Digital Reflections 1

The digital divide is possibly something people never really think about. To better illustrate the point we all know that the internet still needs wires to get the signals to where they need to go. What people do not know is that these wires are a lot longer then anyone imagines. These cable wires literally run on the floor of the ocean. These cable wires determine where and who can use the internet. While growing up in a small town the only way to access the internet was to either have a computer in your own home or get on your smartphone. The school was making progress on having students getting used to using computers. This was happening as I was finishing up high school. In the past, there were papers That I needed to type up but these were rare and I needed to do this once every year. When high school came around students were allowed to take home laptops that the school had provided to work on assignments. Because of how recent this development was when freshman a new class came into the picture to teach kids how to use Word and other programs to help with their homework. I was asked to help with my younger sister out on how to do different things on Word and Google docs such as formating her content per the instructions of the teacher. As I did not hang out with other people much I looked to the internet for recreational activities in my down time such as comics, translated novals, and an old art sharing site called deviant art. I found a lot of great stories, art, and some good games. The only computer in the house was a desktop that three kids had to share. So my time on it was limited as well as unlimited at the same time. My younger sisters did not get into the online scene until the school started to become more digital. I had a lot more acess to the web and also started to understand a lot of different lingo. I did not create any social media profiles though. From what I have heard about them they seem to cause to much trouble. From this, I was pretty much ignorant of many different events that were making head lines online. The art site showed me a wide array of how people express themselves. The site is still up but no one really uses it anymore. From my expereces on the web, the connections that I have made are more incline to the digital divide, net neutrality, and digital social actitism. Seeing all the different ways people express themselves on the web was eye opening for me. I had acess to the internet but I did not really know how much the internet would affect me so much in high school. It changed a lot about how I go online now. The connection to the digital divide for me was the time when my younger sister was doing these assiagments that required the use of a computer years before she would be in high school. I did not have the chance to learn about or do the work she was doing before high school.

Week 6

Level 1
The article was about how technology is advancing and how accessibility is being addressed. With the internet and computers becoming so commonplace people think that they can be used by anyone. Accessibility is being addressed by trying to offer the same content as easily to a disabled person as it is being offered to a regular person. The article talks about how some programs are addressing this problem like Canvas, BlackBoard, and Ally. Some programs scan other programs and collect data to see where the problems are and what needs to be improved. Though it is said that a watchful human eye catches more than what can be caught by other programs. On one side of the argument being that technology is not there yet and it will take a while before these problems are sorted out. On the other hand, though it is expected that within five years most of the problems will be solved.

Level 2
Technology will always be made so that the average person can use it easily first. What comes after are the more well-known disabilities such as blindness, deafness, and loss of function of limbs. This is because of profit as well as reaching as many people as possible. Computers are very accessible. Not much is needed for one to access a web page. What people don't think about are problems that can occur that affects everything about personal life. For example, as mentioned in the article a blind student was successful in being able to sue the school because he was not able to have access to the material online. Nowadays we have many different programs that can read a website for you. As well as a way to speak to a computer in order for it to search for something or type something out such as dragon.

February 12 attendence

Some revisions to have checked of are

1. Make sure the text can be read or said aloud.
2. The text in the right contrast 
3. The web page has all hyperlinks in a different colored texted.
4. Color is used appropriately
5. use borders appropriately

https://www.novelupdates.com/

Three revisions

1. Text size can be bigger when listing novel titles
2. The contrast between white and gray could be better. The gray should be darker
3. Borders around the user interface in the upper right corner 

WSU week 5

Area 1
The article is about content modifications. That is to remove inappropriate content on social media. The article explains where the companies have modification centers outside the country for it to be cheaper as well as centers for it in the country for more cultural reference. What is not astounding for me is the manpower that they put into just editing content. Most of the time it is half of the workforce for the company is focused on this issue. Not only that but a lot of the people who are exposed to the content become affected by it. We all know a picture is worth a thousand words but these are the worst of the worst pictures describing the absolute worst of what people are capable of. Many of these works in the US suffer from at the best of times "trust issues". While others just stop trusting people because of how suspicious they have become. The biggest problem in this job industry is that there is no psychological help for the employees most of the time.

