad so he wouldn’t get elected and even after that to get him impeached and in trouble. Spreading false information does end up backfiring later on as Mr. Steele got in huge trouble for lying to the FBI which is very serious. Also when it comes to Covid-19, as it is still new, it is easy to spread misinformation about it as well as be sneaky and spread disinformation about the serious topic. Some people spread misinformation or disinformation whichever way you want to think about it, that the U.S. government created the virus. Also, some people say sipping water every 15 minutes cures the virus which is not true. The person who starts the spreading is the source of disinformation, and after the news blows up, people who spread it after that are spreading misinformation. It can really get tricky when trying to separate the two terms and arguing if what was being spread was intentional or not. None of the three terms really affect different segments in a different way, it affects each individual person differently because no one thinks the same way therefore there will be different opinions about topics, and people will either take the information they hear seriously or lightly with a grain of salt. Especially with the newest generation being focused on social media, it is very easy to get disinformation, misinformation and fake news spread around everywhere. These things will never stop as they have been a problem since the 1800s, but it is very important to keep an eye out and not believe everything that is on social media and in the news as well. 

Blog #7: Privacy Policies

     

    The whole privacy conversation when it comes to the government and other companies being able to track everything we are doing is very scary. This affects everyone in my life including me because we are all being watched in similar ways. In the Ted Talk spoken by Catherine Crump, she spoke about how just use driving cars around, the government can see where we go. Even if you have an old car with no GPS or any other tracking system, there are automatic license readers that take pictures of your license plates while you're parked or driving or wherever. This is due to the low cost of the system nowadays and therefore the police departments have all of this data and can use it if they want to. Even if you're not a criminal being watched and tracked, your data of where they have tracked you is still in the system regardless of who you are. This is honestly so sickening to me the think my little baby cousins are being watched while they go to and from school or to and from sports practices while they are only 7 and 10 years old. I believe the police departments and the government really doesn't need information on little children going to school and just going anywhere regardless. The government should honestly be taking more initiative action in protecting our privacy. We are in this so-called "free" country for a reason, and we should be given that right to our privacy. When it comes to people committing crimes, the government and police departments should be tracking those people and the people who surround them for potential suspects. The government should not be allowed to track and family getting out of their car in their driveway about to go into their house as seen in the Ted Talk. That is their home, their property, they shouldn't be getting surveillanced for that it is ridiculous. In order to protect ourselves from the invasion of privacy, we can do research as to what ways there are to keep things private. Also, read the privacy policies on apps and on other things in order to understand what data will be shared with the companies and what can be shared with the government.  We can also have a privacy block called a VPN on our devices in order to protect us a little bit more from an online invasion of privacy. Invasion of privacy goes from online to in-person and back around again in a full circle. All we can do is protect ourselves the best way we can by learning different ways to keep our information private and acting immediately because privacy is a very important part of the freedoms we have in this country and just us in life in general.

Post #6: Invention of Netflix

   

   One of the inventions that we learned about in class from someone else was Netflix. I believe this company has transformed itself into what it is today very greatly and carefully. When they first came to be in 1997, they were renting out movies in DVD form and having the movies be mailed to people's houses. This was very innovative at the time because their competitor was Blockbuster which was a movie rental store and if you wanted a movie you had to go rent it out in person. A few years later in 1999 Netflix became a subscription site where people could subscribe and watch movies from a specified list, from the comfort of their own homes. In the first year of doing this, Netflix had 239,000 subscribers and by 2003 they had around 1 million subscribers. As the increase of Netflix's popularity continued to climb, Blockbuster was getting hit hard and people didn't like what the store had to offer as much anymore. Just subscribing to a website and getting movies from there was a lot easier than going out to the store to rent a movie and having to bring it back. I do remember those Blockbuster days and I personally thought it was a fun time to go and see the immense amount of movies they had. I believe this was the case though because I was a very small child like 3-7 years old and I wasn't the one doing the work of driving and paying for the movies. Blockbuster sadly declared bankruptcy in 2010 and all of their locations had closed down by 2014. If Netflix hadn't been so innovative and eaten them alive, then there's a possible chance they would still be successful today only if they kept up the technological trends. If there's one thing I've learned throughout the years is that if technology keeps improving and a technological company doesn't keep up with the new trends, they will end up dying out.  Technological advances and new and improved products and services are very important to consumers, so if a company stays at a standstill, it will continue to have some loyal customers but their numbers are likely to drop greatly if they don't change things up. As Netflix was the very first streaming site, they were already on top of their technological game when it came to competitors. This was until 2007, when Hulu came into the game and they offered subscriptions for people to watch TV shows. In 2008 was when Netflix completely switched to streaming but they were still focused on movies at the time with some TV shows, so technology wise Hulu came a bit first, but for target markets, Netflix was still on top when it came to movies. In today's times, I personally use both of these streaming sites because still today they offered different things which make consumers feel the need to have both of the streaming sites. In 2013, Netflix started streaming its first original content which was called 'House of Cards' which was very popular and people loved it. All throughout the years, Netflix has evolved to match the technological needs of consumers and to keep up with the advances necessary to stay on top of their game. In today's day in age, there are many more streaming sites including Disney Plus, HBO Max, Paramount Plus, and Prime Video which are just a few I could come up with from the top of my head. Netflix really started the trend of online streaming services and people even have gotten rid of their cable subscriptions due to the streaming sites having what they need rather than regular TV channels. Cable services are really on their way out as there is a streaming service for most things people need and like to watch. I personally think Netflix had a huge impact on the technological world of how we get out the movie and video content and they are successful and know what they are doing.

