My Relationship With Technology

After watching a few short videos on the effects of technology on humankind and finding some sources of my own, I have been forced to rethink my relationship with technology and reflect on just how unhealthy it was for me growing up. Over time, I have learned that stepping away even the tiniest bit from certain aspects of technology can make a world of a difference. 

The mid-1960s attraction, FUTURAMA, predicted many elements of our current world correctly. It was off on a few things, such as a tropical highway and unlimited underwater resources. Still, we did have moon exploration, a lunar rover, and now have a series of electronic-based cars from multiple companies. 

Moby's remix of "Mad World" depicts a dark, nightmarish world held prisoner to technology. Sadly, the contents of the music video are not a far cry from our current reality. The music video features animations such as multiple couples glued to their devices at a restaurant not saying a word to each other, and a single-file line of people walking towards and falling into an open sewer with their heads down, mesmerized by their cell phones. 

Both of these videos showcase that technology has been placed at the forefront of society. The sheer amount of attention that we give new technology without hesitation already seems dangerous enough. 

My relationship with technology has improved significantly over the years, when compared to the previous inescapable bond between my younger self and social media; specifically, diet culture. 

I never thought about how my body looked, or planned out what I ate, or worried about my size until it seemed like everybody else was doing it. To me, that is the source of the issue. When you are young, you are too easily influenced. You care so much about what everyone else is doing after seeing it posted all over social media, and so you decide to do it too. You think it will be good for you. 

As I entered my teenage years, I found myself searching up things like "South Beach Diet" on Google, watching YouTube videos with complex workouts claiming to erase fat in a matter of days, and following models or shredded, super-fit celebrities on social media, thinking that it would inspire me and motivate me enough to get into the gym and start dieting and restricting myself to look just like them. 

I tried to research what my body type was, convincing myself that I was disproportionate, and avoiding looking in mirrors. I constantly calculated my BMI (body mass index) to see if I was overweight. When an online BMI calculator told me that I was at an average weight, I took it as the end of the world. 

Younger me did not want to be average. She wanted to be perfect and skinny and fit into a size 00. She wanted to have an impossible combination of features, and yearned to look like anyone else but herself. If someone were to take all of the perfect physical characteristics that I imagined in my head and make a real person out of it, the most accurate result I can think of now is if Pablo Picasso tried to build a Barbie doll. 

For decades, society had not batted an eye when young women tried to shrink themselves down in the most unhealthy ways. Even today, the media greatly encourages weight loss and advertises it like crazy. 

Oprah in an advertisement for Weight Watchers

Flip through channels on your television, and you are bound to see a commercial from Weight Watchers, Noom, Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem, SlimFast, or Atkins. Most of the time, celebrities are endorsing these companies because, sadly, people are more likely to buy something if a famous person tells them to. Do you see the connection? No matter how old you are, you are still so easily influenced by other people. 

In a world where social media holds such great presence; filters, photoshop and all, how are we supposed to know what is real? How are we supposed to know what will be good or bad for us if we just continue to blindly copy other people's behaviors? 

Today, I am in a much better place with my appearance. I have learned that food is fuel, carbs are not bad for you, exercise should not be a punishment, and following fad diets is going to do all harm and no good. 

I was able to start healing my toxic relationship with technology, but there are still hundreds of people out there who are stuck, hiding in the damaging shadow that diet culture casts. We as a society need to find a way to fix this. The problems that can arise from diet culture on social media cannot solve themselves. 

EOTO #2 Reaction: The Spiral of Silence, Gatekeeping, and Cord-cutting

The second round of EOTO presentations was on terms and concepts surrounding society and technology. Here is everything I learned about the Spiral of Silence theory, gatekeeping, and cord-cutting. 

The Spiral of Silence theory is about an individual having an opinion on something controversial and choosing to keep their opinion hidden, for fear that whatever they are thinking may be an unpopular or unacceptable opinion by the majority of people who flocked to a more popular opinion.