Area 2
Now I laugh at cyanide and happiness. When I first found the comic strip site it was in my second year in high school. The site shows comics that offer some shock jokes. This is the closest thing that I can relate too to the people who modify images from social media. The site got so much hate mail for some of their jokes that they got creative and made a poster out of it. Now we all know that a joke told on comedy central can be funny. That dirty jokes can get a lot of easy laughs. But if someone proactively has to look at images that show the worst of what people have to offer then we will be affected by it. Every experience shapes who we are. It is no brainer that an image can stay in someone's head. This is why mental health should be the first thought of concern when making this into a job.

week four

level1

Submarine cables are internet cables that run across the ocean floor. The article talks about how these cables only help the people that can connect to them. The problem though is that the people not connected to these cables are being separated more and more from the digital world as time moves by. With the digital world becoming more important to the modern man this is extremely detrimental. The people that are not connected by these cables are usually small rural communities. They try to get the school connected but as the article pointed out big companies only give the minimum cable required and students can not access the internet at home to do their homework or school assignments. The problem the companies say to blame for this is lack of money. Just to get the small community connected would cost a million dollars they said. This is just for the buildings and support they would need.

level 2

The ways to solve this is from the smaller companies. As pointed out small companies are trying to bridge this gap. It is better for these companies to do this job than to hope for one of the big companies like AT&T to show up one day. With this literal divide made by the wires, it is best to have some smaller companies to help out. With the smaller companies, they can show people how the internet can help them out. A place that allows public access to the internet for everyone that walks through the door would probably be most realistic. Because these communities have not had the internet before they would think they do not need it. A way to deal with this would be to put it in schools and have it available for public use to slowly change their minds.

blog post week 3

Section 1
The article is about racism or stereotyping on the internet. We all know that nothing sells more than bad news about someone in any information company. The article talks about how people make stories about how race is a big part of the issue. Some people are very familiar with "Why black lives matter" and "Islomicphobia". Many people make site entries as click bait by making the title about race or religion. Click-baiting just to get more likes or just to get the numbers up is becoming more and more of a problem on the internet. Now, most sites have a bias about whatever subject they have on the internet. Depending on how much bias the site shows needs to be kept at a minimum. For filtering content, the site should just filter out comments by saying something along the line as spoiler warning but more fitting for the site so that people are more informed about what was said. If the site is filtering out content than they need to be held fully accountable for giving out false information.

Section 2
I thought that the article was nice. It brought out a lot of information about how people of color and religion want to make more of a change on the internet. We all know that racism and stereotyping happens in almost any form of media. I find it reassuring that this group is helping to get peoples stories out into the open so that people can listen to them. It is so important to have your voice out there. With more people speaking up the more influence the message has and the bigger the audience it reaches. Change may be slow but it will always come when people just step up and talk.

WSU week 2

The article offers a large amount of information on how the US can manage the internet. Mainly about what can and cannot be put on the internet. It started out explaining why this needs to be clearly stated by talking about the 2016 election when the Russians were using fake news on social media platforms to get Donald Trump elected to the presidency. The US needs to have a firmer policy on how to manage the web based on what the article mentions. The main problem that is the most important is ownership of what one puts out there. Mainly copyright infringement, intellectual property, and artistic property. Youtube a very famous social media site constantly has to issue copyright infringement messages on some of its videos. If the US had a better grasp of the situation than a lot of the videos that were taken down would still be up.


I believe that the internet has been constantly changing as people have gotten more and more familiar with it. Meaning as we continue to make improvements to how we carry data we have constantly improved on how we can use the internet. With these improvements, it is now at the point where problems are occurring. Because we did not set up a firm structure on how to operate the internet it was first becoming a common thing we now must make the decisions on how to run it now. With all of these social media options it is now at a point where just getting something trending can have a snow ball effect. The first thing that should be done is have the internet be the same for everyone. The internet by its definition today is diverse. Think about how many blogs, animations, and commercials are on it. From making this one decision we can build up in a positive we. A foundation if you would need to be simple and not complicated.