User:GSWJim

Brief Intro
I am a returning student after over a decade away. I live in San Jose with my wife and a ton of animals. I am currently enrolled in CIS2 at De Anza College.

1. Introductions
Snopes.com is a great place to begin looking into the validity of a subject. I use it as a starting point when I can not validate/invalidate a news story using the usual media outlets. When they debunk a story, image or a reported fact, they do so in a through manner where they cite sources which allows you to continue your own research. This link is a site that touts the benefits of computer science in society as a way to motivate you to join the field (albeit at their college preferably). It got me thinking about how the reach computer science has gotten drastically larger by making the world much more interconnected.
 * snopes.com (New Search) *BEST*
 * https://www.rasmussen.edu/degrees/technology/blog/ways-computer-science-benefits-society/ (New Search)

2. Privacy and Freedom of Speech
Amnesty International/Amnesty USA is great resource because they are a non governmental entity who examine things through the lens of human rights. The above link connects to an Amnesty International article about why net neutrality is essential in order to avoid internet censorship. If ISPs are given the ability to control the  "where, when, who and what"  along with how long you can access the internet, things become murky very quickly. I often rely on CNBC for a more business minded approach to news. I came across this article about Microsoft retooling its web browser to be the best privacy based browser on the market as well as the continued growth of smaller niche browsers with a bent for security.
 * https://www.amnestyusa.org/net-neutrality-save-the-internet-from-corporate-censorship/ (New Search) *BEST*
 * https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/05/privacy-first-browsers-look-to-take-the-shine-off-googles-chrome.html (New Search)

3. Intellectual Property
The link above is an interview with a European street artist named MTO. He discusses how he developed his style over time and how his work has taken an outspoken turn in regards to the potential for internet censorship by those who control the interface, Google for instance. Global Focus is the business minded magazine for the European Foundation for Management Development, a firm whose goal is to enhance management across all fields. The link above is an article about what it means to learn in the digital (information) age. They highlight six characteristics that one must adopt to be a lifelong learner in todays world.
 * https://mymodernmet.com/interview-mto-graffiti-street-art/ (New Search) *BEST*
 * https://globalfocusmagazine.com/digital-age-learning-2/ (New Search)

4. Crime
Fast Company is a great resource when looking for articles about the amalgam of business and technology. This link is a discussion about how apps, even when the user limits the permissions, still find ways to track phone/user location through means other than GPS. They do go out of their way to make it clear that not all apps operate in this fashion and do offer an additional resource to verify whether or not an app might operate in this fashion. Forbes is the longest running and most influential business magazine in the world (in my opinion) and are well known for their data driven ranking systems. This link is about a public charter preK through 8th grade school in the greater Washington D.C. area that includes critical thinking in its curriculum. Starting in preschool, they lay the foundation and year-over-year they add more and more to the critical thinking process. A few of the processes are explained in depth and then used in the classroom. Fifteen years into their program they are starting to garner national attention.
 * https://www.fastcompany.com/90372033/these-are-the-sneaky-new-ways-that-android-apps-are-tracking-you (New Search)
 * https://www.forbes.com/sites/helenleebouygues/2019/07/08/how-one-school-is-using-critical-thinking-to-ensure-its-students-long-term-success/#1650b0ff5094 (New Search) *BEST*

5. Employment, Education and Entertainment
Engineering is Elementary is a site whose focus is on establishing engineering as an educational core element during the pre-elementary school years with continued support through high school. They offer curriculum for both schools and after-school programs. Ensuring that engineering is equal in the STEM mix is important because engineering is the finality of the work of the other aspects, concepts manifested so to speak. Wired Magazine is a San Francisco based media company whose focus is on how technology affects the world. This link covers the ever-growing world of social media influencers being used by businesses to promote products in lieu of traditional advertising. They touch on how spending on influencers as advertisers continues to grow as well as how many of these influencers do not follow the FTC rules around transparency in posts.
 * https://www.eie.org/ (New Search)
 * https://www.wired.com/story/inside-the-industry-social-media-influence/ (New Search) *BEST*

6. Mid Term project - Grand Challenges
These statistics paint a larger, more accurate picture of the global refugee crisis. In the U.S. the refugee crisis focuses on those fleeing Central America into the United States and is often used as a talking point by the major political parties. In the fervor, we forget that there are more conflicts happening worldwide, often due to the meddling of the western world. Using the vast monetary and scientific might of the developed world, there should be a stronger system in place to help these people and place them in places of possible success around the world. When people think of the housing crisis, most think of the rising cost of property/land in major metropolitan areas all over the world. What is not often thought of is the developing parts of the world where the population is growing faster than the infrastructure can handle. People are left with no option and find themselves residing in unsafe unsanitary housing. Major corporations, philanthropists, academics, and creatives should be investing time developing some kind of modular dwellings even if they do not generate tangible value ($$$) for the global market.
 * https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/figures-at-a-glance.html (New Search) *BEST*
 * https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/04/the-global-housing-crisis/557639/ (New Search)

