Cassandra Mischak

In my opinion, I have mixed feelings in relation to technology. The amounts of pros and cons are unbelievable. Personally, I believe that my current relationship with technology, especially in this generation, is very unhealthy. This is due to numerous reasons, but the main underlying factor is my extreme addiction to my phone and social media platforms. I believe that I give technology way above the expected amount of time it should be getting. It takes up too much time of my day. I notice this when I get the notification from settings on my phone every night before bed when it states my screen time. I am shocked when it says I spend 8 hours on my device. If you think about it, there is 24 hours in a day. As a college student, about 8 of those hours are for sleep. That leaves around 16 active hours in your day, and HALF of those are spent strictly on my phone. This doesn’t even count for the endless hours on my laptop for school purposes. Recently, I’ve been extremely taken back by th...

 After viewing each presentation, learning in depth about net neutrality, caught my attention in many ways. It has always been a subject that I knew about, but wanted to know more details. I recalled a lot from this presentation.  First, net neutrality is  the basic principle that prohibits internet service providers from speeding up, slowing down or blocking any content, applications or websites you want to use. The issue behind it is that Net Neutrality is the way the internet has always worked. When it is left alone, companies can and have violated our basic online rights. If this was ever removed, many issues would rise. For example, Without net neutrality everything becomes about money. Statistically minority households have less money due to discriminatory government policies. This means minorities would lose access to these services that increase their prices. Many pros and cons come from this as well. The pros are that it e liminates fake news, there are n o rise ...

I learned a lot during the presentation about these new terms and concepts, but my concept about news deserts was the most interesting. A news desert refers to a community that is no longer covered by daily newspapers. The term itself emerged in the United States after hundreds of daily and weekly newspapers were closed in the 2000s. According to a study in 2018 by the UNC School of Media and Journalism , more than 1,300 communities in the U.S. are considered news deserts. Other communities may be covered by a ghost newspaper , which is a publication that has become a shadow of its former self. The total number of newspapers in the U.S. fell from 8,891 in 2004 to 7,112 in 2018, which is a decline of 1,779 newspapers, including more than 60 daily newspapers.  Of the remaining publications, an estimated 1,000 to 1,500 newspapers were considered ghost newspapers after scaling back their news coverage so much that they were unable to fully cover their communities. The cons of this are ...

After viewing this video, I had various take backs from it. Overall, I realized that there will always be new innovations in life. Ranging from a new method, idea, product, technology, or social media platform, we are affected by it daily. Roger’s Diffusion of Theories helps in understanding the timeline of an idea and explains each stage of adopting the idea.  Diffusion of innovations is a theory that seeks to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread. Everett Rogers, a professor of communication studies, popularized the theory in his book Diffusion of Innovations.  I wanted to focus on the development of social media.   In my lifetime, social media has had the most influence on this generation, but especially me. Applications such as Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, and newly TikTok have taken over. These apps gain millions of new users each year and continue to grow. Innovators, early adaptors, early majorit...

Out of all the incredible presentations about the development of communication technology, the concept that stood out most to me was paper. I learned a lot from this presentation. Th e first documented account of paper being invented was by Cai Lun in China during the Eastern Han period (25-220 CE). Before paper was created, materials such as bamboo or wooden strips and expensive silk had been used for centuries as a surface for writing. The materials became cheaper and more convenient than bamboo, wood, or silk. The main benefit was i t was helpful to spread literature and literacy. O ne advantage of paper is that it is a renewable resource and good for the environment. A negative aspect is that p aper is fragile and can be easily ripped or distorted causing any information that is written to be lost.

Learning about the EOTO's of communication technology had some mind boggling standpoints. I did find my topic of the telegraph to be very interesting for various reasons. I've always known the basis of what the telegraph is, but doing further research showed how much of an effect it had on the evolution of communication. First, the general definition of the telegraph is that it is a device or system that allows the transmission of information by coded signal over distance. The original telegraph was invented by David Alter, but was then developed electrically by Samuel Morse. It was developed in the mid-19th century, and the principal means of transmitting printed information was by wire or radio wave. Before the development of the electric telegraph, visual systems were used to convey messages over distances by means of display. The development of the voltaic cell in 1800, by Alessandro Volta , made it possible to power electric devices using low voltages and high currents....