Brittanica defines it more specifically as, "the theory that people’s willingness to express their opinions on controversial public issues is affected by their largely unconscious perception of those opinions as being either popular or unpopular." 

Someone may not go against popular opinions or trends because they do not want to look like they are "wrong" or saying or believing the "wrong thing". 

The Spiral of Silence theory really seems to revolve around a fear of judgment by others. 

The truth is, just because something gains popularity, does not make it morally "right". However, in the case of this theory, the individual who has a differing opinion from their peers wants to remain agreeable and not isolate themselves by expressing a different set of thoughts. I found this theory interesting because it is visible in society; particularly in those who may have social anxiety or aim to blend in with a crowd. 

Gatekeeping, as defined by dictionary.com, has two meanings, one pertaining to physically keeping watch of a gate, and the other being the definition I was looking for. The more relevant definition states that gatekeeping is, "a person or thing that controls access, as to information, often acting as an arbiter of quality or legitimacy." 

An example of gatekeeping in our generation currently is when a person refuses to share what products they use or purchase regularly to prevent the products from selling out and becoming hard to find. This is usually seen on social media. Business Insider defines this modern version of gatekeeping as, "having access, opportunity, or knowledge — and then keeping it all to yourself." 

Gatekeeping has become a more serious term regarding internet safety. Google, Facebook, and Amazon, just to name a few, have been saving our information and for a while, it was not widely known that our information was being saved. These companies gatekept our own data from us. I'm curious as to what information about me is being saved. 

Cord-cutting is the idea of canceling satellite or cable television to prioritize streaming services or other internet media. Cord-cutting has started to become more frequent year by year, as more television companies have noticed people flocking to streaming services instead. In the past year, roughly one million users have canceled their cable or satellite television subscriptions. 

With younger generations going straight to using streaming services and skipping out on cable and satellite, their parents are following suit and switching to only using streaming services as well. 

Cord-cutting may be financially beneficial, as the costs of streaming service subscriptions are less expensive than paying for cable and satellite television. Also, streaming services offer a wide range of television and movies readily available to its users, that may not be playing on cable or satellite. 

One negative connotation with cord-cutting is that streaming services are not live, and do not contain a live news source. To be able to watch live news broadcasts, updates, and breaking news, people would still have to have access to cable or satellite. As a future journalist, I do not support cord-cutting for this reason only. I think that it is important for everyone to have access to news at all times in case of an emergency and just to stay updated in general. 

Blog Post #10: Living in the Age of AI

After watching the documentary about artificial intelligence by Frontline on PBS, it is safe to say that no one should blindly put their trust in technology, people are tracking you, and the internet is forever. 

For starters, in the documentary, it is said that the standard of living has gone down by 15% due to advances in technology. Whether you're a tech lover or a hater, I think that is still a concerning statistic. 

The beginning of the documentary explores the fact that AI was able to swiftly outsmart its human opponent, Lee Sedol, in a game of Go by using moves no humans have ever thought of using before. 

As a result, Sedol, previously known as a Go champion, resigned from the game. According to the documentary, the AI taught itself how to play Go based on the history of other games and by studying moves. 

The documentary raises a lot of good points about both the benefits and pitfalls of using artificial intelligence. A few interviewed sources give their takes on how it affects jobs, and other sources tap into how your digital footprint can be used for profit, such as in the case of companies selling your data. 

Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, once said at an IPO, "We know where you are, with your permission," and continued to list out other qualities Google knows about a person with their permission. While people are searching Google, Google is searching them too. I found it interesting that Eric Schmidt declined to be interviewed for the documentary. What is he hiding? 

Shoshana Zuboff said that whenever we search for stuff on the internet, we are leaving "digital traces" of ourselves that anyone can have access to. Zuboff also said, "Industrial capitalism claimed nature," and based on the way things are now, I agree with her. 

Another problem Zuboff mentions is the danger presented by wealthy people buying and selling your data. She says that if someone has enough money to buy people's data, buy scientists, and buy companies, only problems await and people's privacy is put at risk. 

