EOTO Presentations

 The EOTO presentations from each person were fantastic overall. A lot of them were incredibly descriptive, and some were very fun to learn about! However, my personal favorite was the presentation on the printing press. I did not really know a lot about the printing press outside of, oddly enough, a music history class I took in high school. Learning about the history and significance of the printing press really opened my eyes about how a piece of technology can revolutionize the entire planet, despite not everyone feeling that it will.

Some of the most interesting points really shocked me, not only because the history of the printing press was not as I knew it (for the most part) but also learning about how revolutionary it actually was to society as a whole. One of my favorite pieces of information from the presentation was the fact that Gutenberg's printing press was not the first ever printing press, and the original inventor is unknown. As a result of this, combined with how revolutionary Gutenberg's press was to all of society, he is credited with the invention of it. I knew it was revolutionary for a number of reasons, but the thing that shocked me the most was the fact that it basically universalized literacy. With so many books being mass produced (The Bible in particular) written works became far more accessible to everyone as they were being mass produced so easily. The printing press revolutionized books and killed word of mouth and slowly mitigated handwritten methods of history-keeping.

Learning about the printing press really put a lot of my life into perspective. I ended up comparing its impact to that of the World Wide Web. We would have gotten by without either, but the printing press feels far more revolutionary when thinking about the timeline of history is far more impactful than that of the World Wide Web. Also, WWW did not benefit everyone for a few years, whereas the printing press was immediately impactful and was made for everyone. It was nice to help give me a lot of perspective and help me be grateful for the technology we have today, even if a lot of the biggest companies are not exactly trustworthy.

The World Wide Web

 I had a lot of fun with this one! I love learning more about stuff like technology, sports, and the like. Technology in particular is incredibly interesting because of how quickly it has developed. The prime example of this is the World Wide Web. I found it remarkable that the WWW developed as quickly as it did, especially considering the initial market. The World Wide Web is one of those inventions that appealed to a niche market so, initially, it didn't really affect a lot of people. Now? It has been deeply rooted in everything we do, from how we take notes to how we shop and consume our news. As I thought about it I realized that I wouldn't be writing this blog about a presentation I just completed to a website that wouldn't exist on a computer that likely wouldn't exist or, at the very least, be useable without the World Wide Web. Anyway, this is supposed to be about the history and impact of the World Wide Web.

Historically speaking, we have one man to praise like Beethoven and his symphonies: one Tim Berners-Lee, a European scientist from CERN (European Council for Nuclear Research). Think about that: a NUCLEAR SCIENTIST created the modern internet and helped kickstart 4 of the 5 most valuable companies on earth into overdrive. At the time of its creation, the internet wasn't much of an internet as we see it today. It was exclusively used by specialists who knew how to write code on DOS, or the Disk Operating System. The World Wide Web proposed to streamline the coding portion and create a simplistic interface that could be used by any shmuck such as myself. Now, the US Government had been using a form of DOS since the 1960s, but Berners-Lee's intended use for the initial web was to send information between hospitals. It was conceptualized in 1989, but was initially created in late 1991. Just 3 years later, there were over 10 million users. Nowadays, it seems that we can't live without it. However, with great power comes great responsibility, and in the past 10 years we've seen the consequences of this power being used inappropriately.

The World Wide Web initially did what it was created to do: share information between medical centers. As it developed and became global, the production of technology boomed and continues to grow today. However, as mentioned above, this power comes at a cost, and Berners-Lee even said that it could become a destroyer of worlds. Today, it feels like it had been a destroyer of at least one thing: privacy. From data selling to hacking that affects elections, a lot of...we'll call them, less than positive actions, have altered the lives of individuals and created a level of paranoia not seen since the advent of nuclear weapons, if ever. Berners-Lee did create the World Wide Web Foundation in an effort to "fight for digital equality". In other words, they're trying to return the Web to the people by taking the power away from corporations like Google and Amazon (Google removed "Don't Be Evil" from there Code of Conduct in 2018. That should say enough). The World Wide Web is one of the most revolutionary inventions in recent history, and maybe even human history considering how important it has become in our lives. However, its initial purpose has been lost and has been hurting millions of people. I hope Berners-Lee succeeds in his efforts, and I'm sure everyone else would the second they hear about it, unless you're Google I guess.

The Importance of Free Expression

 Throughout human history, men and women from all walks of life have had their own methods of expressing themselves, from how they dress to what they say and do. As the centuries passed, the dynamics of expression have changed, such as women being able to more freely express themselves, minorities being able to speak out more easily creating a larger populous for inventions and societal revolutions. The First Amendment protects all peaceful forms of speech and all actions that send a message. With the Age of Enlightenment, however, values of expression were already being conceived. Some of these ideas include the promotion of tolerance, checks on the powers of the government, and the allowance of "venting." However, one value is the most prominent in the world today with cancel culture becoming prominent and, in the eyes of many, a problem that ruins lives. Protection of dissent is, without question, the single most important value of expression in our society today, and no other country has it like America.

