Final Presentation

 Ferris's Relationship with Technology

    Considering I am a Game Design major I would say that technology is going to play a huge part in my life. Despite that, I still use technology every day whether that is using my phone to make plans with friends or doing homework. Avoiding technology is next to impossible so why not embrace it? I think that technology is super cool and the possibilities for it are pretty much endless. If you asked my grandmother what she thought of my relationship with technology she would think I'm the smartest guy out there but if you asked my best friend he would say that I know nothing about computers. I am excited for the future of technology as it will lead to more and more innovative inventions and creations. The only thing that I can say I am worried about for our future is our laziness. One of the most successful business industries in recent years is Uber Eats and Door Dash. People are paying up to double for food just because it is more convenient. My online presence is weird. If you look me up you will find my Linked in and a bunch of people named Lewis Ferris. Now if you really dig deep you will find my Youtube Channel that has a bunch of Lego videos I made when I was young. They honestly have an impressive amount of views for a twelve-year-old. I am not scared if an employer sees that because if he does I will say hey man I've been creating things since I was a kid. 

Final Blog Post

 Our Relationship with Technology

I think that overall Technology has caused more good than bad. While yes there is a lot of cyberbullying and people are always glued to their phones, Technology has allowed us to share content with anyone on the planet instantly. It allows information to be communicated much quicker. If anything Technology has saved more lives than caused deaths. With technology, we are able to communicate with others much quicker. Anything you want to know is a quick google search away. I think that for some people it can become a bad habit. I mean we are all guilty of it. I have this one game on my phone that I play for multiple hours every day. I will sometimes be riding in the car with my mom playing my game as she is talking to me and I am only half listening and it makes her angry. Despite all of this Technology has done some magnificent things. We are able to perform surgery across the country with robots. We also have access to any information instantly. Perhaps one of the most impactful things Technology has done for us is through the huge huge amounts of entertainment it can bring. Whether that be through watching Youtube or Netflix or playing a video game technology provides entertainment to everyone at some point or another. I think that our world is evolving and more accepting of technology. I grew up with it and so I understand it and think that it is normal. While someone who is older and has lived the majority of their life without a smart device always on them has a completely different point of view. I think that they probably have much better social skills than our generation and may find information more valuable. While my generation is quicker to learn things and more ambitious since they grew up being able to know anything whenever they want. I am a Game Design major so for me, technology is quite literally going to be my livelihood and future. Now putting the bias behind me I think that when determining if technology is healthy or unhealthy it really just depends on the person. Like most things in life I don't think it is fair to generalize it being flat out good or flat out bad. People can do good things with it like save lives or create something entertaining for people. But people can also do bad things with it like plan bomb heists or something. I think that overall technology is good for society and I don't think we should look at it as a bad thing. It really is what you do with it. Some people are glued to their phones and that's their personality. But not everyone is like that. I mean you can also find out a lot by googling someone. There are not many Ferris's out there so for me it's pretty easy. If you google me you will find my Instagram, Linkedin, and my Youtube channel from when I was young with a bunch of old Lego videos on it. There are also pictures of people who are not me. In those descriptions, it said Lewis Ferris so I think it is safe to assume that Ferris was their last name. Ferris Linkedin 

