Why fake news? Basically, it is needed in order to get the audience happy and entertained. Everyone has heard of the boy that cried wolf, correct? Well this is basically the same. However, many people, including me have believed and read stories that seem to be so true that it’s so hard to distinguish which is real and which is fake. Now when I started writing my blogs, I was always looking for something that relates to ethics and technology. I did write a blog once that I thought was interesting; yet as one of my classmates made a comment regarding the issue I was talking about, it turns out that it was fake news! I couldn’t believe it, but he was kind to leave me with the information I needed to confirm it was fake news. As this being my last blog I was looking for something a little different and I came across this website called “recode” which I hope the information is creditable. The article “We’ve had fake news, fake science – and now, ‘fake tech’” has completely surprised me.
According to Phil Baker, companies such as Magic Leap, Indiegogo, Kickstarter and Theranos have utilized fake information and spread it through social media to get other companies to support and invest in what they thought was going to be one of the greatest investments of the time. Fake tech has “raised $1.4 billion based on videos” created to lured and gain profit from something that is not even there yet. Therefore, as Baker suggested complicated and overwhelming technology and terms must be written by someone who has the knowledge of what is actually going on, “potential customers and investors” should get informed before investing millions, if not billions in the development of AR or VR. Anyone can become pray of such scams, but is it ethical for journalists or reporters to bring fake news to the table? Yes it is, because it gives a sense that every time we look at the news online and or in Facebook they are fake. There is actual and real news out there and people might not believe it is real anymore because someone is making news up. So, when real news is showed, it becomes hard for people to believe in them especially if they are about technology. “So, anyone with a clever idea and a simulated video can raise money proposing an idea that’s impossible to do.”
5 Comments
“For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate.” – Margaret Heffernan
Human beings are always seeking to improve and take the next step. Now as autonomous vehicles and robots are beginning to take shape it is most likely that conflicts are just the beginning. In the article “Uber: We don’t need a permit for self-driving cars” by Dara Kerr is mentioned that the state of California regulations are extremely strict when it comes to permits. If a vehicle needs to be in operation it has to have all its paper work done and in order. If this isn’t the case then the car is not able to be driven. So Uber has decided that they don’t have to report and get permits from the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). Their approach to this is “don’t ask for permission, but be prepared to seek forgiveness.” Yet, as the article moves on, Uber doesn’t even need the DMV’s forgiveness for something they have done and has come to be such a major success. They preferred to leave the risk to civilians and people than to get a permit for their driverless cars. Uber is one of the first companies that bring “autonomous vehicles to the public in the US. “ Other industries such as Toyota, Ford, Volvo, and Tesla are a few that have gone through the process of getting a permit from the DMV. The DMV conducts testing on self-driving cars, checks if they are secure and if they are not, they can’t go around on the streets. However, Uber doesn’t think the same, in the article it is mentioned that Anthony Levandowski, Uber’s vice president believes that “California’s rules and requirements are overly strict” and that they “could have the unintended consequence of slowing innovation.” Innovation is already here and not because the DMV requiring these industries to get a permit means they are cutting innovation. The DMV’s values include the safety and protection of the people, they value the life and that’s what they are trying to protect. They value life and they don’t want to see any accidents coming from autonomous cars. If the cars are not ready to take the road then there should be someone saying and implementing rules. Even if the driverless car is still in the hands of a human it doesn’t mean that it is secured, it only means that there is a greater risk for the people inside the car and in the streets. So Uber is trying to go around the issue by implying that “[their] cars are not yet ready to drive without a person monitoring them.” Yet there has been an accident involving Uber. “There have been a few reports of cars involved in fender-benders, going the wrong way down one-way streets and ignoring traffic signals.” Therefore, Uber should be taken out of the streets if they don’t have a permit. Everyone knows that there is always a price to pay to use technology. Technology does not only cost us our privacy and our freedom, but it also can cost our lives. The lives of many people are on the line each day, each day they people spend on their smartphone, computer and other electronics it’s another day they that many peoples’ bodies are being pushed to their limits. So the reason “Why your tech is a pain in your neck. And back. And eyes” is because people like myself and like many others don’t know the risk it pose to the body and brain. Susan Friedman explains that she has been putting her phone away when she is exercising and is constantly moving. It is a challenge to stop oneself from the use of social media and technology. However, if she doesn’t do this or if no one does the body becomes tense, the eyes start fluttering, “neck aches. Sore back. Eyestrain. Thumb strain. Poor sleep. Lack of focus” becomes symptoms that digital age is involved with. Likewise, “[the] use of laptops, phones, and tablets all day can lead to chronic pain and possibility blunted long-term memory” as well as a dependence on “being constantly connected – and anxious when you’re not.”