AI is stealing human jobs by working quicker and more productively than human employees. Companies are turning to machines to crank out riches for them. The documentary showed viewers a grocery store where machines were retrieving items for human customers. 

To make matters worse, Molly Kinder said that women hold the job positions today that are at the highest risk of being lost and given to machines. As a woman, that terrifies me. Imagine spending the earlier years of your life studying in school and building upon your work experience just to be turned away and replaced by an AI employee. 

The sad reality is that AI has already begun to take jobs that people may not expect it to. According to Kate Crawford of the AI Now Institute, AI has weaseled into healthcare, education, and criminal justice, as well as shopping. 

AI is also heavily affecting the world of politics. The documentary states that the power of AI could pose a threat to democracy. We are given a glimpse of how this technology is used and abused by the government in China. Research scientist, Xiao Qiang, says, "China is on its way to building a total surveillance state." 

The Chinese government has already installed millions of cameras with facial recognition to keep track of every move a citizen makes and shame them publicly for wrongdoings, such as jaywalking. 

The documentary also says that homes in China have a barcode posted outside the door to show what type of citizen is living there. Quite an invasion of privacy. 

Regarding the relationship between AI and business, investor and adviser to Facebook, Roger McNamee, explained why companies value our data so much and how it helps them. 

McNamee said, "Behavioral prediction is about taking uncertainty out of life. Advertising and marketing are all about uncertainty. You never really know who's going to buy your product...until now." 

Big companies, including Google and Facebook, hold onto our preferences, our searches, and our interests in order to spit them back out at us in the form of suggested items we might want to purchase. If we choose to purchase these suggested items, we are then showing companies exactly what they want to see - that behavioral prediction works for them. 

These companies can then aim their products toward a target audience or group to increase sales. For business, it's a win-win. For us as individuals, any information we put about ourselves on the internet is no longer just ours. Our information alone is a business now. 

McNamee also said, "We have to recognize that we gave technology a place in our lives that it had not earned." I think this is one of the most important quotes in the documentary. 

In addition, Roger McNamee spoke with anchors at CNBC as part of its business segment, Squawk On The Street, on May 30th. McNamee discussed the troubles of AI, how it compares to cryptocurrency, and how certain generative AIs such as ChatGPT are "B.S. generators". Feel free to check it out here or below. 

Lastly, before we insert AI into every inch of our everyday lives out of convenience, we must educate ourselves fully on how technology like this works and be aware of the chaos that can ensue if it becomes too powerful. If we fail to do that, then technology will have earned its place by outsmarting humans.   

Blog Post #8: Privacy Online and Offline

After watching four TED Talk videos about how technology affects our privacy, I have learned an uncomfortable amount of new information. 

The first video I watched was of Darieth Chisolm talking about revenge porn, or another title given by Chisolm, "digital domestic abuse". Chisolm's stalking, toxic, manipulative ex-boyfriend had taken explicit photos of her while she was asleep without her knowledge or consent, and posted them on a website with Chisolm's name on it. This guy even went as far as sending a link to the website to Chisolm's ex-husband. 

This video affects me, my friends, and my family, because anyone's personal information or explicit content can be posted online without warning or consent, and it is quite a hassle to get it taken down by professionals, as Chisolm discusses in the video. Photos meant to be private and not released publicly could upend careers and damage reputations. The government should find a way to wipe this type of content from the internet much quicker and have less of a waiting process for victims. 

As for how we can protect ourselves from revenge porn or having our explicit photos leaked, I have been told since the start of my teenage years to rethink who I belive I trust, and to be careful who I choose to put my trust in. When I was in middle school, a group of guys in my grade leaked a girl's explicit photos without her consent and sent them around school. That taught me from a young age that absolutely no age group is safe from digital abuse or cyberbullying at such a private and sinister level. 

