Tyler

Today my writing will be based around an article, “The Internet’s Original Sin”, and a video presentation, “The Internet With a Human Face”. Both links can be found at the end of this post.

After gaining knowledge from the two sources, about the amount of data that webpages are able to collect from an individual, makes me think about going on the internet much less.  One example to note is dealing with search engines such as Google.  When one searches on Google, Google is able to take that information from the search and generate an advertisement related to it. These advertisements become valuable and are worth the most money when they appear as someone is ready to make a purchase.

When an advertising company demonstrates that they are going to target people more that Facebook, will involve tracking users more closely. Companies will then begin to track what people do and search on their phone and track their physical location.  They will use this information to get the most suitable advertisement for the user in order to get them to make a purchase. Just the thought of this alone makes me think, “should I drop my smart phone and use a classic flip phone?” This will probably not happen for myself, but others may consider making the switch to a flip phone because it will carry much less personal data to be collected by hackers and the government.  Would you consider a flip phone after reading the article and watching the presentation?

Even is one were to change from a smart phone to a flip phone, are they still safe?  The answer is probably not.  According to Maciej Ceglowski’s presentation video, under the Bush administration phone networks allowed them to tap peoples’ phones.  There were only one phone company that would not allow the NSA to tap peoples’ phones.  All other companies allowed the NSA to tap lines under one condition, that they got immunity against lawsuits.

With all that information from both the article and video presentation, it really makes me more question how much authority the government has, and if they already have too much authority.  But what is more questioning is when the amount of surveillance was released, many internet users came to just accept it, as long as the costs remained free.

The Internet’s Original Sin: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/08/advertising-is-the-internets-original-sin/376041/

Hello all!  In this blog I will talk about my social media usage throughout a normal day and an experiment in which I altered my social media use for a day.

To start off, I already do not use social media too often.  When tracking my social media usage, I found that I mainly used my phone in the mornings when I wake up and at night as I am going to bed.  In the mornings, I found that I use my phone for about a full hour. In the afternoon, from about 6:00-10:00 pm, I found that I am on my phone for just over two hours on social media and my sleep was poor.

With the information I found tracking my social media usage, I decided to alter when I am on social media. I decided that I will not be on social media at all in the mornings and not on social media after 8:00 pm.  I decided not to change my habits in the early afternoon because I was not on social media to begin with.  This experiment was easy for me to accomplish. I also found that without social media in the mornings, I am less stressed getting out the door for work. This made my mornings smoother and more relaxing.  If you are on social media in the mornings before work or class, I would highly recommend trying to cut it out completely.  What I found at night without social media past 8:00, is that my sleep was much better. I was able to relax more without social media and a screen in my face, which helped me sleep better without.

In this post, I will be discussing information from Max Stossel’s presentation, “We’ve Been Sneaking Into Your Brains”, and Emma Rathbone’s article, “Before the Internet”. Both links can be found at the bottom of this post.

We’ve Been Sneaking Into Your Brains

Before diving into Stossel’s presentation, I would like to tell you about social media’s usage and influence in my life.  Up until last year, I would have considered myself addicted to social media, along with 50% of young adults as mentioned in Stossel’s presentation.  I would be constantly checking my phone, and always had my notifications on.  Once I heard one notification, no matter what I was doing in the moment, I had to check it.  I had to know what was going on, even if it did not relate to my life.  Because I do not consider myself addicted to social media today, does not mean I deleted all forms of social media.  I muted and disabled all notifications at once.  I could control when I wanted to be on social media, and not be told when to log on by a notification telling me that I had been away for some time.

Near the end of Stossel’s presentation, he went over some points to avoid screen time.  The first one he mentioned was to turn off all notifications that are not from a human trying to reach you.  With this being his first point made me feel more confident in my choice last year to turn off all notifications from social media. It confirmed that I was taking steps in the right direction.  The second point was to turn your phone to a grayscale.  This will draw your attention away from the notifications that would stick out because they were red.  Another point to reduce screen time was to eliminate your phone alarm clock and to buy a physical alarm clock.  Stossel’s reasoning for this was that a phone alarm clock will cause people to be stressed fist thing in the morning because of all the notifications that gathered from that night.  This causes people to feel behind, forcing them to check all their notifications just to catch up.

One thing I would suggest is taking Stossel’s advice to: get a small group of friends together and delete, yes delete, all forms of social media from your phone for one full week.  The purpose to do this with a group is to hold each other accountable.  By the end of the week, some people may find that social media was causing them to stress over nothing at all.  Some may then spend less time on a screen and more time interacting face-to-face.

Before the Internet

At times where internet is not available, as described in the “Before the Internet” article, there is a different environment.  When I am without internet, I feel relaxed instead of stressed.  There is no stress of what others think about what I post or wondering what everyone is doing.  I can focus on what I am doing.  I can allow myself to focus on other hobbies, such as playing my guitar, or mixing music. Times without the internet, everything slows down.

https://vimeo.com/370135963

I am Tyler, a student at Central Michigan University majoring in Information Systems.  I am currently a fifth-year student, planning to graduate in December.  I was born and raised in a small Michigan town, Coloma.  I graduated from a private school of 38 people.  I worked at a local restaurant for 4 years, and now work at my family business, as an electrical apprentice, for the past two years.  While at Central Michigan, I assist the HVAC department in upgrading all the pneumatic controls to an electronic control.

For my career goal, I plan on growing my family business after graduation and applying what I learn from Central Michigan to my business.  My family business is an electrical contracting company.  It was started in 2012 for approximately 1 year and was restarted in 2018.  So far, we are doing work in two different counties and I plan on expanding that after graduating.

One company that is exemplary with its social media is IHOP.  They have a strong social media presence.  They have Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Instagram profiles that reach people of all ages. One of the things they are known for is when they led all their customers to believe they were changing their name to IHOB in 2018.  They said they were going to start selling burgers. They changed all of their names on their social media to IHOB and were promoting burgers like crazy. Many of their customers were confused of the name change.  However, many people were sharing IHOP’s posts over and over again.  It seemed like it was all anyone could talk about.  With IHOP’s one post, they received a lot of free publicity.  Attached is a link to one of the posts promoting IHOB, which reached out to 1.2 million twitter users.