The consequences of technology haven’t stopped people from going online and playing long hours a day or even read from a small screen. What they don’t know is that by always having their head down and sitting with a bad posture can lead to a misaligned spine and putting “as much as 60 pounds of force” on their neck. Yet, even when people do feel the pain they decide not to do anything and keep playing, reading and ignored the issue. For example, younger children are hard to deal with when it comes to electronics. They might not listen and ignore their parents’ advice, children who play “mobile [games], which relies on longer periods of intense, repetitive action, increases [the] risk” of the overuse of the joint at the thumb’s base. The point is that many people not just children are drown by technology that it takes part of their daily routine and are absorbed by digital work. Friedman, also explains that the mind is being affected and has come to be an issue for many people. The ability to explain, recall or even do something has taken people to an extended in which they are not able to process and retain information. Anthony Wagnet a Stanford professor has found that “heavy multitaskers found it hard to ignore irrelevant information when performing a single mental task”. Wagnet also says that brains don’t really multitask, what the brain does is switching from one activity to another. So having a smartphone, tablet or any other device cannot only give the illusion of a false reality, intrusion to privacy, but it can lead to chronic pain and other body issues. It is hard not to have the phone at hand or any other electronics, but it is better if when people use their phone at night they set it up to “orange-hued”, because the “exposure to green and blue light before bedtime is especially harmful.” People have to be informed of the consequences technology can do to ones body. People need to distract themselves and live a healthy life without being in constant pain or even blind from using the phone. Just like Friedman says “ You have to set aside time for yourself that no one can interrupt…. You’ve got to take control of your technology rather than let it take control of you.” Augmented reality has come to be known as the next world of virtual reality, we have seen it in Pokemon Go in action already and what it has done to the younger generation. There is always a price that needs to be paid in order to play and have the benefits of such games. Technology has taken the human beings to a path that is not clear. There must be a way to protect users from themselves when they immerge into a world that is not a virtual one anymore, there are steps that users need to take to be safe and steps that developers and engineers need to take a deeper look.
The national geographic has “the big idea” of what augmented reality will look like. The world they seem to be waiting for is an astonishing view of what can be found and done with augmented reality and has virtual reality becoming something so small compared to what is expected by 2021. National geographic shows a world in which everyone would be able to see “bubbles floating... filled with cool info about stuff… on the street[s]” and we can call it “reality 1.0”. This reality will be able to use the five senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. The emergence of this new technology could bring people that speak different languages to establish a conversation and or find their way in an unfamiliar city. As stated in the article, the “computer-generated images on the real world” make it so fascinating to work with. For example, if a person is on the street and wants to find a place they can just run the application and it would guide and show them places without going through the process of using their Google maps or any kind of map. Yet, once again, this can bring some critical AR technical abilities and can create a place in which it comes to know every little detail about the user whereabouts. On the other hand, it has created a better way to train “U.S. Marine Corps” soldiers with AR technology. This might not be true because their training is a simulation. There is no guarantee they can fight without fear but “[t]he marines worked faster with…AR program than with laptop-based manuals,” this means that they learn faster and can understand what’s going on because they are working on it in an augmented reality. It is not just some people think that “AR adds to the toll that distracting technologies take on personal interaction.” It is the consequences that it can bring if immersing [oneself]” would isolate the person in real life. Keep in mind that some people, users, and players feel more alive in the virtual world than in the real world, therefore, having such technology might help them to love the world in which they were born. People are being watched even if they don’t like it. There are cameras in stores, in streets and even in our own homes. Phone applications are more intrusive than ever before. The terms of service are always changing, but even so is the desired for more technology. Today more and more applications are requiring access to our phones’ cameras and microphones and what consumers do is agree to everything they want to access in order to get a little taste of what it is to have such apps. Rory Celian-Jones is a technology correspondent from BBC News; in his new article called “Blippar wants your face in its app” he introduced the application that will use facial recognition. This new application will be able to capture a person’s face and let the user know the name and personal information. “[t]he app will also recognize people – in real life or in photos and videos.” Nobody is going to feel more secure and more well observe than with this app from Blippar.
