###### tags: `CDA`
# Trevor's Reading Responses (set 1)

- Checklist for a [good reading response](https://reagle.org/joseph/zwiki/Teaching/Best_Practices/Learning/Writing_Responses.html) of 250-350 words
- [ ] Mention specific ideas, details, and examples from the text and earlier classes.
- [ ] Offer something novel that you can offer towards class participation.
- [ ] Begin with a punchy start.
- [ ] Send to professor with "cda-r" in the subject, with URL of this page and markdown of today's response.

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## Reading Responses 5 out of 5

### Sep 13 Fri - Attention

“In this media Heavy world,” People with superior multi-tasking genes “will be naturally selected” for. Or at least this is what Ulla Foehr, a media studies researcher thinks. The technological revolution that has been taking place in society, has led to a shift to people bouncing around and doing many different things. Especially with the introduction of cell phones and always being connected to so many different people and information. Inevitably, this has led to multitasking. However, it is often more efficient to be focused on one thing in “a state of absorbed, energetic, long-term concentration called flow” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990).

Our previous class discussion on multi-tasking leaned towards the belief that multi-tasking is less efficient; I personally believe this to be the case. The pinnacle of technology use is not to be flooded with information and notifications all at once but to be able to pay deeper attention to one thing at a time. There has been a shift towards this concentration state of flow with the introduction of virtual reality. It is used to control multiple senses with few external stimuli, causing people to more easily focus on the simulation. This has many useful purposes including military applications, learning simulations, and games where “logical thinking and behavior is rewarded” (Volti, 2014, p.273). Military training using virtual reality has long been apart of science fiction, including one of my favorite books Ender’s Game. Now technology has begun to catch up with drones being flown by pilots in virtual reality and new pilots and astronauts training in simulators.

There are an uncountable number of pros and cons for different technology. Whether it is the vicarious protection all of our phones give us and knowing we are always connected, the micro coordination last-minute communications give us, or just the digital hangouts we use to talk to anyone from around the world. It is important to look on an individual scale for what types of technology and uses are advantageous for each person rather than thinking of it as black and white.

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### Sep 17 Tue - How the Web works

Intercepting electronic communications pre-dates America joining World War I, back to the Zimmermann telegram, with the British intercepting this telegram from Germany attempting to ally with Mexico and attack the United States. This surveillance was a major factor in why America became involved in WWI, drastically shifting the war and leading to the fall of Nazi Germany. If it was fairly easy to intercept telegram messages with such large implications, why is it that today we do not even think twice about sending our private information like credit card and social security numbers over the internet? The basic idea of how the internet works is that clients ask servers to send them a copy of the information that they contain. Then the server sends the information and the client can use the information to do any number of other things. Hartley Brody a web developer was curious about “How can a client and server create a secure connection if someone was already listening in on the wire” (Brody, 2013) similar to the scenario of the Zimmermann telegram.

This is a very difficult yet intriguing challenge because how can a decryption code be communicated when someone could be listening to everything that is said. Especially, since we have already talked about the presence of online threats and exploiters being very prevalent. The simple answer is by using math. “One of the most common way this exchange is performed is by using a Diffie-Hellman key exchange” (Brody, 2013). This exchange uses a private key number from the client and combines it with a common root and a massive prime number to hide its secret number. It then sends this value to the server, which does the same in return. By using each of their secret codes and the public number, a secret and unique decryption code is created and is almost impossible for a third listener to decode. This solution interests me as a prospective computer engineer as I think about how this type of math can be applied to many different aspects of cybersecurity, including the fake account exploitations we talked about last class; especially as hackers continue to find new, more advanced ways to take advantage of technology.

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### Sep 24 Tue - Fake News

Did Pope Francis actually endorse Donald Trump before the election? This is an example of fake news that was spread widely across facebook according to [Craig Silverman in Buzzfeed news (2016).](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/viral-fake-election-news-outperformed-real-news-on-facebook) Recently, the term fake news has been plastered all over social media and talked about by numerous politicians, including President Trump. The reason there has been so much hostility and animosity between groups of people and political parties is that it can be difficult to decipher what news is actually fake news. When two groups can not even agree on what the facts are, how can they possibly come to a consensus or even a compromise?

