User:Jonathanjmartinez

I'm a part time student at De Anza College and I'm majoring in computer science. This wikieducator page is being used for coursework for Prof. Valerie Taylor's CIS2 class (Computers and the Internet in Society).

(BEST) Computers and Social Websites:
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/how-much-of-the-internet-is-fake.html

This article talks about how fake a lot of the internet has become. The internet has become full of fake companies, fake content, even fake people (bots). It is becoming hard to distinguish what is real on the internet from what is fake. For example, on YouTube, content creators are driven to gain views on their videos to gain money or notoriety. However, many of these views can actually be bought with money ($15 gets you as much as 5,000 "fake" views). Amazon opens up a whole world for resellers to buy from other resellers and then reselling the product again for higher prices. Even Facebook has been caught inflating their metrics of video views and traffic. The article gives some more examples but this all leads to the realization that authenticity is becoming less and less important in a metrics-driven internet.

Selected Media - Society:
https://tallblog.conted.ox.ac.uk/index.php/2008/07/23/not-natives-immigrants-but-visitors-residents/

This article covers an interesting topic about the distinction between having a real presence on the internet (being a "resident") or simply using the internet as a tool (being a "visitor"). While I agree with some of the observations the article makes, I feel like more and more the line between a "resident" and a "visitor" is becoming blurred. I think that these days a "visitor" to the internet is going to have some kind of presence on the internet whether they even intentionally seek one out or not. Just by using services on the internet, a "visitor" is leaving a digital footprint. Basically we are seeing that most users of the internet are "residents" in some form, even if they only see the internet as a tool.

(BEST) Anonymity:
https://mashable.com/2018/05/03/anon-value-society/#Oo.GPWHooiqE

To me this word basically represents what most people ideally want in their average use of the internet: to be anonymous. This article talks about the value of anonymity on the internet. As the article points out, there has been an ongoing debate about anonymity: is it better that it exists or not? Some believe that anonymity is important to the very idea of the internet, essentially a right that is very close to our own freedom of speech. Others believe that too much anonymity leads to abuses such as cyber-bullying or other criminalities.

Freedom of Speech:
https://nypost.com/2017/08/19/so-just-how-guaranteed-is-your-freedom-of-speech-online/

As pointed out in my previous topic, our anonymity lends itself to us having a freedom of speech on the internet. But is the freedom of speech a guaranteed right online? As this article explains it, basically no. The internet doesn't guarantee us any rights, our own government does that. As such, any private web company can decide to censor its users if they so wish and this would not be a violation of our freedom of speech because it is not a governmental action. However, such abuses by these private companies could lead to push back from not only their userbase but from the government as well.

Privacy:
http://www.safeinternet.org/internet-piracy-infringement/

Internet piracy is essentially a form of theft wherein someone copies and distributes on the internet an intellectual property without the consent of the copyright holder of that property. However, not many people find internet piracy to be wrong. According to a stat presented in the article above, 70% of online users feel there is nothing wrong with internet piracy. It is also quite popular as another stat shows that 22% of all global internet bandwidth is being used for online piracy.

(BEST) Art and Computers:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/amazon-counterfeit-art-sellers-fakes-copyright-infringement

The internet, specifically Amazon and similar marketplaces, offer a place for artists to sell their work. Unfortunately, quite a bit of this art is counterfeit. This article talks about how artists are noticing a lot of fake and copied versions of their art being sold on sites such as Amazon and Etsy. Although Amazon claims that it strongly prohibits the sales of copyright infringing products, the article gives many examples of stolen art still being sold. Examples were easily found by simply using an in-app Amazon feature where you can search for product by taking a picture of it. When a picture was snapped of a particular piece of art, many examples of products came back in the search such as pillows, yoga mats, and tapestries that feature that art piece, none of which had the permission of the artist to use the material.

(BEST) Computers and Crime:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jan/31/fbi-counter-hacking-operations-raise-privacy-red-f/

The FBI has revealed that they've done some recent counter-hacking in order to map out the severity of the Joanap malware, a huge botnet allegedly created by hackers in North Korea.

Apparently, the FBI piggybacked onto the botnet, essentially hacking into any computers that are infected by the Joanap malware. This was all done in order to identify what computers are infected and to track the activities of the malware in effort to eradicate it. This malware is particularly dangerous because it gives hackers access to your computer and allows them to commit wire fraud and other crimes.

Because the FBI had to essentially hack into infected computers, some are worried about these powers, calling them "invasive." However, the FBI did attain a search warrant prior to this operation which legally allowed them to do it.

Risks Forum:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201901/16/WS5c3edfb8a3106c65c34e4d75.html

This article talks about an app for WeChat that was released by the "Higher People's Court of Hebei" (a court in the Hebei province of China). The app displays if there are any people in debt within 500 meters of the user.

The debtors information is then made available to the user so that the user can easily tell authorities about anyone who is in debt. A spokesperson for the court had this to say about their app: "It's a part of our measures to enforce our rulings and create a socially credible environment."

Assistive Technology:
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/2/5/18210912/websites-ada-compliance-lawsuits

This article argues that more accessibility is needed on the web. The writer of the article themselves is disabled and gives many examples of how some websites are falling short of being fully accessible to people who are blind, deaf, or have other disabilities. The article also talks about recent lawsuits that are being levied at companies whose websites are difficult for people with disabilities to navigate. As the writer argues, the web should be fully inclusive and accessible to all and companies should have these accessibility issues in mind when creating their websites.

