Week 6: Presentation Research

 

                                                                  Wi-Fi

My group's presentation was on the Newspaper box, Wi-Fi, radio and halftone. I was responsible for the impact of Wi-Fi and the history and growth of Wi-Fi. While researching information about Wi-Fi I discovered a lot of things that I did not know before. I did not realize that Wi-Fi really has not been around that long, being that it was created and introduced to the public in 1997. As we all know there were so many positive impacts it has had on the public. It helps us in our everyday lives and allows distant communication. Some negative impacts I found that Wi-Fi has when I was doing some research is that public hot spots are limited and that Wi-Fi can easily be hacked. A fun fact about Wi-Fi that I learned is that the full name for it is 'Wireless Fidelity'. I was surprised by the name I didn't know Wi-Fi was just an abbreviation and I have never heard anyone call it by the full name. It has taken several years to get where we are with Wi-Fi today. Every day they are figuring out how to make it stronger and how to allow it to reach more areas. When doing some more research about Wi-Fi I came to the realization of how weird it is that we all use Wi-Fi pretty much every day but we don’t really know much about it or how it works. Wi-Fi uses radio waves which is a form of electromagnetic radiation. All of our devices that have internet use adapters to translate all the data requested into a radio signal. The waves that are sent out from these devices are then received by the wireless router that is connected. Then the wireless router translates that into data. After learning all this I think it’s crazy how this process is what brings us internet connection. Another fact I found interesting is that Wi-Fi actually originated in Hawaii. There was a computer networking system called the “ALOHAnet” that permitted the first public demonstration of a wireless packet data network. After this was invented it took 20 years for companies like AT&T and NCR corporation developed the “real” Wi-Fi that we use now. Another fact I found interesting are the other devices that connect to Wi-Fi that I did not know about like baby monitors and garage door openers.

Links:

A fun website that breaks down the history of Wi-Fi and how it has evolved:

 https://www.cablefree.net/wireless-technology/history-of-wifi-technology/ 

Week 5: Anti-War Articles

Anti-War Articles

If you think about it, you never hear the thoughts of people who are anti-war on the news channels or in a quick google search on the war. Until now, I never have really thought about this. I am not sure why this is but I think some of it has to do with the fact that the amount of people who want war and think it is necessary for our country is so great. I feel like in a sense these comments and views out weigh the ones of the people who do not want war. When I did a google search it was hard to find a lot of information on people who are anti-war. There are two sites that do talk about it which are, antiwar.com and The American Conservative. The American Conservative has lots of information and conservative views on all political/news issues. They have articles, blogs videos and more. When I looked at antiwar.com I first realized how much of a mess their website is. There is information everywhere and a request to donate money with a big graphic of how much money they have raised so far. When you take a first look at the website it does not look like a reliable source. Basically, they are a group dedicated to stopping the war and bringing you information on it. I am not a fan of the site. What are your thoughts on these sites?

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/

Week 4: Facebook has a gapping loophole in its fight against fake news

Fake News

Fake news has been causing problems for a while now and one of the worst things about it is that some people don't even know that something is fake news. It can sometimes be very hard to tell the real from the fake. A lot of social media sites or even sites like Wikipedia have been dealing with this problem for a while now. Why is fake news so hard to stop? Well there are a lot of different factors that make fake news hard to stop being created and spreading. Although, Facebook has taken a big initiative to stop fake news. On Facebook you can share links to your page and in the past when you did this you also had the ability to to edit the link previews. When they got rid of this feature it helped stop the spread of fake news, as people would go in and edit the link to say something different. Some Facebook user eventually found a glitch in this and was still able to edit the links. The person who found this glitch reached out to Facebook to let them know but did not get much back other than an automated response. Facebook's policies continue to change as they are constantly making improvements to their sites. What more do you think they could do to stop the spread of fake news?

https://www.facebook.com/facebookmedia/blog/working-to-stop-misinformation-and-false-news