Blog post 10

 The Five Eyes

The five eyes is an organization comprised of the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United Kingdom. They would trade many secrets about various topics. We do not know specifically what they talk about other than it is on surveillance and intelligence. We do know that the five eyes operate and staff multiple bases across different countries. Another thing about the five eyes is that they are not governed by anything at all so they are able to say whatever they want to these other countries and nobody can know what they are talking about. For all, we know they could be planning an attack on other countries. The Five eyes have also expanded their eyes to add more countries to their group. However, each set of eyes still meet without the other eyes. The nine eyes added Denmark, France, The Netherlands, and Norway. So what I'm saying is that the original still meet without the nine. After the nine eyes, there were the 14 eyes which added Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and Sweeden. Just like before The 14 eyes cant meet unless the nine eyes are there too. The eyes have expanded to over 41 and you can see the full list at https://privacyinternational.org/learn/five-eyes. While the five eyes are very secretive sometimes leaks will get out. For example, it was recently revealed that New Zealand did not agree with the other four eyes about China's rapid growth and exports. I personally don't find that interesting. What I find more interesting is how did something like this leak? Who told the public? Who did they tell and why? I mean it just doesn't make sense to me. I mean who gets to take place in these meetings? If it's just the government's official leaders then it had to have been one of them right. I don't know man. https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/australianz/australia-new-zealand-disagree-over-role-of-five-eyes-intelligence-pact-as-china. Australia also wanted the Five Eyes to expand its economic growth to China. I am not sure what else the Five Eyes talk about because they are very secretive about what they talk about. Some of the government officials were even joking calling it the four eyes. Japan is one of the tier B countries and Japan’s government official said that he would like to see more inclusion of China in the Five Eyes. I find that this is honestly scary. I know pretty much everything is imported from China but still, it seems like China still has things that they are not telling us. It’s not that I think we are enemies with China I just don’t think they should be considered one of our closest allies. I mean not even the general public knows what the five eyes are talking about why should we trust a communist country? That’s just my take on it. I do not know a lot about politics nor do I follow them I just am speaking what sounds logistic to me. 

Eight Values of Expression.

Theory of Innovation

    The seventh value of free expression is the theory that it promotes innovation. So essentially what that means is that if free expression is encouraged and protected that people will express themselves in many creative and different ways. I'm not sure if the reasoning is to stand out so people notice you more or if the reasoning is that it awakens your creativity. Either way, we can see evidence of this all over the internet. Take Youtube for example. There are all types of videos on that website made by tons of different people discussing pretty much every topic. Whether it's music videos, politics, makeup tutorials, or gaming videos there are millions of completely original content posted every single day. This leads to people in the community continuously trying to outperform one another. These videos take a ton of creativity. For many years that's how Youtube worked. It was quality over quantity to be successful. From what I heard it would often take up to 100 hours to make a really good 20-minute gaming video. You would have to play the game write a script sort through the gameplay footage record the script, and edit the video. And so to make a good video creators would spend tons of time being creative to make a good video. It was typical a few years ago to only have a video come out from one creator every couple of months. But eventually, some people started hiring editors to speed up the video creation process. so they can release more frequently. Some people even had multiple editors so they could be working on multiple videos at a time. That was the next innovation made for youtube was the realization of editors. Over time having a few editors evolved into having 6 editing teams. And so people would post up to even twice a day and still get millions of views. Now you may be asking yourself what does this have to do with the theory of innovation? Well, I believe that Youtube has evolved from people expressing themselves and competing to be the most creative into finding the most creative way to make as many videos as quickly as possible. Almost every YouTuber that used to do all of the editing themselves that I used to watch either switched formats and hired editors or rarely release anything at all. Everyone except for my favorite YouTubers "Videogamedunkey". He even made a somewhat parody somewhat serious video addressing this topic. Here's a link if you are interested. I'm done making good videos. YouTube is still a relatively new medium of expressing yourself. It's been around for over 15 years but still, it's constantly evolving and changing and people are constantly trying to figure out new ways to be creative on the platform. And this is just one platform on the internet where you can freely express yourself. Now obviously there are some restrictions as it is a company. But for the most part, you can say whatever you want and anyone's voice can be heard. About 10 years ago I made a lego stop motion video and it got a couple thousand views so believe me I do mean anyone can be heard. And that's pretty impressive for a ten-year-old.  

