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Final Blog Post

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 When thinking about technology, it is hard to quantify the effect that it had on me. I think it is far to say that it has helped as well as hurt. Technology is a great tool. I use it to do everything from schoolwork to working at a job. Pretty much anything you could think of to do nowadays, it involves the internet in some way. We use our computers for almost every aspect of school now, taking notes in Word and or finals online through Blackboard. It means that we have access to our work at all times and can collaborate with others even if we are not in the same place, through Google Drive. It is a source of entertainment. You can download hundreds of games onto your phone or watch hours of Netflix. But there are also huge downsides to technology. It is proven to be addictive. It can mean an invasion of your privacy. With your information being in he cloud, it could be lost from you forever if something goes wrong. For these reasons, I do not think my relationship with technology...
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What I Learned About 5 Eyes

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During the class presentations I learned about the organization 5 Eyes. It is an intelligence organization made up of The United States, Britian, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The purpose of this group is to share intelligence among themselves. It was  first formed in 1946 after World War 2. Its first intention was preventing the Russians from learning American secrets. It then grew with the inclusion of Australia, New Zealand and Canada.  There are many different intelligence sharing groups like NATO, but it is not equal to Five Eyes. Because of the shared language and interests, information sharing between the nations involved in the organization is more effective than other organizations that might include many countries with conflicting interests. They moniter each others citizens for intelligence, a fact that was relativly unknown until it was exposed  by Edward Snowden in 2013.  % Eyes has been helpful in the aftermath of terrorist attacks. In a report b...
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Sherman Anti Trust Act

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 The Sherman Anti Trust Act was passed in 1890. It was the first anti trust law to be passed by the United States Congress. It was passed during the term of President Benjamin Harrison. The Sherman Anti Trust Act was named after Senator John Sherman, who was an Ohio politician. He was an expert in trade and commerce regulation. The intention of his act was to "prevent the concentration of power into the hands of a few large enterprises to the disadvantage of smaller enterprises." It was to prevent attempts to monopolize markets and push out new or  smaller companies in an industry.   It is a federal statute which is meant to prevent actions that restrict interstate commerce. It also prevents companies from restricting competition in the marketplace. The Sherman Act prohibits monopolization of goods or  services and make it a felony if a company attempts to do so. Under the Sherman Act, violations of the act will be procecuted under the federal district court. ...
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First Amendment Violations

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Today in class we learned how the first amedment rights of citizens can be violated by the government. One example of this is Julien Assange . He is the founder of WikiLeaks, which is a platform on which whistleblowers can post government documents anonymously. He fled America in 2012 to escape persecution. In London, he asked for asylum from the Ecudorian embassy and they granted it. He lived in the Ecudorian embassy for over 6 years to avoid being procecuted by either the United States or London police. In 2019 he was evicted from the embassy and put into a London high security prison. It was a prison normally used for housing potential terrorist suspects, not someone like Assange who had enabled the actions of a corrupt government to be revealed. He was denied justice and his first amendment rights as his lawyers were unable to speak to him during when he was held at the Belmarsh prison.  Daniel Ellsberg also shares why he  thinks Assange has been unjustly treated. Ellsberg...
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Age Of AI Reflection

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 There are many positives to artificial intelligence and machine learning. It can be used to automate boring tasks that human do, like putting a car together or doing complex math problems. This will make the task more effiecient as well as faster, without the risk of human error. We can do more while taking less time. AI provides many oppurtunitys to people who might otherwise be left without, like self driving cars for those that can not afford them or medical diagnosis quicker than humans can see. It also poses many risks as well. AI facial reconizition is used to unlock your phone, pay for groceries, and find who did a crime. This is convient, but comes with risks. AI can be used by the government to track people like they do in China . It can be hacked and used against ordinary people. It can mean a barrier against identity theft, but because of AI we also have deep fakes that can seen exactly like the person it is imitating. AI can use your information that it learns from you...
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Anti War is Anti American

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I think anti war opinions are hard to find because it does not suit the interests of the government. The government does not want its citizens to be against the actions they take. The US relies on its military prescence to boost its own economic outcomes, like with the wars in the Middle East. From these wars, the US gained favorable oil prices for themselves. The US gains more than they lose by supressing anti war voices. The US continues to  stay in the Middle East to prevent hostile powers from controlling the oil supply. There are few to begin with, since the war in the Middle East has gone on for so long and was launched after the 9/11 attack. Because of this, few Americans are willing to speak out against what they have been told is a rightful war.   Another part of this is weariness of the  war in the Middle East. The Middle Eastern wars have been going on for over 2 decades, with no signs of actually stopping until recently. This constant state of war has l...
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What I Learned About The Phonograph

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 During the EOTO presentations, I learned about the phonograph from someone else. I found this really interesting as phonographs were a precursor to the CD player. A phonograph is an early machine that produced sound as well as recording through cylinders. It reproduces sound through the vibration of a needle following  groves in a disk. It is also known as a record player. It was created by Thomas Edison in 1877. He created this by combining his previous inventions of the telegraph and telephone. The machine was used in World War 1 by the Army. The phonograph was popular from the 1890s up until the World War 1 era.   The first recordings were made by Edison by making indentations on a piece of tinfoil, which was then wrapped around a cylinder to be played. It was redeveloped over the years by Edison and others to produce better results. Columbia Records produced the long playing record in 1948 which could play for 30 minutes on each side of the record. Phonographs ...
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