Privacy in a New Age

After watching these two TED Talks, I started thinking differently about how much of our personal information is actually private anymore. The first video, by Juan Enriquez, talks about how our online lives can be like an electronic tattoo. Things we post online can stay with us for a very long time, even after we have forgotten about them. A picture, comment, or post that seems funny or unimportant today could affect us years later.

The second video made me think about privacy in a different way. Catherine Crump explains how information from our cell phones can be used to track where we go. Most of us carry our phones everywhere, so it is easy to forget that they can also create a record of our movements. This means privacy is not just about what we choose to post on social media. It can also involve information that is collected automatically while we use technology.

These issues can affect me, my friends, and my family because technology is such a big part of our everyday lives. We use social media, smartphones, apps, and websites constantly. Sometimes we share information without really thinking about who might see it or how it could be used later. I think this is especially important for young people because something posted when we are teenagers could still be found years later. We may change as people, but the internet does not always forget as easily as we do.

I think the government has a responsibility to protect people's privacy while also allowing technology to be useful. There should be clear rules about when police and other government agencies can collect people's location information and what they are allowed to do with it. Companies should also have to be honest about what personal information they collect and how they use it. At the same time, privacy laws need to keep up with new technology instead of always being years behind it.

There are also things we can do ourselves to protect our privacy. We can think twice before posting something online, use strong and different passwords, turn on two-factor authentication, and check the privacy settings on our social media accounts. We should also pay attention to the permissions that apps request and avoid sharing personal information unnecessarily.

The biggest thing I learned from these videos is that privacy is not just about having something to hide. It is about having control over information about yourself. Technology makes our lives easier in many ways, but it also means that we need to be more careful about the information we leave behind. Before posting something or giving an app access to my information, I think it is worth asking myself one simple question: Would I be comfortable if this information were still available years from now?

AI Disclosure: This blog post was researched and drafted with the assistance of Claude, an AI assistant made by Anthropic. Claude Created a blogpost created solely off of notes written while watching the aforementioned Videos, no  external information was used in the creation of these posts.

EOTO POST

The Box That Talked: How Radio Changed Everything

On election night in 1920, almost no one owned a radio. Still, a Pittsburgh station called KDKA read out the Harding–Cox results to whoever happened to be listening.

That small broadcast started a revolution.

The story really begins with Guglielmo Marconi, a young Italian engineer who built on Heinrich Hertz's discoveries and sent a wireless signal across the Atlantic in 1901. Marconi saw wireless as point-to-point messaging, like a telegraph without wires. Others, such as Reginald Fessenden, pushed toward voice and music.

The real leap came from a hobbyist. Westinghouse engineer Frank Conrad began playing records on a regular schedule, a department store advertised receivers so people could hear him, and Westinghouse built KDKA to sell more radios. Broadcasting was born.

That shift from one-to-one messaging to one-to-many broadcasting is what made radio a true mass medium. For the first time, a single voice could reach thousands of homes at once.

People embraced it because it solved real problems. Before radio, news moved at the speed of newsprint, but radio delivered it live to anyone with a receiver. At sea, it saved lives, and the Titanic's operators were able to send word that the ship was sinking in 1912.

At home, radio brought music, sports, and education to people separated by distance and income. Franklin Roosevelt used it to speak intimately to families in their living rooms. It also reshaped politics, because voices and personalities suddenly mattered as much as policy.

Success, however, created chaos. Too many stations crowded too few frequencies, so Congress passed the Radio Act of 1927, which said broadcasters did not own their channels and had to serve the "public interest, convenience, or necessity." The Communications Act of 1934 then created the FCC.

That system came with a cost. Critics note the early regulators favored large, established broadcasters, which held back small independent and noncommercial stations.

Music became the next battleground. Broadcasters lobbied for an exemption from licensing but lost, and radio was treated as a public performance requiring payment. In 1923, KFI became the first station licensed by ASCAP.

Then the fees climbed. ASCAP raised broadcast rates roughly 448 percent between 1931 and 1939, and in 1941 broadcasters boycotted it and founded BMI, leaving NBC and CBS without ASCAP music for ten months. The system also had a fairness problem, since ASCAP's exclusive membership shut out many blues and country songwriters from royalties.

Radio's intimacy raised ethical questions too. In 1938, Orson Welles' War of the Worlds imitated a live newscast, and newspapers reported mass hysteria. But historians say the panic was exaggerated, partly because newspapers wanted to portray their rival as irresponsible.

Media credibility and misinformation, it turns out, are not new problems.

Radio taught us that the airwaves are a shared public resource, that creators deserve compensation, and that trusted media carries real responsibility. Every modern debate about streaming and social media echoes those early fights.

We're still arguing about the box that talked.

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AI Disclosure: This blog post was researched and drafted with the assistance of Claude, an AI assistant made by Anthropic. Claude located the sources linked throughout the post, and the illustrations were generated by Claude using code. I reviewed the content and sources before submitting it.

