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TS'AI LUN 

The invention of paper goes to Ts'ai Lun back in A.D. 105. The way that people made parchments and stuff to write on before Ts'ai Lun invented paper was through the use of silk. However, at the time there was a huge problem that occurred and that was that there wasn't enough silk to be produced at the time with inventions of calligraphy and animal hairbrushes that also needed silk. This caused a massive reduction in production of books to the point where a better source of material was needed to mass produce books at that time. Ts'ai Lun made paper out of rags, fishing nets, hemps, and China grass, which caused a massive production increase in China. 

Printing Press

The printing press was invented in 1450 by Johannes Gutenburg. Unlike the paper model made by Ts'ai Lun, the printing press was much more efficient when it came to paper making. Instead of using silk, the printing press used metal and placed blocks with each letter of the alphabet. He also made larger quantities of the printing press by using replicas casting which created brass and made replicas by pouring molten lead over them. He also made his own ink when making the printing press because it would not have worked without a very specific type of ink that could affix to metal instead of wood. 

Impacts

There are four major impacts that paper had on society when it was invented, and mass produced.

One big impact that paper had on society was that it helped retain information and knowledge in the form of scholarly journals and books. Because of these inventions that helped mass produce paper, it led to a wider publication of books and knowledge to be spread among the population. This let people around the world instead of just the rich to be able to absorb knowledge that has been written down.

Another big impact that paper had on society was hygiene. Back before paper wasn't invented and mass produced, people were unhygienic because they didn't really have a way to clean themselves. Now with paper being invented, people can now wash their hands wipe them off or just clean themselves up using paper towels or toilet paper. This also impacted the spread of bacteria at the time and it reduced it by a large margin. This led to people living healthier and cleaner lives. 

Another big impact was the invention of newspapers. News papers allowed for wider communication to the public, revealing news about what is going on in society such as politics and economics. It also helped keep the population entertained with the wide variety of little games that appeared frequently on news papers such as word searches and cross word puzzles. But the biggest impact that news papers had was just the amount of information being speeded through them. It lead to a massive increase in demand to the point that there were even "rag wars" in America which is using rag paper to produce newspapers instead of regular paper. This also lead to the invention of the Paper Mill which helped mass produce paper using lumber and wood. 

The last major impact that paper had on society was the usage of recycling paper to make more products. The recycling industry was actually made because of the amount of paper that has been wasted in the past, which people realized it as an issue. Now because we recycle paper, it has helped reduce deforestation on our environment and helped increase the production of paper because all the recycling goes back into paper mills. It also helped clean up city streets and helped keep our towns and city clean from landfill.

 

Age of AI

Google

Google was one of the very first steps when it came to ai production, it was a simple company that let people ask questions and they would receive many different answers that they could look into. The company started out thriving for a while until the .com crash. The company founders were desperate and needed a way to keep it alive, so they gathered data from the answers that were provided used that data that people received to help other companies to keep theirs alive. I think personally that Google knowing what we like and dislike is not a bad thing because it gives us recommendations based on our searching history and what we look up all the time as interests. However, there are way more cons than pros to this because it is also taking personal information and storing that in a data bank that Google owns, this includes personal information and other information that we would not want companies to have access to. I think this scary to think about because its basically letting me know that it has all my information and it can use it at any time and I wouldn't even know it, it also has personal information and that is just frightening to think about. Just from the segment when they were talking about Google, there are already many takeaways from this such as you should be careful with what you put out on the internet because that can be used as data by Google depending what you search up.

Voice Recognition

Alexa is another example of advancements in Ai production. It helps us with just being able to use our voice to ask for things rather than having to type it in on a computer or in google. It also has voice recognition that way Alexa recognizes who is speaking at any time. This may seem like a good thing and it does have its benefits, but this is actually quite scary to think about considering "how does Alexa always know what I sound like". Alexa records our voices and no matter whether our voices are either scratchy or if were in the middle of coughing while we are speaking. Alexa will be able to recognize the person that is speaking at all times. That is because it stores that data of the person's voice just like how Google stores information of what we look up. So Alexa is basically storing very personal information into the company. Not only that, but it also stores the information of what we ask Alexa every time we talk to it. I think that this is really important to note because if our voices are stored into data, its very possible for our voices to be used as identity theft and as someone imposing as us because our voices were recorded, it's just as bad as our personal information getting stored. 

Privacy

 Electronic Tattoos

In the first video from Juan Enriquez, he talk a lot about the term "Electronic Tattoo" and how that impacts us as people. Electronic Tattoo is another way to say as a facial recognition or identification from cameras or different sources to gather data about people. He mentions how you can take a picture of a group of people and still be able to get all the names and be able to identify who is who. This is really scary because for people who have stuff like snapchat, Facebook and other social media platforms, we have to be really careful with what we put out on the web. Regarding this video, this impacts me a bit because I have taken pictures of myself and other people that I care about and its very possible that there is something in my phone that records all that information from my camera and pictures and uses it as data to identify our names. I also personally think that the government should be keeping an eye on the people who are managing this data of our personal privacy when it comes to collecting photos because not only can it be dangerous to the people that have been recorded through camera photos but the people recording the data and storing it could be corrupt and use that data for criminal purposes. It should be the government's responsibility to make sure that the privacy of all citizens is safe. The most that we can do to protect ourselves, as mentioned in the video is to just be careful with what we're posting online through Facebook or Instagram. That way, we are not risking personal information from getting leaked.