The second video I watched was of Christopher Soghoian talking about avoiding cell phone surveillance. Soghoian brought up wiretapping, stating that the U.S. government or even a foreign government could be wiretapping and listening to what's going on on your phone. He also said that iPhone users who text other iPhone users are less likely to get wiretapped, because it would be more difficult that way. Same goes for if someone with an iPhone were to FaceTime another person with an iPhone. I was a little relieved to hear that as an iPhone user myself. 

These issues affect everybody, because we live in a generation majorly ruled by technology. I cannot think of one person that I know personally who does not carry around a smartphone of some sort. We rely so heavily on these things and use them so often without thinking about the risks of who has access to them besides ourselves. 

Soghoian said in the video that if the government can intercept calls from a terrorist or a drug dealer, there should not be any reason why they cannot intercept anybody's phone calls and listen in. I think the government should only wiretap when they think it is necessary, for instance, in criminal investigations or to track someone who may pose as a threat. If I had to guess, the general public probably do not have very interesting phone conversations that the government needs to eavesdrop. 

Soghoian mentions that the government would have to stop wiretapping every single device, thus losing track of bad guys in the process which could be dangerous, so I know that I cannot ask the government to stop wiretapping people altogether. In order to protect ourselves from government surveillance and the possibility of our devices getting wiretapped, we as a society should aim to only use communication services and apps that are protected by encryption, such as iMessage, FaceTime, and Whatsapp. 

The next video I watched involved Catherine Crump discussing that the police can track our locations. People's locations are a sensitive piece of information. The police keep a record of every license plate that passes through the location trackers, and hundreds of photos of people's cars and their whereabouts. The police can also release information from cell towers to discover who was using a specific cell tower at what time. Crump made a point to say, "just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it's not there." 

These issues affect me, because I drive a car back at home and was just made aware that the police have records of all the locations I have driven to at certain times in my life and possibly photographs of my car. If the government is doing this as a safety measure to track criminal vehicles or criminal cell phones, then I guess I am not as worried. However, I still do not want the government owning this stuff about me. Crump said that local police stations can be governed by the city councils who can make laws to dispose of innocent people's locations and other data. I hope that happens. 

The last video I watched was a TED talk by Juan Enriquez, comparing your online footprint to a tattoo. He referred to a quote by Andy Warhol, where Warhol theorized that in the future, people would be world-famous for only fifteen minutes. Enriquez decided to flip the theory on its side, and theorized himself that maybe in the future, people will be anonymous for only fifteen minutes due to their "electronic tattoos".

There is no such thing as digital privacy, since multiple online platforms and applications hold onto the data and information that you choose to share with them. When you post something online or enter any personal information such as interests or personal preferences, it is out there for the world to see forever. 

I have heard people say the internet is forever, but I was never aware of to what extent exactly. This issue affects me and the people I love, because I and everyone I know share things online with each other. A good amount of my friends and family have Instagram, Facebook, etc and update their statuses on there frequently. The government should not be holding on to all of our data, and should get rid of it. To protect ourselves from this type of invasion of privacy, I think we need to reflect on what we should allow ourselves to post online, and start being more private with our lives on social media. 

Blog Post #7: Diffusion of Innovations

The Diffusion of Innovations theory talks about the effect of certain inventions or ideas on the general public and separates those who hop on the bandwagon into different groups based on when they join in. The groups consist of innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. 

I found an article that defines these groups in simple terms. Innovators are open to risks and are the first to try new ideas. Early adopters are interested in trying new technologies and establishing their utility in society. Early majority includes the general population and moving tech through mainstream society. Late majority is just the delayed version of the early majority, and laggards are self-explanatory: they lag behind the general population in adopting new ideas. 

I believe that social media follows the Diffusion of Innovations theory. Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube have been stealing ideas from each other for years. Below is an example of the theory at work.  

Snapchat released its "My Story" feature in October of 2013. With this feature, users could post pictures and videos they took onto a storyline viewable by friends for 24 hours. Later on in May of 2017, Snapchat released custom stories, to which users could add specific photos and videos and allow specific other users access to viewing and adding to the story too. Part of the custom stories feature is the creation of private stories, where only you can post content, and only those you add to the story can view that content. 