8 values of Free Expression

    

Promote Tolerance:

    Promoting tolerance among our society is something that I personally place a high amount of value on, and something I think our society should too. To be able to live in a society in which different viewpoints, ideas and beliefs can be held, shared and respected. Tolerance does allow protection to speech that many people might find hateful or personally upsetting, but my reasoning comes twofold. One, a society in  which people are unable to tolerate something they don't agree with can never have debate, and two, opinions or beliefs that hold an extreme different to your own can help you evaluate how important that belief truly is to you.

    An Excellent example of this would be the Westboro Baptist Church, where their members are commonly seen protesting outside the deaths of fallen veterans with signs that many consider to be highly offensive and obscene. 

Westboro Baptist Church member protesting

While many will view their actions as entirely Negative, their views and stances on veterans brought many to evaluate how much they cared about veterans and whether or not this was a belief they were willing to fight for, or simply one that they had held due to it being a common ground.  Westboro Church members actions caused many to step up and show support actively for veterans and re-engage with their community, and in total some could say outweighing the potential harm brought forward by the Westboro Church members.   

    

    But this idea of tolerance does not mean that just because anyone's speech and/or belief is tolerated, that it is without or should be without consequences. 

Picture of Donald Sterling

    A textbook example of this in action is the Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling. Donald  is a wealthy older white male that one night got drunk and proceeded to post the "N" word all over a multitude of his social media profiles. There was quite a strong reaction by the public to the words said by Donald, but the speech was legally tolerated. However just because Donald Sterling's Speech was tolerated, it did not mean that what he had said had  no repercussions, The NBA had decided he banned from the NBA for life from holding ownership of a team, and from purchasing season tickets to NBA games.


I think Promoting tolerance is something that should be a cornerstone of our modern society , that Speech is something that is open and free for people to debate and disagree, and if we as a society continue to stray away from it as we have, there will be irreparable damage that will follow.

Top 5 News sources I would go to

1. Ground News

https://ground.news/

Ground news is, practically the only news website I ever visit,  because well, in terms of being a "news service" it kind of cheats a little bit. Ground news's purpose is to help sort out inherent bias found in news by collecting articles from a multitude of other news sources and summarizing it together to try and find the closest version of the truth it can, as well as showing people what stories they might not be hearing because of their usual news providers inherent biases.  So unfortunately the rest of this list is going to be quite barren, and will probably just be filled with news places I think are a good place to get information.

2. Associated Press

https://apnews.com/

Again as mentioned above, I don't really visit any news websites besides ground news, but on ground news AP's articles are usually some of the most factual and accurate available, so credit where credit is due. 

3. Al Jazeera

https://www.aljazeera.com/

Al Jazeera is generally considered a well liked source outside of the US, and for good reason. It tends to cover stories that a lot of Western outlets either underreport or skip entirely, especially in the Middle East and Global South. It's not without its own bias, but again, that's exactly the kind of thing Ground News helps me catch and weigh against everything else.

4. Reuters

https://www.reuters.com/

Reuters is another one that shows up constantly on Ground News as a "factual" pick, and it's easy to see why. Their reporting tends to be pretty dry and to the point, which honestly I appreciate. Less spin, less commentary, just the facts laid out so I can form my own opinion on it.

5. BBC

https://www.bbc.com/news

BBC rounds out the list mostly because it's a solid middle ground between the US-centric coverage I'd otherwise be stuck with and the international perspective I'm trying to get. It's not perfect either, but it consistently lands in that same trustworthy bucket the others do, which is really all I'm looking for at this point.

Supreme Court Video Reflection

 

The Quiet Power of the Supreme Court

Nine justices. That's all it takes to interpret the supreme law of the land.

The U.S. Supreme Court has become the model for high courts around the world. Its deliberations happen in private, away from cameras and public debate.

Its legitimacy comes from the Constitution. But its real power comes from public faith.

It's the most powerful judicial body on Earth, yet it operates in a strange kind of quiet. Not silence, exactly. More like the quiet of a storm's eye.

For over 200 years, the Court has interpreted the same document, adapting it to uphold the rule of law across changing times. Justices serve for life, and fewer than 100 people have ever held the position. On average, they serve 16 years. Interestingly, many justices have said it takes three to five years before they truly settle into the job, once they forget the weight of where they're sitting.

Much of this tradition traces back to John Marshall, whose ruling in Marbury v. Madison established the principle of judicial review. In many ways, Marshall built the Supreme Court as we know it today.

Not every decision has aged well. Dred Scott v. Sandford stands out as the Court's most controversial ruling, and by most measures, a deeply flawed one. Looking back at a 200-year-old document gives us the hindsight to see both the folly and the genius in the decisions made along the way.

Each year, roughly 7,000 cases are submitted to the Court. Only about 100 are accepted.

Once a week, justices review petitions for certiorari with the help of a small team, giving each request for review, no matter how small, equal consideration.

Before entering session, the justices shake hands with one another. It's a small ritual, but one that seems to set the tone for the work ahead.

As one justice put it, making these decisions is like walking through fresh concrete. Whatever path you leave behind is the one others will follow.

AI DISCLOSURE: ai was not used in the procurement of information, all information came from notes that I took while watching a video titled Comm3390 Supreme Court, Pt. 1.  I then prompted Claude to shape my notes into a 349 word blog post written in a smooth professional style, I then added links to online sources that the reader could pursue for more info AFTER writing the article.