Post #5 Anti War

    

   Nowadays, the United States of America and countries all over the world have felt heightened tension due to statements in the media and careless choices that world leaders are making. Most news sites such as  CNN and MSNBC, have put things on the top of the news including Covid-19, which has been a popular and frequently publicized topic since early 2020. There are many conspiracy theories surrounding this topic and a lot of controversial political bias running around in circles over and over again.  In the next sentence I will be voicing my opinion and I am sorry if I offend anyone or upset anyone, these are just my thoughts about what is going on in our country right now. The media keeps Covid-19 on the top of their to speak about list, because they want to cover up what is really going on in the country behind closed doors. Covid-19 is a very important topic, but there are other equally important things going on including potential wars and conflicts that the mainstream media is putting on the back burner. Former President Trump, was the first president in around 50 years to not go to war with anyone, so the fact that Biden is now having conflict with Russia because of hid foreign policies with Ukraine it really makes him look bad as a president. He was so hyped up all throughout the election, that now he keeps making careless mistakes because of his policies, the mainstream media doesn't want him look bad. This is the way they shove other news into our faces, in order to make sure no one sees the damage this president is doing to our country. The mainstream media is so filtered and censored, because they don't want any opposing sides of their beliefs to be able to voice their opinions. The media really wants people to believe what they think is right and nothing else could possibly trump their opinion. These unheard of websites are sadly the only way people can express the way they feel about important topics including antiwar opinions which is extremely sad and disheartening. The first amendment, Freedom of Speech is really thrown out the window when it comes to anything spoken about in the mainstream media. As long as there are no threats being made or violence being initiated, anyones opinion should be valid and allowed to be shared with the public. People come from different backgrounds, with different experiences, therefore, will have different opinions. The mainstream media should not be one sided especially on important topics like war, there are obviously two sides to that, pro war or anti war. Nowadays the mainstream media decided pro war should be the way to go to anti war opinions are wrong in their eyes. They try to censor anyone talking about it, which goes against the First Amendment.

Post #4: Invention of the Iphone

 

The wonderful iPhone was unveiled on January 9th in the year 2007 by Apple's CEO Steve Jobs. The phone was actually released to the public on June 29th of that year. With this product, Apple wanted to “reinvent the phone”, they wanted it to be a revolutionary life changing product in the technology world. This new phone was something no one had ever seen before as it was the first-ever smartphone. Before this product's release, consumers were used to flip phones and phones with tiny keyboards and tiny screens that were not touch screens. Some examples of these phones are the Nokia and BlackBerry, which were the most technologically advanced phones at the time as they had embedded GPS systems which was the huge wow factor of those phones. Apple wanted to go above and beyond and create a product that could do way more than having phone calls, texts, and GPS systems as the phones could be hard to use due to the small keyboard and small screens and a not good internal system in some cases. Apple saw the opportunity to not just have one small technological advance with a new product, they created a product that was revolutionary. A major part of the first iPhone that people loved was that it was so small it can fit in the palm of your hand. When cell phones first came out, they were huge and bulky, not able to fit in any pocket, and a bag needed to be a remotely big size in order to fit it inside there. From then on phones did get smaller, but it was technologically unheard of before 2007, that a phone with so much power and uses could be as small as it was. This phone had 2G power which was amazing for its time and it was a combination of three products all in one small device. It was a touch screen iPod, a mobile phone for calling and texting and it was a breakthrough device for internet communication, including all web browsing and emailing that would be done on a computer. Apple created a revolutionary product that combined multiple products into one to make life easier and faster for people when it came to technological advancements and having their daily life needs be met with just one small easy-to-hold and use the device.

    

The invention of the iPhone changed our world in a huge technological aspect. With it being the first Smartphone with its small screen and easy-to-use applications, making something better than that at the time was a challenge for other companies. The manufacturers at RIM, where BlackBerry phones were made, were in denial about the whole iPhone fiasco. This caused the company to not update their technology just like Apple and other competitors, so those phones are no longer in existence today. Although the price of the iPhone was more expensive, they were more preferred and valued over other phones including BlackBeryy which in the end pushed other companies phones to the ground. The invention of the first iPhone itself helped with easier, faster, better communication, and as the years have gone on, each newly updated device has been better and better with its time. Customers complained that the first iPhone didn’t have any camera attached to it, so the next phone in the line, the iPhone 3G, which came out in 2009, had a camera plus more amazing features. In the year 2010, Steve Jobs unveiled a new feature of the iPhone which is FaceTime. Nowadays, this feature is so well known and turned into the normalcy of communication, but for its time in 2010, it was a crazy new thing to be able to see the person's face you were calling on the other end. As the years went on Apple of course updated the Facetime feature to better suit their customers and to keep up with the ever so rapidly growing technology. The iPhone really helped to make Smartphones be what they are today. Also with its easy to use functions from the first phone all the way up to now with the newest iPhone 13, anyone at any age with mobile hand functions can use the iPhone. Personally, my grandparents use iPhone and are able to Facetime, call, and text so easily even when they didn’t grow up using Smartphones. As my grandmother is legally blind, she has a big text feature on her iPhone as well in order for her to be able to see what she is doing on the phone. Apple really makes sure that people all across the board and people with certain disabilities can use their phones which is another reason as to why the iPhone is such a revolutionary technology advancement that changed the world. The negative effect of the iPhone would have to be an addiction to the easy-to-use device itself.Smartphone addiction is a real thing that can be very damaging to people's health if not taken seriously. Smartphones are a main cause of stress which leads to other internal physical body problems. On the iPhone, there are ways to lower brightness and turn the phone on night mode and things like that to help eye strain, but overall this piece of technology can be dangerous if used too much at the wrong capacity just like anything else really. Overall the iPhone was a revolutionary product that changed the technological world and still is ever-changing to this day with their new phones that are released every year.