This brings an ethical concern not only for the user, but also for everyone who might get their face saved in the app. It will be recognized and give away personal information that only the user should have access to. The implementation and the addition of “more than 70,000 “public figures” recognizable by the app” means that at any moment everyone who has Bliippar will be able to identify and recognize someone’s “social media profiles and Wikipedia entries.” At the same time looking at this at a different prospective, the app will come in handy in circumstances that are in need of identification. Calian-Jones gives some examples of why people should be feeling uneasy about this kind of app. To begin with, nobody likes the idea of “a stranger … com[ing] up to you and scan[ning] your face to find out more about you”. Having your own face in a pool of pictures ready to be selected is kind of creepy. Not only that, but people will be at risk of being followed and have a higher risk of being targeted by others. Even Google knew that having that feature in Google Glass was an intrusion to privacy. It is good to know that Blippar takes their users into consideration and the people that might be affected by such an app by letting them decide whether or not they want their face stored on Blippar’s servers. Something that I found interesting is that Celian-Jones mentioned something so true to everyone. It is not clear “why people will find facial recognition compelling”, but as people get older and as many begin to forget who they are, it can help them know who they are and where they live. If this technology is used well it can become a great benefit to older people and for the police to find criminals. It is intrusive, but people get used to this kind of technology everyday, before people weren’t confortable walking down the street because their every move was being watched and recorded, now this app is going to have the same capabilities to do that but in a faster way. People are being watched even if they don’t like it. There are cameras that are constantly recording every action and every word we say in public. The ethical dilemma is whether the consumer and people have a say in this matter. They can oppose the use of such technology but they can’t if they don’t know the implications that it may have. Cameras are everywhere and people are getting used to them. The new generations don’t care whether they are being recorded or not they just want to have the newest technology. These days there are many who have given up their privacy for the excitement and entertainment that technology brings to them. In the article “Amazon Go stores could watch, listen, and remember your every move” by Natt Garun, it is mentioned that the latest Amazon product “Amazon Go” is a product that can reach to the customers. This product is said to decrease the lines to pay, instead of waiting to pay in-line, the customers have the option to pay using their own mobile devices. This product does not only promote self check out, it takes away the customers’ privacy.
As it is described in the article, the system in which the app will run with is a system in which the user will be able to use Amazon Go, once the application starts running, the user will be under constant watch in the grocery store from the moment they step into the door. It will also identify who the user is based on their ID card that’s associated with their Amazon account. It’s not just a personal intrusion but an invasion towards privacy. The company and the third parties that come with the application will be able to collect more than enough information to know everything and anything from its users and the people surrounding them. Facial recognition should also be for government use only. The reason is because if companies are beginning to use facial recognition to determine the account holder then it is considered stalking as well. Ethics does not only lie within the intrusion of privacy but that it can lead to personal information being stolen right in front of the consumer’s eyes. It also can leave people without a job, because if consumers can buy without waiting in line and just do it by phone, the future will have no cashiers and everything will be paid by users’ accounts. The author of this article mentioned something notable about Amazon Go,” the fact that Amazon knows what you’re buying and who you are down to your skin color and this is pretty next-level market research data.” It is also kind of creepy to know that an application can know what the user is buying and how cameras will be implemented to confirmed any kind of purchasing. However, it is not clear if this application will be able to determine the owner of the amazon account being used for purchasing. |
AuthorI transferred to CSUMB in the Spring 2016 from Hartnell Community College. I'm currently working towards my bachelor's in Network and Security and minor in Business Administration. ![]() Archives
December 2016
Categories |