Blog Post 12 Each One Teach One 2

Illusory Truth Effect

This is when someone believes false information because they have heard it so many times over and over. If people think they know the topic makes it more evident. And even if the person knew the information was false, to begin with, it can still happen. I find that very interesting and I can contest this theory being true. Once I got in a car accident and I convinced myself that it wasn't my fault. I told myself that so many times to the point that I actually believed it. I tell everyone that I got t-boned. Well, I recently learned from my mom that according to the insurance company it was my fault and that I knew this. I swore it wasn't my fault and I was convinced it wasn't but it was. I also feel deja vu and feel like this has happened before. 

Blog Post 7: Antiwar

 Antiwar websites

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/web-categories/realism-restraint/

https://www.antiwar.com/

   The two websites that are listed above are two very strong views on anti-war. It covers various topics that the mainstream news never goes over today. Why is that? Maybe going to war isn't as big of a concern for the American public as the government wants it to be. I don't know. But what I do know is that both of these websites feature very strong viewpoints. There are countless links to articles in the first website. For example one of the articles was talking about how we need to respect our allies and not treat them as enemies. The author was mainly referring to India and its military. So why doesn't the news ever cover stuff like this? Well, I can't say for sure but my theory is that they don't want to cause chaos and more controversy before we know all the facts. From what I've read and my understanding while yes there has been some controversy between countries there has been no evidence of war or anyone being hostile. I think that the people who are super anti-war are just trying to be at peace and prevent one from ever happening. I believe that as of right now we don't have anything to worry about and perhaps they are paranoid. I mean, believe me, I don't want a war to happen either but I don't think that we have to be 100% in agreement with every country to prevent one. I mean we are separate countries for a reason so why should we always listen to them? 

Blog post 9: How technology spreads (Stock Market Investing)

 Why more and more people are investing.

People have been invested in the stock market for over a hundred years. However, the vast majority of the public was not investing until much much more recently. Let's go over the timeline of people when they started investing. cool facts

Exploratory: (Pioneers)

These were the first people to get into the stock market. They were primarily businessmen who lived in New York and had to physically go to Wall Street to buy and sell shares of a company. This lasted from the 1920s to 2006. You had to own a seat to be allowed in Wallstreet and they were worth millions of dollars until it was disbanded in 2006.

Early Adopters:

The next generation of shareholders is in more modern times. These people are people that wanted to get into the stock market but either A. did not live in New York or B. could not afford to go to Wallstreet. Now anyone could buy stocks online and was the turning point for a lot of the stock market's future.

Early Majority:

I would say investing became a lot more common especially after the BitCoin spike in 2015. This was huge and more and more people got into investing. I was in High School at the time and even some of my peers were investing.  I would say this era lasted from 2015-2020

Late Adapters:

I think the next major spike in new investors was actually after the Gamestop incident a few months ago. I was able to make about 1200$ off of Gamestop but I already owned a couple of shares for about a year. I started investing in 2019 so I am part of the last group. I remember in my Human Communication class I tried to get the class to join Robinhood which is an investing app for one of my projects. I think most of the class thought what I was saying was a scam. But now about half the class is using Robinhood after a year and a half. I find that very interesting. After the huge Bitcoin spike being worth nearly 50k, The GameStop incident, and most recently DogeCoin spiking. More and more people are joining the stock market. I feel that we are still in the late adapters category right now. 

Laggards:

I think that this category has not happened yet and hopefully, it won't be anytime soon. I would like to keep making money. 

Blog Post 6: something I learned from EOTO

 The First Movies

I learned a lot from the each one teach one the other day. However, I found what Ben said about movies to be the most fascinating topic of them all. To think that the reason the invention was created in the first place was because of a stupid bet. The bet was that a horse is airborne when it runs. So a man created an invention called the zoopraxiscope to prove that he was right. This was the first moving picture. Later on the first movie was released in 1907 and it was called "A Trip to the Moon". It was under 15 minutes and when released in theaters typically included live performance doing the voice overs. Movies became moe popular in the 1920s. This led to the sucssess of the worlds first movie star being Charlie Chaplin. Another thing that I found interesting that Ben said was that back then the theaters were called palaces. Isnt that a little odd? Imagine going to a palace to watch a movie and a live performance and it costed only 25 cents. 