Instagram swooped in with its own story feature in the summer of 2016, with the same functions as Snapchat's stories. Users could share photos and videos with friends that would disappear after 24 hours. Adding fuel to the fire, Instagram then went ahead and launched a new story feature called "Close Friends Stories" in 2018, which mirrored the concept of Snapchat's private stories. Users could post content onto a story that only those who got added were able to view. 

Facebook was the next app to come out with a story feature in March of 2017, using the exact same concept as Snapchat and Instagram. Users could share photos and videos with friends on a storyline that lasts for 24 hours. 

YouTube released a story feature in 2019 where users could view stories for up to 7 days. The company got rid of it in the summer of 2023 due to a lack of popularity and community engagement. 

TikTok followed suit and launched its own story feature in 2022. TikTok stories have the same concept as Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook. Users share content that friends can view for up to 24 hours. 

In the example above, the idea of sharing and posting "stories" as a social media feature is a new, innovative technology. Snapchat stories are the innovators, Instagram stories are the early adopters, Facebook stories are the early majority, YouTube stories are the late majority, and TikTok stories are the laggards. TikTok eventually hopped on the story bandwagon, but since they were the last platform to do it, I consider them the laggards. As the idea of "stories" rose in popularity over the years, more apps chose to add it to their list of features in order to join in on what mainstream society was doing. 

EOTO #2: Generative AI

Generative AI, or Artificial Intelligence, is a relatively new concept in the world of technology that people are still trying to navigate and understand. However, its likeness has been researched since the 1960s. 

In 1966, MIT computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum created the first-ever chatbot and named it ELIZA. The chatbot was named after Eliza Doolittle, the fictional character from George Bernard Shaw's 1913 play, Pygmalion. ELIZA was one of the earliest examples of Natural Language Processing, or NLP. 

ELIZA's purpose was to simulate plausible conversations with human users by generating responses based on the text it was given. ELIZA was originally modeled after the Rogerian style of psychotherapy. The machine would rephrase any speech input it received into a question. For instance, if you told ELIZA a conversation with a friend made you sad, it would ask, "Why do you feel sad?" 

Weizenbaum designed ELIZA with the intent of displaying how superficial the conversations between humans and machines were, but ELIZA's existence produced the complete opposite reaction from the general public. People loved talking to it and hearing it repeat and reflect everything they just said.

Weizenbaum was so disturbed by these reactions, that he spent the rest of his life warning people against the chaos that could ensue if computers were given too large of a role to play in society. The irony here is that a man who regrets his own invention and does not support the idea of humans and machines communicating helped to create Artificial Intelligence in the future. 

Weizenbaum even went on to write against ELIZA in a book he published in 1976 titled, Computer Power and Human Reason. In the book, Weizenbaum states, "What I had not realized is that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people." 

People saw the machine as an illusion of compassion, which Weizenbaum feared the government and other corporations could take advantage of. 

Weizenbaum passed away in March of 2008, well before the more advanced Artificial Intelligence that we know today came into existence. Although he would not approve if he were still alive today, ELIZA has acted as the perfect blueprint to build more advanced Artificial Intelligence creations. 

In February 2010, Siri was released on Apple's App Store for iOS. Two months later, Apple acquired the app and integrated it into the iPhone 4S at its release in the fall of 2011. The separate Siri app was then removed from the App Store, and Siri became the official digital assistant of Apple. Siri can now be found on all Apple devices, including the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Macbook, Airpods, Apple TV, and their latest virtual assistant development, HomePod. I am going in chronological order here, so I will touch on HomePod within the next few paragraphs. 

Siri uses voice queries, gesture-based control, and focus-tracking, and similarly to ELIZA, has Natural Language Processing abilities. Siri can adapt to its users' individual language uses, searches, and preferences, and delivers results that reflect them. The assistant can set up text messages, dial phone calls, schedule calendar events, set timers, set alarms, and come up with internet searches from the questions it is asked by users. 

