Diffusion of Innovations and Snapchat

The Diffusion of Innovation is a theory of how communication spreads. A small number of people adapt to new inventions of communication and these early adopters are one of the elements that can make or break these new platforms. With more users, there will be more chance of success. One of the more recent and successful innovations for online communications is Snapchat.

Snapchat has spread rapidly throughout the world within the first few years of its debut. With a bit of a slow start, the early adopters were the ones who really made it take off. While Snapchat is a source of communication, you need other users to talk to. This is another way in how Snapchat thought ahead. With the need for other users, these early adopters would send invitations to their friends to join. They all talk amongst themselves making the number of users increase dramatically. As more and more users join, the early majority of users hit the tipping point. The tipping point is when the majority of the users have already joined and the only people left to joiner the late adopters and the laggards. For Snapchat, these people tend to be kids who have turned the age where they can get the app for themselves and start using it (or parents who have been introduced to it by their kids-the early adopters).

The downsides of this technology, Snapchat, can vary from person to person. The most common downside of Snapchat is normally time consumption. People will spend more time than needed on this app and they will keep going back to it because there is always stuff to do on it. You are drawn in by not only talking to your friends but also watching what they are doing with their lives through their stories. While this helps to keep the app alive and very popular it has changed the way people have chosen to communicate with other people and maybe even distracted them from the world around them. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations

https://www.oberlo.com/blog/snapchat-statistics

https://www.omnicoreagency.com/snapchat-statistics/

Promoting Individualism

7. Promote Innovation — see Jack Balkin, Living Originalism

A community in which free speech is valued and protected is likely to be a more energized, creative, interesting society as its citizens actively fulfill themselves in many diverse and interesting ways.

Freedom of speech is not something that can be found everywhere in the world. It is, however, one of the founding principals of America. Because of this, America tends to be more informed and has more open communication between its people. We the people of America can speak freely because there is no threat from governmental repercussions. 

Of the Eight Values of Free Expression, the seventh value stands out the most. It stresses the importance of freedom within a community to create happiness and creativity. With the freedom our country has given us, individuals are more inspired to speak freely of themselves and their beliefs. I think that this is inspiring because it allows people to think for themselves and express their thoughts. Living in a community where you can think for yourself enables creative thinkers which build even more pronounced creativity. If an individual can share their thoughts and ideas, it gives an opportunity for others to build off of those ideas. 

The Renaissance era is a great example of how people learn to build off each other's ideas to create better art. Today in our technical society, some might overlook art as being meaningful. However, the free flow of ideas during this time period reflects perfectly what a “more energized, creative, interesting society” would look like. These artists all grew off of each other's visions and styles and interpreted them in their own ways. This is what freedom of creativity/speech looks like and encourages. When you are surrounded by different thoughts and perspectives, you are able to grow off them and you’re own perceptions become endless. 

While this might sound perfect, we are humans meaning nothing is absolute. This means that there are some restrains to speech. One example would include not being able to yell “fire” in a movie theatre. While this is a very simple and well-known example, there is also the sad through of political correctness. In other words, political correctness inhibits people from the actual truths about their surroundings. This discourages people from hearing the whole truth keeping them from being able to fully think for themselves. In extreme conditions, this can even lead to a lack of understanding about the world around you and how people could lean towards communism.

Communism and the freedom of speech are on opposite ends of the spectrum. A country ruled by communism has no freedom of speech. Its citizens are under the government's speech regulations often leading to a community living in fear of their own thoughts. For example, Venezuela just went under strong communist rule and its country and economy has been going downhill ever since. Televisions and radio stations were taken over by the government and were limited to what they could talk about leaving the people with very biased information. With this extreme censorship and fear of speech freedom, it has created a “brain drain” (https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2017/12/28/press-freedom-is-dying-in-venezuela/#5bd6016b58ce) to its citizens. This means that the original "thinkers" of the country flee leaving the economy with only followers. These followers lack the originalism and creativity that might otherwise be there with freedom of speech and expression.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2017/12/28/press-freedom-is-dying-in-venezuela/#5bd6016b58ce

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-36319877

https://www.cpusa.org/article/hands-off-venezuela/

https://medlawlit.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_9.html

What is Youtube?