7. Evaluating and Controlling Technology
The Pew Research Center is a great place to search for information of all kinds. The link above carries over to several talking points regarding the digital divide and allows you to refine your search by sub-category as well as by research year. ComputerNetwork or CNET for short is a website with a focus on consumer electronics. This link is about the lack of standards, security and otherwise, used in IoT devices and how those standards must be created and implemented as soon as possible. The FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) Alliance hopes to be the group to do it. Much like EnergyStar or UL certification, standards are needed to communicate reliability to the consumer.
 * https://www.pewresearch.org/topics/digital-divide/ (New Search) *BEST*
 * https://www.cnet.com/news/fido-alliance-looks-to-create-standards-for-internet-of-things-devices/ (New Search)

8. Risks, Failures and Responsibilities
I like the HuffPost because it is, in my opinion, the easiest place to find coverage of each days top news story. This article looks at our dependency on technology from a different vantage: job creation. With our world growing ever dependent on technology, hardware and software designers are in demand worldwide. The Atlantic is an American magazine with a focus on literary and cultural commentary and has been for over 150 years. It is a great place to find well thought out opinion pieces, usually from an expert in the field being discussed. The above link is to a written perspective regarding Elon Musk revealing the Neuralink implantable brain-machine interface and the potential implications.
 * https://www.huffpost.com/entry/our-dependence-on-technol_b_14228856 (New Search)
 * https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/07/neuralink-elon-musk-silicon-valley-promises/594316/ (New Search) *BEST*

9. Anytime, Anywhere
US News and World report is an American news organization predominantly known for their rankings of hospitals and colleges and I often find myself on their site looking at similar rankings or simple "10 Things ... " style lists. I have no experience with MOOCs but they seem to be the way certain areas of higher learning are headed. Experts in any field can immediately share their knowledge with anyone seeking it out. People with a desire to learn can pick up any subject and learn at their own pace ... for free. For those who desire some kind of credit/credential for their work can now do so for a small fee. While these are all awesome the world of MOOC is not without detractors. It has been pointed out that most courses are only presented in English, limiting those who can utilize them. In addition, there are unscrupulous "schools" who are charging for something that is provided elsewhere for free. TED is a series of conferences held all over the world where the lectures themselves are captured (Video, audio or both) for later dissemination to the masses not in attendance. No matter what the subject you can almost always find at least one lecture about it. The lecture above discusses the creation of a contraceptive pill for men so that they can be equal partners in pregnancy prevention. This would be a welcome innovation since there are currently at least a dozen, highly effective contraceptive options for women but only two for men (condoms and vasectomy). The presenter discusses the potential options for making this a reality as well as touching on why making contraception a couples issue and not a woman's issue is important for society.
 * https://www.usnews.com/higher-education/online-education/slideshows/10-things-to-know-about-moocs-in-online-education (New Search)
 * https://www.ted.com/talks/john_amory_how_a_male_contraceptive_pill_could_work#t-744 (New Search) *BEST*

10. Technology Advances, Social Trends
Medium is an online blog space for both amateur and professional writers to participate in social journalism. Medium was created by one of the founders of Twitter as a space for writing longer than the 140 character limit (now 280) Twitter allowed. The link above is to Society 5.0 which, in concept, shows that our relationship with technology can be a positive one. Instead of data or connectivity being used maliciously, they are instead used to enhance the quality of life for the citizenry. I appreciate that the Japanese government has taken this stance because a fair amount of the news you read/hear about the direction humanity and tech is all doom and gloom and many other nations have yet to establish any kind of public opinion or guidelines. The Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan research data and fact finding organization whose focus is on how demographics and social issues affect the world. I use the site often when looking for data to back up or debunk an argument. Pew Research conducted a survey about how often American adults go online. They took these findings and narrowed them down even more. Here are few that jumped out to me:
 * https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/the-future-of-humanity-and-the-world-of-technology-society-5-0-6e4dd5952bae (New Search)
 * https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/25/americans-going-online-almost-constantly/ (New Search) *BEST*

28% of American adults now report that they go online “almost constantly,” up from 21% in 2015

81% of Americans say they go online on a daily basis (28% who go online almost constantly, 45% who say they go online several times a day, 9% who go online about once a day

Roughly half of 18- to 29-year-olds (48%) say they go online almost constantly and 46% go online multiple times per day (94% are on a minimum of multiple times a day)

7% of those 65 and older go online almost constantly and 35% go online multiple times per day

These numbers show how our relationship with the internet is ever-growing and how the younger generation lives largely through the internet. Pew also goes into further detail about how age, gender, race, education, and income affect one's internet connectivity as well as their methodology used for conducting the survey.