On another note something else that was interesting was the introduction of Facebook. I did not know that it was originally meant for college students to network with others. This sounds more like a Linked-in at first glance. Obviously, it became much more than that and opened up to other schools and eventually to the public. Anyone could get a Facebook. It became more than just a place to meet other students but a place to share pictures and interact with your peers. Facebook soon became the largest social media platform on the planet. Everyone and their grandma had a facebook. This allowed so many families to reconnect and see what people far away have been up to. It was a new beginning for technology. Eventually, Facebook bought Instagram and so their only real competitor for social media now is Twitter. And Twitter is a whole different breed.

The last topic that I found super interesting was the iPod. I find it oddly nostalgic. My father had the original iPod when I was young and I had an iPod nano and later an iPod Touch. The iPod and all of its itterations have been discontinued which sounds so weird to say. The reason the original iPod was so successful was the same reason cassette tapes were successful except this was more convenient and cheaper. The reason the iPod Touch were so successful was because it appealed to a bunch of kids who were not old enough for an iPhone. I was one of those kids and I had an iPod for a couple years. Nobody used the iPod Touch for the music. I mean I didn't even use the iPod Nano for music. I wanted to just play the games on it. I played breakout on the nano and a bunch of the early mobile games on the touch. Here is a link to bring you down memory lane.2010 mobile games

Blog post 4: 6 Freedoms of the 1st amendment

Is Twitter breaking the first amendment?

Supreme Court Ruling

As you may have already heard President Trump was banned on Twitter. A lot of people thought that this was against the first amendment and our freedom of speech. Well, we may be allowed to say whatever we want but Twitter is a company and they are allowed to censor whatever they want. I know it may not be fair as it is an easy way to mass communicate with the country but its the truth of the matter. But banning the President of a country is a big deal. I don't think that has ever happened before and it really caused a lot of drama and political havoc. I mean it makes sense that they are allowed to. You are using their platform and agreed to their terms of service. As an average American, you probably don't need to worry too much about the terms of service. But if you are famous and have millions of people following you it is important to not break the rules. Everyone is watching you and people are gonna do everything they can to bring you down. Now I think that while technically twitter is allowed to ban him, he is allowed to say whatever he wants and should not be in trouble with the law. I don't think it's cool as a big company to play a role in the political war. I think that Twitter should just stay out of it and let people say what they want to say. I don't like that they clearly have a bias towards specific political parties. 

Ex Walmart employee drives Car through Walmart

What Happened?

News Article

Just the other day a man drove his car through the Walmart. This is the same Walmart that I have been going to my whole life and this whole story sounds absolutely crazy. Apparently, he was upset from being fired and did this in retaliation knocking over shelves and causing massive damage to the entire store. I feel like this is something that would typically happen in a movie or something. But at least in the movies, it's generally a more interesting reason than being upset about getting fired. The man was later arrested and the car is currently still in the Walmart. The man was charged with two felonies being breaking and entering and Assult with a deadly weapon on government property. Now, why did this happen? What do you gain from doing this? Obviously, no normal person has this train of thought. However, I am glad nobody was hurt and find this story absolutely hilarious. 

But there has to be more to the story......Right???

So this story leaves me with more questions than answers. We know that he was fired but is there any proof that that's why he drove inside? Why was he even fired? Sure no matter what the reasoning is you probably shouldn't drive through a Walmart but. What were his motives? Was he mad at his boss or the corporation itself? Obviously, the store cant operate a functioning business after an incident like that. We know he was taken into custody yesterday. But what happens now? Who is going to clean up the Walmart? The Walmart employees probably are not expected to do that. And now they are out of work. Did this guy not expect to go to jail after this? At least he will have an interesting story to tell when he is asked what he's in for. I wonder how long it will be before this Walmart is open again. Why drive through the Walmart dude? Like it seems fun and all but I just don't see any benefit of doing this. Nobody is going to be mad at you. The entire Concord Community is laughing at you. If it were me and I wanted to drive through somewhere I'm not supposed to it would be the Speedway. I mean come on we are in Charlotte. The speedway would be way more fun and you probably wouldn't have gotten in as much trouble. I mean maybe I guess you are still breaking and entering but. 