In 2011, Jeff Bezos was brainstorming the first Echo device for Amazon. He said that he wanted the device to be completely voice-controlled, which his team said would be hard to accomplish. In 2001, a speech synthesizer called Ivona was invented in Poland. Ivona's purpose was to convert text into audible speech with a human-sounding voice that humans could easily understand. 

In 2013, Amazon bought Ivona to help them develop a voice for the artificial intelligence that would later reside in the Echo, Alexa. Ivona was inspired by the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, whereas Alexa was inspired by the Starship Enterprise in Star Trek. In 2014, Alexa was finally complete and ready to be released as a part of the Amazon Echo. Alexa, like ELIZA and Siri, also uses Natural Language Processing to perform its functions. Alexa has voice interaction and music playback. It can make a to-do list, shop on Amazon for you, set alarms, stream podcasts, and play audiobooks. It can also provide the weather, traffic, sports, and other news in real-time. 

In 2016, the original Google Home was released in the United States, and devices under the Google Home name have continued to be released globally since 2017. Google's line of digital home products has been sold under a new name, Google Nest, since 2019. The name change's purpose was to keep all of Google's devices together under one name. Google has also come out with thermostats, security cameras, smoke detectors, smart doorbells, and more under the Nest branding. 

I will, however, keep referring to the devices as Google Home in this blog post because that is what they were called when my family bought ours. Google Home was at first a series of smart speakers that had built-in Google Assistant, the company's own virtual assistant. Users can play music, control the playback of photos or videos, and receive news updates by voice. The devices allow users to control them by voice command. A later update allowed the Googe Home devices to connect to Bluetooth for audio streaming.

 In 2016, the original Google Home was a tall cylindrical shape with LED dots on the top. In 2017, Google released the Google Home Mini and Google Home Max. In 2018, Google released the Google Home Hub, a smart speaker sporting a 7-inch touchscreen. Finally in 2019, after rebranding to Google Nest, the Google Nest Hub Max, a bigger and newer version of the Google Home Hub, was released. 

In 2018, Google decided to create its own virtual assistant to make phone calls for people, called Google Duplex. The point of Duplex was to schedule appointments and make restaurant reservations on a human's behalf while sounding like a human. Google wanted Duplex to sound as realistic as possible, so the company gave it a natural speech pattern that included filler words such as "er" and "mmm-hmm" to make it sound more human-like. Google Duplex was also able to ask businesses for their hours of operation during holidays and make the information available to view online with a Google search after receiving it. 

In 2018, the first generation model of HomePod was released by Apple. HomePod has been sold alongside its smaller and less expensive version, HomePod Mini, since 2020. HomePod's first generation was discontinued in 2021 due to a series of complaints by users about its few abilities and hefty price tag, but the first generation of HomePod Mini got to stick around and is still sold today. 

In 2023, Apple released a second generation of the HomePod with improvements. HomePod is a smart speaker that Apple designed to work with an Apple Music subscription. The device uses beamforming, a technique used to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of received signals, eliminate undesirable interference sources, and focus transmitted signals to specific locations. 

In 2021, DALL-E was developed and released by the company OpenAI. DALL-E is able to generate digital images using natural language descriptions from users, called "prompts". In 2022, OpenAI released DALL-E 2. The purpose of the second model was to make images that appeared more realistic and could be viewed at higher resolutions. Microsoft decided to insert DALL-E 2 into their Designer app as well as their Image Creator tool, which is included inside Bing and Microsoft Edge. In 2023, OpenAI released its third model, DALL-E 3. The third model was created to be able to understand "significantly more nuance and detail" than its predecessors. The name DALL-E is a combination of the Pixar character, WALL-E, and the Spanish surrealist artist, Salvador Dalí. 

