Final blog post

Twitter:

At first it was very challenging to come up with how we were going to incorporate Twitter into our presentation. We first considered live tweeting, but felt that that would cause our presentation to be too time restricted and it would not have worked. We would have had to time everything perfectly, and if something was off, then it would have been off for the entire presentation. I found it very difficult to use the computer to transition from powerpoint to Twitter, so that would have most definitely thrown off our timing. Instead, we made a timeline (on our timeline) of Twitter, as well as retweeted some notorious tweets. We basically used Twitter to tell the story, as well as show unique features, such as Vines and polls.
    A major difficulty I found was with the transitions from Powerpoint to Twitter. It took a lot of time up, which was our fault. (Especially when there were videos to play). We also found it difficult to tweet a timeline, considering the tweets go on the feed in the opposite order. We basically had to be really careful what we tweeted and when, so that we did not forget something and have to start all over. It would have been nice if Twitter had a feature that let you move tweets around on your own Timeline so that they were in the order you wanted them to be in. The lack of that feature I think hindered our presentation. There were some tweets out of order, but for the most part I think we did a good job. Overall, this timeline of Twitter worked out well. We probably could have spent more time planning our tweets, which would have minimized this problem. Lastly, if twitter wasn't 140 characters or less tweets, we probably could have just done what was on the Powerpoint on Twitter. However, that is what Twitter is known for, and I don't think it should change for the sake of our presentation!
   

Week 12

Paul Wilson was a guest speaker this week for our class, and he talked about the dark web. I became much more informed with how the dark web works, as well as why it even exists. The military created the dark web to form private networks. However, it got out of control when people learned how to access it. Now, the dark web is a hidden network that is home to many, many unthinkable things. We all know how massive the public web is, and Mr. Wilson explained that the dark web is even more massive. Some examples of activities that are enabled by the dark web are the solicitation of child-pornography, drug trafficking, human trafficking, and even terrorism. The appeal to the dark web is simple: people can do illegal things without being tracked by law enforcement. People making purchases, perhaps for a hitman or drugs, use currency called BitCoins. I had never heard of this before, but it shocked me to see just how separate of a world the dark web is. This lecture really opened my eyes and made me see how terrible of a place the world can be. What is very scary is that our law enforcement have no way to protect us from the terrorism acts and plots that are on the dark web. It is so disturbing to know that all of this stuff is going on all the time, and we have no idea or no way to stop it. I really enjoyed Paul Wilson's lecture in class; I learned stuff I never would have known, and also got a glimpse into how dangerous the Internet (not just the dark web) can be!

Week 11

     Today was probably the most interesting class yet, in my opinion. We were discussing the negative aspects of the Internet and social media. For example, we watched a video about what all media is doing to us. It said all of us view, on average, about 10 hours and 45 minutes of media EACH day. This includes television, radio broadcasts, movies, music, magazines, and social media/Internet. The point of the video was that for something that we invest so much of our time into, we are not watching things that are helping to construct our morals. For instance, I have yet to see a show on Netflix (besides maybe on Netflix Kids) that does not have curse words, show nudity, or drug use/alcohol consumption. Children who are still learning about how to interact with others and constructing their morals are being exposed to this, and in turn thinking that this is how the world should be. The video made a really great point. There are half naked women all over media (all attractive, for the most part) which teaches women that they are not good enough unless they have a nice body or pretty face. On the other hand, it teaches men that women are just their bodies and nothing more. On top of it all, there are celebrities that young girls look up to, that portray this same idea. For instance, Kim Kardashian posts nudes on her social media, which makes the girls that look up to her believe that they must look like her or be beautiful to be successful and noticed. Then, the celebrities arguments are that they should not have to feel ashamed of their bodies and by posting these nudes, they are "liberating" themselves. There is nothing liberating that is going to come from posting those things, because all that teaches us is that girls need to have a body like that, and boys need to find a girl who looks like that (regardless of personality, brains, etc.). As long as this media is what we are exposed to--and it is literally everywhere--nothing is going to change.