Final Thoughts 

Ultimately it sucks that this happened not only for the employees but the business owners of the location. Now from an outsider's perspective, I find this to be really funny. Nobody was hurt and it just sounds so stupid. Like stealing the Mona Lisa kinda crazy. I have so many unanswered questions and this is the Walmart I've been going to for years. Well before this I thought those tall metal poles blocking cars were kind of pointless and unnessasary. Well, I still think that because obviously, they did not work. I am just glad that this is something I can laugh about and not a tragedy. 

Blog post 2: Supreme Court

Supreme Court Video part1 Supreme Court Video Part 2

Things I Learned about the Supreme Court

There have only been about 100 Supreme Court justices over the course of America's History.

The Supreme court said that an act of congress was unconstitutional

They only accept about 100 cases a year.

The Hearings are all public.

Each side of the Supreme Court cases has 30 minutes to make their argument to the judges.

After a case is determined the winning side has to write an opinion on their reasoning.

It takes about four weeks to write an opinion of the course case.

Each judge may also write an opinion if they disagree or agree but disagree with the reasoning. 

Opinions can be up to 80 pages long and within hours they will be summarized and realized on tv or in articles of what they decided and why.

Most Important Takeaway Point 

The Supreme Court Justices are people too all each with their own opinion which can make things complicated as views on issues change.

The most surprising thing I learned

The supreme court implemented a system so that each justice gets a chance to speak before someone speaks for a second time. This allows everyone's opinion to be heard without having interruptions and gives each Justice the same chance to speak.

How the video changed how I view the supreme court.

I now can see a more detailed process of how the supreme court works. I already knew what they did but I now have learned more about the process and complications that go with that. I also think that The Supreme Courts' decision is important because that will go into effect for the rest of America's history. I guess I already knew that but until watching this video that did not really click in my head. 

5 News Sources I use

 5. Instagram 

Instagram is a good news source as it allows you to see the community's perspective on a lot of topics through the usage of hashtags. Instagram also recommends similar posts to the ones you frequently interact with. Although Instagram has a great variety of content the quality is not always the best.

4. Snapchat

I always feel bad when I see news from Snapchat. Its news section is filled with Tik Tok drama and beauty stuff that I don't care about. So when I see news on Snapchat that does interest me I typically read the headline and then google it and read an article about it that is more reliable. It's not that I think the news headlines on Snapchat are wrong it's more so that I don't want to say I learned this from Snapchat. Also sometimes I learn about things when my friends post about something.

3. Friends and Family

Most people trust their friends and family more than strangers. While more than likely they probably do not have any extra insight on the issue they are more likely to sway your opinion. When my mom tells me about something that is happening in the world it will mean more to me than if I just happen to see it on my phone. Also, the people you talk to will most likely have a different opinion than you. It can be super beneficial to discuss your point of view and issues with one another. Of course in a civil way that doesn't ruin relationships.

2. Twitter

A lot of the community is able to voice their opinions on twitter. I see a lot of new information from the trending section on twitter which shows which hashtags are being talked about most within a period of time.This allows people to easily find what issues are happening within communities you most frequently engage with and communities that are being most mentioned in general.

1. Youtube

I personally spend a good portion of my free time on Youtube. As such a lot of News that I see is posted on youtube. Videos also generally tend to have more detail and opinions than twitter. Watching a ten minute video about something gives you a ton of more information than reading about something on Twitter.