2022 brought the initial release of ChatGPT, and 2023 introduced the stable release of the chatbot. ChatGPT stands for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer. It was developed by OpenAI, the same company that created DALL-E. ChatGPT is a language model-based chatbot that lets users refine and steer conversations toward whatever length, format, style, level of detail, and language they want. Users can get priority access to newer features with a paid subscription to ChatGPT Plus which was released in 2023 and costs users $20 monthly. 

The chatbot was trained on its functions by humans through two different methods of training: RLHF and supervised learning. RLHF stands for reinforcement learning from human feedback. The way it works is, humans go into the chatbot's conversational history and rank its past performance. These rankings created "reward models" and helped to fine-tune the model even further. Supervised learning puts the trainers in the position of both the human users and the chatbot assistant itself. 

After researching eight types of generative artificial intelligence, I have identified a big problem among at least three of them. Siri, Amazon Alexa, and Google Home/Nest all respond immediately to a simple voice command programmed into their system. Siri's command is, "Hey Siri". Amazon Alexa's command is, "Alexa". Google Home/Nest's command is, "OK Google". The problem that these simple voice commands have pointed out to me is: if people are able to grasp the attention of AI-controlled devices using a voice command and have them respond immediately to let us know that they're listening, does this mean that the devices are listening to people all the time 24/7? I believe it is possible, but I have no proof. 

Blog Post #6: Anti-War Voices

One of the first articles that caught my eye on the website antiwar.com began with the title, "The Media Aren't Telling the Whole Story". Immediately curious as to what they were talking about, I clicked on the article. The title told me right off the bat that I was about to read something the U.S. government did not want to get out. 

Part of our First Amendment rights as American citizens is freedom of the press. How free is the press? Is the press coming up with their own narratives and reporting on stories they've written for themselves, or is the government spoon-feeding journalists hand-picked information to prevent them from spewing other bits and pieces of information that they want to shield from the public eye?  

The first article I clicked on discussed severe floods in Libya, which I have seen nothing about in the news. Thousands of people are dead or missing, many houses have been destroyed, their dams are in bad shape (which caused the floods) and overall, the politics in Libya have been an absolute trainwreck for years. Who obliterated Libya's political system? The U.S. government. 

Further down the article, it is mentioned that NATO went behind the back of the United Nations and violated what was allowed. NATO launched what they called a "humanitarian intervention" but over two thousand Libyans were killed in the process. NATO labeled the intervention in Libya as a means to protect its citizens, when in reality, they intended from the start to cause destruction. Also, they murdered Libya's dictator at the time, Muammar Gaddafi, with little to no supporting evidence that he was plotting to use his troops to mass murder and rape civilians. 

The tragic invasion of Libya was closely compared by the U.S. government to the invasion of Iraq and the murder of Saddam Hussein. The two events are similar in the way that NATO went and started a war based on zero proven facts without the United Nations permission. Circling back to the beginning of this post, I think that I have to seek out obscure websites such as antiwar.com in order to hear strong antiwar voices because the U.S. government is overly supportive of war. They love the idea of war. They jump for joy at the thought of sending troops out with explosives. 

Why is no one stopping them? The U.S. government has developed an abundance of power over time. Weapons have been upgraded, and laws have been both rewritten and unwritten from history. There's a famous quote by George Santayana that sits in the back of my head. He once said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it". Erasing history will only lead to it coming back to haunt you in the future. 

When you take a minute to think about all of the history that has been erased, or unwritten, or how many people have tried to make you forget it happened, there is a long list. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the original verdict of Roe v. Wade. Also, in the past, someone tried to tell me, a Jewish woman, that the holocaust was not real and did not happen, as a joke. If tragedies in history such as the holocaust were to be forgotten, that leaves a chance of repetition later on, and I cannot begin to imagine what that would look like today. 

I believe that the roots of any country lie within its government. What does that say about America as a whole? Libya no longer has roots to grow from, as it still does not have a government. 

In conclusion, the U.S. government is too powerful, history is capable of repeating itself if one tries to forget or erase it, and I hope that Libya can reconstruct its government and restore what was destroyed.