Security Surveillance

In the video from Catherine Crump, she talks about how the police have been using surveillance cameras and other methods of gathering information about where people are going, people's daily visits such as doctors, workplaces, and even their homes. They gather all this information and store it in hopes that it will be useful one day. This also includes gathering license plates on cars and from that they can gather personal information about people. This poses as a real threat because it violates our privacy from the government. I personally am not affected by this now, but the rest of my family certainly is because they have all surely been tracked by these cameras from their license plates. Also, I am sure that because they are able to gather data on my sister and my parents through the license plates, they probably have information on me as well since they would have information about my family. Now since the police and surveillance is owned by the government, they could produce some laws that would keep the police force in check such as only using the surveillance data for criminals and crimes which gives citizens more protection from them using the data in corrupt ways. What I can do to protect myself from privacy invasion such as security cams is by proposing laws to city council that can help protect my privacy.

Free Expression

 Stable Change

It is very important for people to be able to vent out their own emotions about certain government and the way that

the government is handling the people. It is also important that the people have an opinion about certain laws and

regulations that the government is upholding onto them. Also, according to an ACLU document, the freedom of

expressing ones self is very important for the people because it allows people to express our thoughts and be able

to communicate those thoughts to other people as well. It makes us feel worthy in our society, in turn giving value

to human power and letting people realize how much power that they have in a society. It is also very crucial for

society to advance and attain in knowledge and also it helps society uncover truths about either corrupted figures

in the government or what type of people are in our society. It is also true that any type of point of view, even

those that are wrong or bad, can be proved beneficial when obtaining information when expressing speech. It is

also very important for the people to have their own opinions so they can check the government from being evil

or corrupted by power. It is also true that American people are the ones determining their own life so there for

they need to have the knowledge to be able to understand what is important and beneficial for them. These are

all very important because it basically defines a person’s future and that they are in control of what happens to

their future. 

Protect Dissent

Giving the people the right to hate on the government is very important as it lets the people control what laws should be in place and it basically checks on whether the government is corrupted or not based on what their reaction is to a mob of hate speech or what types of laws they have towards certain types of people. Also even if hate speech towards government is really offensive and vulgar, it is still protected under the 1st Amendment. For example, in an article from Fordham, they explain a specific case where the court was in favor of the National Socialist Party of America because of the severe amount of racism and slurs used against them from the people of Skokie. However, because the 1st amendment protects many types of speeches including hate speech, they won the case. This is very important because it shows that we can correct a corrupted government with hate speech and be protected under the 1st Amendment.

U.S. Supreme Court

 U.S. Supreme Court

I find the Supreme Court to be very interesting in how much power that they hold within their court. Something that I didn't know when watching the video is that sometimes, justices will accidently overlook certain details in a trial so the other justices always ask certain questions to mark importance in a certain matter and remind the other judges of such matter. I believe that the most important take away point of the supreme court has to be that the 9 chief justices stand to protect the people and answer any problems that the people raise to them, not them going out and picking out problems for themselves to answer. The most surprising thing that I learned from this video was that most of the chiefs whenever first going into office and doing there job were very nervous at first, some even said that it took them three to five years to not be nervous anymore and just do their job. I think this because I would think that they would have just hired people who wouldn't be nervous and would just be able to keep a calm composure when presented with an audience during a case. I will say that this video definitely made me respect the supreme course more and it also helped me understand that they don't just work for power and money but also that the supreme court is home to a non-biased group of chief justices that only want what is best for the people and not for a specific party. 

Top 5 Sources

 IGN

As someone who is in the Game Design industry, it is very important for me to keep track of what is going on between different companies, consoles, and games. IGN gives all the important details that I need between showing how games have influenced the future of Game Design and Lawsuits against certain companies for stuff like copyright and trademark infringement against other companies or just even smaller games earning money. They also just have walkthroughs of different games and they point out key features that represent very specific themes in said games. There are also game reviews for people to see others opinions on what they feel about certain games, certain aspects that they link and other aspects that they are not a fan of.

Twitter/X

Twitter, now known as X, is a very good way to find information across the world with it getting constant updates from many different people. You could practically find anything on X but the thing that makes this source of information valuable is the way it feeds it to you. Initially as you first get on X, there are loads of different types of posts whether it's related to politics or if it has to do with new on games but as you explore X more and more, it takes that information of what you look at and tries to send you more information that is more so related or more something that X would think that you would be interested in seeing. For example, I look at posts for e-sports, specifically for a game called Smash Ultimate, about like upcoming tournaments and stuff like that. X would the give me information on other tournaments and results, people posting tier lists, and so on. This proves to be very useful as it gives me information that is useful to me.

Microsoft Start

Another piece of news that I use quite often is a website called Microsoft Start or MSN for short. The way MSN works is that it takes what you look at on the Microsoft web and then it feeds you articles that you can look at that relates to what you are interested in. However the big difference between this and Twitter is that every time you open up a different browser to like look up anything, MSN will have a little spot where it rotates out different articles that you can look at or just ignore and continue web browsing like normal. I have looked at a couple different articles relating to mainly game releases or information related to different companies that makes games. They can also release information about not related to your recent searches to give you some new stuff to look at too.

CNN

If I am ever wanting to look at just news about politics to see what is going on in the world, I would usually just look at CNN. Ever since middle school, I have used CNN as a reliable source for political news and they are also very informative about politics that happen today. They also talk about past events that have happened, stating historical, important information to better help us understand how we are where we are today. They are very reliable as I have been using CNN for about 10 years and I have learned a lot just from skimming through their news articles and videos, even to the point where they get used during history classes to help inform students about past events.

ESPN

One last news website that I rarely look at is ESPN. Even though I don't use it a lot, ESPN is perfect for people who either want to know what happened between a game or whether a team drafted a new player. ESPN is a very resourceful website just for helping people understand what exactly is going on the in sports scene. They can talk about how a certain player got injured as well so they have many different types of information that they feed into ESPN for people to know. The best part of ESPN though is that they also have streaming services so you can watch games live on their website to see what's happening.