Youtube is a very useful tool in today’s society for not only entertainment and learning new things but as a communication tool as well. At first, youtube was very small and did not start off as successful. After a Nike commercial hit over one million views, Youtube really started to take off. This growth was very rapid and more and more users started to get on the new trend. This is how Youtube started its upward climb that continues to this day.

Youtube is a great tool that really anyone could use and benefit from. The idea is simple and it is very simple to use so more people are urged to use it. While some people might think that Youtube is just for trendy vloggers, there is so much more to it. Yes, there are many platforms of entertainment including the classic vloggers, but there are also so many other videos about education, politics, tutorials, music, etc. There is an endless amount of options out there. 

Youtubers (aka vloggers) have found a way to get paid through the making of their videos. Through each view, they get they are paid a certain amount. The videos are normally for entertainment, however, some people do makeup tutorials, life advice, or even life hacks. They make a living by communicating or sharing their life with anyone that wants to see. There are so many great things you can learn from Youtube, from how to change your oil or what’s going on in politics. There are an endless amount of options on Youtube and you can find it so easily.

The impact is incredible with how easy it is to access and work. Youtube can give so much more information than you'd expect. While it is very informative, youtube can also be very distracting. You might be looking for one video about curling hair and end up an hour into watching videos and you are now watching puppies playing. While this might not be the worst thing, Youtube is very consuming of time if you let it be, and maybe that is the point of it. 

https://www.themycenaean.org/2015/11/youtubes-impact-on-our-society/ 

https://www.webwise.ie/parents/what-is-youtube/

https://www.engadget.com/2016/11/10/the-history-of-youtube/

https://interestingengineering.com/youtube-its-history-and-impact-on-the-internet 

Communication & Social Media

Social media has made a huge impact on today's society. From Facebook to Snapchat, there are so many ways to use social media as a way to communicate with not only one person but with a countless amount of people. You can decide who you want to communicate with and how many you want to. This creates endless opportunities to share what you want with the world. Each social media has its own niche while all in the realms of communication. 

Facebook, being one of the oldest platforms of social media, has most of the essentials. It started as a place to share photos and videos, and now you can text, video chat, repost other’s pictures or videos and many more perks. Instagram is very similar to Facebook in the aspect of sharing pictures. Both of these platforms use the aspect of photos as a source of communication. They share these photos and use captions and comments as a way for people to communicate through pictures/videos. While this is a very simplistic explanation of what these social media platforms can do there is so much more to it and they are improving more and more with time. As they improve, they increase the amount of communication and gives more options for what you can do.

Snapchat and Twitter are other platforms of communication that are a huge part of today's younger generation. With the simplicity of 24-hour pictures and different filters, Snapchat has brought in people that become daily users from some of their applications. From news stories to streaks and more, Snapchat is very fun to use. Snapchat can be used for talking to individual people, friend groups, or even just sharing a cool picture from the day with different stickers or filters. Twitter is more about sharing brief thoughts or pictures/videos. It’s about sharing with people close to you (your followers) about something that happened in life. All of these use communication in their own unique way. While they might seem vastly different, they all have the same purpose of communicating with the people around you.

https://circaedu.com/hemj/how-social-media-changed-the-way-we-communicate/

https://www.hrzone.com/community/blogs/samdavtyan/use-snapchat-as-an-internal-communication-tool

https://smallbusiness.chron.com/facebook-helps-communicate-66432.html

The First Newspaper

In 1690 of September, Richard Pierce published the first newspaper in American history. It was first and only printed in Boston with the help of Benjamin Harris as the editor before it got shut down. It was intended to be a monthly paper, but authorities shut him down before a second one was ever printed. Authorities did not like what Richard Pierce was printing and the freedom of the press was nonexistent at this point so they had the power to shut it down.

When April of 1704 came around, John Campbell published the first issue of the Boston News-Letter. This was America's first official weekly newspaper. This newspaper ranged from ship arrivals to English politics. One of their most compelling stories was about the death of the famous Pirate Black Beard and how he died in hand to hand combat. However, the paper never really made much money. It was not until 1732 when John Draper took over the paper and reedited it in hopes to make more profit.