Now we must understand what allowed for the new alternative facts to become so popular online today. It stems from “a deep distrust of media sources” [(Boyd, 2017)](https://points.datasociety.net/did-media-literacy-backfire-7418c084d88d#.d46kox6e1), specifically the mainstream media sources. Boyd talks extensively about this idea in her article that many people have learned not to trust the news or listen to authoritative figures. Instead, “all they have to do is ‘do the research’ for themselves and they will know better than anyone what is real” [(Boyd, 2017).](https://points.datasociety.net/did-media-literacy-backfire-7418c084d88d#.d46kox6e1) From this individual researching sprouted fake news. The general public now seeks out all their own information typically with confirmation bias which our class has already discussed and find potentially biased or false information that they then share with all of their friends. Then the information is spread because if your friend posted something it is often seen as more trustworthy than the general news.

Going back to my web search and evaluation essay, I spoke about what is often being talked about, censorship. This includes Facebook, who’s VP [Adam Mosseri](https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/12/news-feed-fyi-addressing-hoaxes-and-fake-news/) wrote about their efforts to remove and warn users about articles that are flagged as fake news. The problem with this as I have already spoken in-depth about in my previously mentioned article is that the basis of America's free press is that we are guaranteed free press by the bill of rights but not necessarily press that is completely true. This directly contests the idea of censorship. The solution is rather to teach users the skills to weed out false information and look at numerous sources with different biases before the individual may come to a conclusion on a topic. This prevents one biased view from controlling the information seen by the public.

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### Sep 27 Fri - Learning

It is time for the first semester finals. Students around the nation are spending hours upon hours rereading and memorizing their notes and textbook information. Right before the test, they spend more time cramming facts and figures into their brains. But what if all these students are going about studying wrong. What if they are wasting their limited hours studying ineffectively. This is what many teachers and professors fear. The problem with learning this way as outlined by the chapter is that it tends to lead to short-term recall but it is never stored as long-term memories. Since much of what we learn is compounding on previous things and it is important able to remember what we learn in a long-term way, we need to change how we think about studying.

This is backed up by the data which shows that it is better to force oneself to recall information on numerous separate occasions rather than staring at information over and over. This makes sense to me because going over the information from the previous class at the beginning of our class allows me to try recalling the information and has helped me learn the content better. Everyone has been in the position where they had been trying to memorize content the night before and day of for a test; then as soon as you take the test, all these small, specific questions come up, making you unsure of what to do. Now imagine if you had spent the previous night testing yourself on the content instead of memorizing, which would have allowed you to work out all the details and understand the content before getting to the test. By looking at all the new research every student, as well as adults, can become better at learning. The ability to learn is vital to being successful, so become successful at learning.

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### Oct 04 Fri - Cooperation

Evolution: natural selection: survival of the fittest. When we think about these words we think of cut-throat competition between different animal species, families, and individuals; doing whatever it takes to get ahead of one another to survive. Then why is it cooperation is so prevalent across many different animal species when it does not immediately help the individual reproduce. This concept is the basis of a lot of research that looks at specific species and the impact helping one another has.

Some reasons for cooperation are more basic while other reasons can have complex effects on the population and individuals. One common, simple example is ants and how they help each other to lift and carry larger food particulates. This directly helps them feed the colony and queen more efficiently, leading to more reproduction. However, some species have much more complex relationships; vampire bats for instance sometimes regurgitate and share the food they collected from prey that day with others they may have no relation to. Why would giving up some of their own energy to a potential stranger ever be beneficial in survival or reproduction? These bats have evolved from the fact that when they do not share they may go hungry for a day or more and the survival rate is lower than when they share with others so much fewer bats are hungry. This specifically helps the individual because the bats that have food shared with them remember who shared it with them and typically will return the favor when needed. Cooperation similar to this extends to many different species and even intercellular actions.

The pinnacle of cooperation is the human species. This stems from our ability to communicate and arguably have a conscious to make decisions differently from animals. This allows us to think about the conflict in our emotions between if we should cooperate and help others or look to get ahead at the expense of others. This is what I consider to be a major differentiating factor between being moral or not. Cooperation between people has created all the great technology we have today; Cooperation is how people can all guess the weight of an Ox and be wrong but the average is close to the actual weight.

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