Protection of dissent is an incredibly important piece of the puzzle that is a functioning society. It prevents people from entering into a mob mentality that we have seen in the past, such as Hitler's Germany, Stalin's USSR, and most recently Kim Jong Un's North Korea. One of the most useful tactics that all of these dictators have used and continue to use to this day in places like China is censorship. Censorship is an argument many people have used in recent years in America to prevent hate speech. However, hate speech, if not incitement, true threats, or calls to negative action, are protected fully by the First Amendment. Censorship, in every sense, is a violation of the First Amendment. Censorship creates mob mentalities that we have seen in the past, and if censorship does in fact take effect, it ruins the idea of free speech and, subsequently, free expression.

What is intriguing about the whole censorship argument is this: some of the most hated countries in the US and considered the antithesis of what the US stands for (Russia, North Korea, Iran, China) are the most censor-heavy countries on the planet. In spite of this, some Americans feel that censorship will make the country better. While a valid argument, the First Amendment, almost verbatim, protects ALL speech, regardless of the form. No matter how much I may despise your beliefs, I am immediately in the wrong for trying to silence them. Most importantly, censorship is prior restraint. When you prevent people from screaming obscenities, you could also just prevent people from having a differing opinion, even if their opinion is valid, just on the grounds that you don't like it. Not only that, but the fact that people have been punished for racist comments, such as Jon Gruden, proves that society already has subsequent punishment. All prior restraint does is prevent some people from having their egos damaged at the cost of democracy.

One of my favorite news stories that has been making headlines recently is that of Dave Chappelle and his special "The Closer." Dave Chappelle has frequently made jokes at the expense of transgender people (and just about any other group but transgenders are the people that are up in arms), but it seems like "The Closer" crossed the line for them. Watching the entire special, I found 2 things: the special was hilarious, and Dave Chappelle told a very long story about a transgender woman that wanted to be a comedian and that she was one of Chappelle's closest friends. He made a few jokes after the whole story, but what was saddest was the fact that the same people in this LGBT community were, quite possibly, a key cog in this woman Chappelle talked about killing herself. He was getting hounded on Twitter and she defended him. In spite of that story, in spite of the bravery he described, in spite of him stating that the community greatly hurt her and she later killed herself, an effort was made to get him cancelled. Fortunately, the CEOs of Netflix didn't have brains as smooth as some of the people who only looked for a reason to bash Chappelle, and the special has not been removed. Netflix has said that they did not handle in-house dissention very well, but they stood by their decision regarding the state of the special itself. "I was being dragged through Twitter. I don't give a f*** because that's not a real place." -Dave Chappelle, "The Closer."

The SCOTUS - Reflection on Historical Videos

 The Supreme Court is the most powerful judicial body on the entire planet. Its unique ability to regulate the other governmental bodies gives it a unique power to not only prevent change, but allow and force it. It took quite a large amount of effort to get the Supreme Court to where it is today, and some important information about it, both past and present, is lost upon most Americans.

One thing that I did not know about the Supreme Court was the amount of cases they receive yearly (roughly 7,000) vs the amount that gain full consideration (roughly 100). Another interesting concept I did not know too much about was a Trial Court. A Trial Court answers most of the legal questions before the case makes its way to one of the justices. The justices, as well, individually examine cases that are brought to them. One last piece of information shared that I found interesting was not what the Supreme Court does with cases that are denied, but how the media reports on these rejected cases. When the SC does not accept a case for review, the media reports that they upheld the decision or ordered something to happen, when they never even fully considered it.

I felt that the most important take-away from the Supreme Court was the overall process for a particular case. If a case makes it to the Supreme Court, it has to reach the desk of one of the Justices. Then, that justice has to bring it to a weekly conference with the others for it to be addressed. After that, they decide on which cases to take on and which to reject. After that, they go through a series of briefings, asking questions in relation to the case. Finally, the prosecution and defendants make an oral argument. When this whole process is done, the justices write a final opinion after several draft attempts, and this opinion is released with the rest of the opinions to the press in late June. This is the most important take-away because knowing the process is more important than any other piece of information.

The most surprising thing I learned was the amount of cases that get generally disregarded by the Supreme Court justices. I just found it shocking that so many cases made it that far, and just how many were never fully considered. I had always felt that very few cases made it to the court, which made me think of less than 500 a year. Looking at it logically, it makes sense that they get as many as they do because of how many local courts there are in the country, but the fact that roughly 1.5% of cases that the Supreme Court sees are officially taken on by all of the judges just really shocked me.

Throughout the past few years, I always felt that the Supreme Court justices allowed their political leaning to influence their rulings throughout American history. What made me incredibly happy was that they don't let their political views, for the most part, interfere with an unbiased ruling. When it comes to court decisions, being unbiased is imperative, but humans will be human. Bias will sneak in, but it felt nice to know that the Supreme Court puts forth their best effort to give the proper ruling on things in relation to the Constitution rather than the "correct" ruling based on current political tides.