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.