By December of 1719, two more papers came out, one more in Boston (The Boston Gazette) and one in Philadelphia (The American Weekly Mercury). Over the next couple of decades, many other cities and states got their own newspapers. By 2003 “more than 54 million newspapers were sold daily” and even more were sold on Sundays. This alone shows how much of an impact this simple idea made. 

People everyday used the newspaper as a source of information and communication. With daily updates on current events, people would buy their daily copies to keep up on local and worldwide events. The newspaper was so crucial to people during this time because it was the only real source of news. People did not have televisions or radios to be kept up to date on what is happening in not only their city but around the world. When the first paper came out, it was only 3 pages long. To date, the papers have grown to a minimum of roughly 30  pages to a maximum of about 100 pages. With time, there is more information to tell and more section of it. People now not only use the paper for information but for entertainment as well (the comic strip, travel section, etc.)

Newspapers have covered the full spectrum from local stories about families to the Wall Street Journal that cover business angles on world events. The newspaper was such a crucial part of people's everyday lives and the only source of news until the radio came about. With increased digital competition it is becoming less important. With all the different news shows and radio stations, even the internet, the newspaper seems to be coming to its end. It was not until 2003, that the newspaper industry really started its decline. This was when people became more comfortable with the internet and news channels on tv.

http://www.paperage.com/issues/nov_dec2004/11_2004newspapers.pdf

http://www.americaslibrary.gov/jb/revolut/jb_revolut_newspap_1.html

https://www.varsitytutors.com/earlyamerica/firsts/americas-first-newspaper

The Invasion of Communication Technology

In today's society, technology has made its impact on the world and it keeps growing and "improving" every day. High tech communication technology has grown so much to the point that it can perform as well as humans and in some places, outperform them. As technology becomes more a part of our everyday life, do we need to question if it is all good?

Chatbots are a technology that works in place of an assistant for customer service. They communicate with customers to help with solutions for navigating websites and handling complaints. They are so intelligent that some customers do not even realize they are talking with a machine, “they are beyond humans in terms of tasking”. 

AI-based assistance is another set of technology that has made a huge impact on people's everyday lives. This is more commonly known as something like Siri or Alexa. These devices assist people in their everyday chores and quests for information. They are programmed with endless information, however, it is hard to completely know what these devices are listening for. AI communication is said to “replace at least 50 percent of human communication jobs worldwide”. While this might seem like a negative, there will most likely be more job openings to be created by this. 

Other new technologies such as Google Duplex, 5G and 6G, Blockchain, VR and AR, IoT, and LiFi are all new and are being created to make life easier and quicker. However, because these technologies are so new, we do not know enough about them to know how much they will really help. Having these devices in our everyday lives could become a silent invasion of privacy. We are giving up certain privacy when using these technologies and while they might be helping us with a simple task, how can we be assured that the collection of this massive amount of data won’t be used against the user's disadvantage.

http://techgenix.com/business-communication/

Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court is made up of people who only try court cases that have reached the highest level. Depending on the case, the Supreme Court is normally the last resort. About 8,000 cases are filed for Supreme Court but only about 100 or less actually go through. Because this is one of the three coequal branches of the government, it was started with the founding of our country. 

People whose cases go to the Supreme Court go there because they have exhausted every other appeal in the other courts. These cases can be anything. People who normally make it to the Supreme Court are there because they are not happy with the turn out from the other courts. What makes a case stand out to be heard but the Supreme Court is Certiorari. This means that they only agree to hear what they think is most important. These cases are most likely about controversial constitutional issues such as religion and public schools. 

The judges in the Supreme Court are the most pristine in the country, maybe even the world. To become a judge for the Supreme Court, one must be nominated by the president and confirmed by a majority of the senators. Once they have been appointed, they are a Supreme Court judge until they die or resign. This idea of lifelong power raises some questions. The fact that these judges are allowed to serve and make such important decisions into their elderly years, can make one question their decision making. With people living longer, some of these judges have been serving for 30 or more years. They get to the ages that bring up the question of whether they are mentally capable of making such important decisions for our country. Should there be a sanity test at a certain age or should it be left alone? 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWRoXYRsaeo&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca8qSuWxcG8&feature=youtu.be

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Supreme_Court_Justices_by_time_in_office 

https://www.thoughtco.com/how-do-cases-reach-supreme-court-4113827