Jake’s Blog

While the stock market may not dictate the exact state of the economy, it surely is telling of the financial status of tech companies. I highly recommend reading the article linked, as it tells a gloomy story of how some of the biggest companies in the world are reshaping and resizing their workforces.

From what I have read, the biggest factors leading into these layoffs are the reduction in advertiser and consumer spending, both caused by inflation. I do find it very possible to imagine that many of these companies did not need as many workers as they had prior to the layoffs, but I hope that (retained) workers for these companies are making sure they earn more if they are expected to do more work.

With what seems to be what will be a continually evolving story, crypto exchange FTX is going out of business. This may not be that surprising to anyone that is against crypto in general, but FTX was the 2nd largest exchange in the world, so this is going to impact the market strongly.

What makes a collapse like this so damaging is how unclear the proceeding events will be. With endorsements from top athletes and influencers from every aspect of entertainment, so many consumers have trusted FTX with large amounts of their money. This trust has led to countless users having their withdrawals paused with no idea of what to expect. There are event reports coming out now that much of the company's financial auditing were done by illegitimate "metaverse firms," further adding fuel to the fire and questioning of "how did we get here?" As the weeks ahead occur, I am expecting some clarification on how exactly this happened; but I am worried this all may be a small piece of a much bigger problem with our financial system.

As most people know by now, Elon Musk has officially taken ownership of Twitter. While this is sure to lead to many drastic and controversial changes in the coming months/years, the first event to stir things up is his idea and promise to start charging a monthly fee to verified users. Originally, he threw the idea out at $20 a month and has come down to $8 a month; but verified users are not happy. I personally find it to be a very practical way for Twitter to generate revenue, as it is well known that their current/previous business model has been failing in terms of revenue. Verified users, on the other hand, are livid. Listening to so many of these verified users complain and act as if this is a violation of free speech has been funny to hear, as so many of them say these things with such a sense of entitlement. The verification system of Twitter has been both inconsistent and overpowered for years, and it (in my opinion) surely should come at a cost considering how strong of a tool it is.

In a society where every online service and application requires a sign-off on pages of terms and conditions to proceed, you can only assume there will not be much privacy. From companies listening in on phone's microphones (which is commonly and unknowingly authorized by the user) to home devices such as Alexa products listening to just about anything they want to. A prime (no pun intended) example of our data being the product is Amazon sending out Echo Dot's for entirely free. What is typically a $50-$100 product being given out for free should tell you exactly how important and valuable your information really is to these companies.

For my experiment, I decided to do a full 24 “detox” of all social media platforms starting Thursday at 12:00 AM until Friday at 12:00 AM.  The timing honestly was perfect, as I had a lot on my plate in terms of school and it really helped me focus on my work without distractions.  The main social media platforms that consume my time are YouTube, Instagram and TikTok; and I surely felt these platforms trying to “pull” me back with countless notifications.  While it was not necessarily easy to not use them, it felt good; my mind felt clear.  Often what I am viewing on social media is not doing anything good for me, even in some instances putting me in a bad mood with all of the “doom and gloom” that these platforms highlight around the world.  Without all of that, I finished my other class work with time to spare and had a good night playing basketball with my friends.

While these two clearly come from very different fields, they seem to find the potential problems of technology to be a very real thing. I find Louis and many comedians to be great analysts and commentators of current society, and clearly a professor from MIT who has done countless research knows what she's talking about. Social media and our phones have given us tool and access to connect with the world in ways that were never possible before, but what gives also takes. We are turning into the most knowledgable and "capable to learn" generation of all time thanks to things like Google and platforms like YouTube, but at the same time so many of us are incapable of holding a simple conversation and maintaining eye contact. We may be able to keep up with friends that moved states away, but the same technology is often also keeping us from truly connecting to the people directly around us. I surely appreciate what social media and technology can and do provide for us, but I also am worried that we are losing sight of what matters most; real in-person connection and collaboration. As technology continues to advance, I am very curious as to how our society will evolve with it.

I found this talk to be very accurate but also slightly out of date; especially considering how drastically technology, specifically social media, has grown and advanced into our everyday lives since the inception of COVID.

The point about China was a profound example of how powerful social media can be in the hands of ordinary citizens, providing the capability for us to break free from the traditionally curated and controlled media. While China obviously put an end to that following the earthquake situation, the majority of the rest of the world has (thankfully) not followed suit; allowing for more raw and unfiltered world updates than ever before in history.

How's it going everyone, this is my first time ever posting on the platform so I apologize in advance if my formatting is weird.

My name is Jake Wood and I'm a senior originally from Otsego, Michigan. I will be graduating this December with a degree in information systems with my sights set on an entry level DBA position.

I took this class to further develop familiarity with social media on a professional level, as I have a lot of experience but mostly for personal use. I also run a YouTube channel as a hobby and it has recently become profitable, so I wanted to see if this course could help me expand my reach beyond YouTube to a platform like Twitter.