Dynasty's COM 1450 Journal

  Mr. Henry Wallace presented on the topic of the Echo Chamber. By definition, Echo Chamber is “an environment in which thoughts and opinions are killed off before new ones can form because of circulating ideas”. Here is a simple example, in an environment where everyone needs to agree that the earth is the center of the universe and people who don’t believe will be asked to leave or be punished without having further discussion, the environment creates an echo chamber.  In a modern setting, Echo Chamber is most likely to show up in media where one is forced to believe that the mass is believing without having a discussion. In an Echo Chamber, the belief is a standard, as strict as law and undisputable; they force people to make decisions and shut out things that the standard disagrees with. Echo chambers can take place “anywhere information is exchanged” and can be widely used in propaganda and political settings.  Echo Chamber can be hard to identify but it can be...

            The Rogers Diffusion of Innovations identifies the adaptation of innovation as a bell-shaped curve. For any new innovations, objects or ideas, as time progresses, there will be pioneers, early adopters, early majority, late adopters, and laggers. It also goes through four stages of penetrations: experimental, uptake, maturation, and saturation.            Using Instagram as an example, it can be analyzed with the Diffusion theory. Instagram was released by Facebook Inc in 2012. The first group of users were the pioneers of this innovation, before January of 2012, there were only roughly 90 million users; these individuals were already familiar and comfortable with digital technology at the time. Throughout the next couple of years until 2018, the growth of numbers of users was steady, about 100 million per year. The period before 2018 can be considered the experimental stage.       ...

         If looking into the Smith-Mundt Act, we are not looking at a trail of history instead of a long piece of governmental document. During the 70 years margin of the two Smith-Mundt Acts, there are many things that can be looked into and discussed.  Starting in 1945, the age where the world recollected itself after the chaos of World war II, the U.S. government decided that they needed an information service that can prevent future war and be an effective political communication platform. Brought up in the 79th Congress by congressman Karl E. Mundt, passed by the 80th Congress, the U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 started a brand new page in the U.S. diplomacy policy. The original act is also known as the Smith-Mundt Act (SMA).  SMA gave the state department the right to create propaganda to foreign countries through various forms of information as a form of diplomacy. “The U.S. government was permitted to lie to peop...

          Is there such a thing called “real privacy”? When we walk around in private property when we open up a private browsing mode on our devices… have we thought about if we were actually private? The answer is no, absolutely not. We are living in an age where nothing we do is truly private, especially when we are working with our most trusted friend - cellphones - on a daily basis. In fact, for every app we click onto, for every site we visit in the digital world, we leave an inerasable trail of marks that clearly defines who we are and will follow us where we go.           Of course, everything is a double-sided sword. With the advancement of big data, we can have customized personalized experiences when we are making a purchase, enjoying entertainment, etc. However, we are also leaving our privacy behind, which has no difference between “running naked”. This is a choice that people nowadays have to make, to gain a pri...

         I learnt about the history of the lens from Mr. Henry Wallace’s presentation. The origin of Lenses can be traced back to ancient Egypt. At that time, lenses were not used to take photos, of course, it was used in statue building, especially for the eyes. The ancient Egyptians used polished quartz as the eyes of the statue, as people or worshipers walk around, it feels like the statue figure is watching back at the person from all angles. Later on, the technology of lenses evolved, during the Islamic Golden Age, Al-Haytham used lenses to reflect material. Then, as technology got more and more advanced, people invented glasses, cameras, etc. Prior to listening to his presentation, I never thought of lenses outside of their modern usage. In fact, the use and the invention of lens-related material not only reflected light but also reflected people’s unlimited curiosity and imagination. People nowadays tend to neglect the importance of light, but back in a...

          “There ain’t no answer. There ain’t gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That’s the answer” – Gertrude Stein I visited two political websites, the American Conservative and the Antiwar.com. Both websites are just like their names; they hold almost completely different points of view. The American Conservative promotes stare decisis and is strongly adhered to conservative American beliefs. The antiwar.com publishes insights and beliefs on U.S. foreign policy and the negative impacts that war is bringing to society. However, although these sites hold different political standpoints, both of them are strong anti-war voices. For example, The American Conservative posted the following statement in its post on Feb 15th, 2022: “We must count the costs of endless war, regardless of the little victories, and ask whether we have really accomplished our objectives”. It is correct that I have never heard about these two sites on the mainstream ...

          There are 85 million tons of paper used by Americans each year. Nowadays, paper is the no.1 thing that everyone has in their household, office, and personal & public space. Even with the increasing use of digital technology, paper still remains a necessity everywhere around the world, wealthy or poor.  Before the invention of paper, early civilizations like the ancient Egyptians and the ancient Chinese used various ways of writing and carving to document important materials during the 2000 B.C.s. Untanned sheepskins and clay carving were used for documentation and calculations; Oracle bones were used for religious practices, bamboos were used to record philosophical passages. As early as the 200 A.D.s, the Chinese have been using paper made out of linen fibers and other materials. However, those papers were made by curious individuals, due to the difficult process and the roughness of the material, the linen fiber paper never was able to be ...