(BEST) K-8 Engineering:
https://www.diversityinsteam.com/2018/04/stem-k-8-engineering/

This article gives great examples of how engineering is being taught in k-8 classrooms. One example was a class being tasked with designing something to keep water warm inside of a vessel. The only tool they were given was a temperature probe. With this tool they were able to measure and record the data of the water temperatures. Along the way, they are learning about scientific concepts like heat transfer as use engineering principles to design their projects using the temperature data. One of the teachers featured in the article asks "What is technology?" And another teacher essentially answers that question with: “Pretty much anything around us is technology."

This concept is important to teach to young students as well as for all of us to remember because the truth of technology is this: Everything around us had to be designed at some point to solve a problem. This is the essence of technology.

Internet of Things:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2019/02/04/5-internet-of-things-trends-everyone-should-know-about/#311c974e4b1f

This article talks about a few trends pertaining to the internet of things to look out for in the future.

One of the trends it mentions is more focus being put on voice control tech. Right now I think things like Alexa and Siri work fine but I'd like to see their capabilities increase. What I'd like to see is a voice control home. From all the electronics and home appliances to the TV, to the sound system, the heater and AC, even the shower and bath, everything controlled by a central voice control program similar to Alexa or Siri.

(BEST) Computers and Society Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DPRt3AcUEY

This is a video from a channel that is basically all about computing and many different fields within computing. There's a lot of great videos on there. This video in particular is about computer graphics and how deep learning is being used by companies like Nvidia to render very high quality graphics using less computing power. The basic concept this technology is that a computer graphics card is essentially "trained" using deep learning AI to recreate computer graphics in higher quality (higher resolution, better graphics effects, etc). Right now the technology is still pretty new and the results are pretty varied. However, Nvidia continues to work on it and the future seems pretty promising.

(BEST Medicine and Computers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcSH8b6FGgw

I found a brief video that talks about two aspects of AI that can really help in medicine in the near future. The first aspect is image recognition. This is the ability for AI to recognize specific images and identify what it is seeing. The video suggests this could be useful in the medical field to aid doctors in visually diagnosing a patient's injuries or ailments by recognizing symptoms or scanning MRIs. The second aspect described in the video is speech recognition. This would mean an AI that could actually recognize a person's speech and converse with that person using proper clinical terminology. Doctors would essentially have a secondary who they could dictate medical information to, and in real time the AI could analyse this information and store it.

Both aspects would produce data that could then be applied through algorithms by the AI to further help doctors reach a diagnosis for their patients.

Dependency:
https://www.psycom.net/iadcriteria.html

I found this article on a psychology website that talks about internet addiction (high dependency on the internet). When a person becomes so dependent on their use of the internet that it begins to interfere with their daily lives, this person has become addicted to the internet. The article explains that it is difficult to point at a real cause for why internet addiction occurs. However, it is pointed out that an internet addict's brain has a similar makeup to that of someone who is dependent on drugs or alcohol.

(BEST) Technology and Election:
http://time.com/5543649/2020-elections-voter-security-states/

This article talks about concerns going into the 2020 election regarding election meddling and the public confidence in the process. One of the main concerns going into the election is the vulnerability of voting centers to meddling. The article says that election experts consider the likelihood of success of hacking in the elections is slim. However, this is because voting in the US is decentralized and locally run which also means that some local voting centers in the US will have outdated hardware and software when some other centers may not. This problem is especially difficult when there are reports that voting centers in a number of states cannot afford to upgrade their voting technology.

Virtual Lectures:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iM6M_7wBMc

Having watched the recent documentary "Free Solo", I found this Ted Talk by the same guy who is the subject of that documentary. Basically, this person Alex Honnold is a rock climber that does a type of climbing called free-soloing, which is rock climbing alone without using any kind of rope, harnessing, or protective equipment. Its extremely dangerous and many have died doing it. In the documentary, Alex Honnold becomes the first person to free solo El Capitan, a 3000 foot tall cliff face in Yosemite, California. In this Ted Talk he briefly talks about how it felt to do that. I highly recommend watching the documentary, its really good and it just won an Oscar.

Interesting Quantitative Facts:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelleevans1/2018/12/17/5-stats-you-need-to-know-about-the-digital-consumer-in-2019/#1f03fb28636b

This article has a few interesting stats regarding the Internet. The first stat is perhaps the most interesting overall. 50.8% of the global population is now online which means, according to the article, this is the first time in history that the majority of the world is online. Another stat is that there is now 105 million combined users from India and China who are now online. This number is expected to rise as the internet is becoming more open in those regions. According to the article, it is expected that in the next three years, India and China will add more internet users than there are currently using the internet in the US today.

Both these stats signal to me the growing expansion of access to the internet across the globe. As more users come online for the first time, I believe we will see fresh innovations and ideas come to pass. I believe that this trend of a more free, more open internet to new users around world will lead to a more connected world overall.

(BEST) Future of Computers:
https://www.wired.com/story/inside-the-high-stakes-race-to-make-quantum-computers-work/

This article is about an emerging field in computing called quantum computing. Quantum computing is a new kind of computing that uses the ideas of quantum mechanics to perform computations. In classical computing, computations are made using inputs and outputs of bits in binary. Everything your computer does essentially comes down to many computations of either ones or zeroes, on or off. However, quantum computing operates in the realm of photons and electrons, with particles called qubits that can be in "superposition", or all states simultaneously. This means that computations are done with ones, zeroes, or both at the very same time. With each added "qubit" of memory, the computational power of a quantum computer raises exponentially and would surpass that of any traditional computing used today.