Com1450 Blog

  The Values of Free Expression The First Amendment allows people to have freedom of speech but what does that mean? There are eight different values that can help to explain the rights allotted from the First Amendment that have been discovered by many different people. The first value is that the people have a right to a Marketplace of Idea. This was discovered by John Milton and can also be known as the Discovery of Truth. This value means that U.S. citizens have the right to figure out what the truth is for themselves. This also can entail their right to be ignorant. The second value is their participation in Self-Government and was found by Alexander Meiklejohn. This value plays off of the first in that, as people, they have the right to be informed about government policies and be subject to an involved debate. This can also mean that they can ignore certain policies for the candidate to better suit their personal beliefs. The third value is their right to Stable Ch...

  Video Games and the Diffusion Theory Video games have become a staple in most households all around the world. They allow for engaging entertainment. They can shape the way you view or see the world or they just allow people to have an outlet to escape their day-to-day lives. In 1972, Nolan Bushnell and Al Alcorn of Atari created a virtual ping pong table that you could play in an arcade called Pong . This was the birth of modern video games as we know it. It became so popular that the machines would often break due to overuse and clogging the coin slots with quarters.  Soon after Pong came Space Invaders from Taito in 1978. This began the big boom in video game production that included  Pac-Man , Donkey Kong , and Tron that all came along in the early ’80s.  Video games began to gain popularity due to the kids of that time. They wanted things to do outside of the house and this was an easy escape for them. It got so popular so quickly due to how fast ...

  How does social media leave a permanent footprint? Whatever you put out on the internet, whether that be pictures, timeline posts, your resume, or just your random thoughts, will always be out there. Even if you delete those posts, someone could’ve screenshotted it or recorded it. Along with your social media posts, people can also find out more about you through your credit scores and your bank accounts. With the age of facial recognition, people can find out everything they need to know about you just from a simple picture in a crowded area. Juan Enriquez says that the internet is just as if not more permanent than tattoos and like tattoos they can show the world a specific image or feeling that you are wanting to share. That image can stay around for longer than we are alive. He says that because of this, we are getting close to immortality. Companies can take the info that they learn about you and use it to market their products specifically to you. Enriquez used an example...

  The Supreme Court The Supreme Court is the head of the judicial branch of the U.S. government. It consists of nine justices and has the power to check the other two branches of government. It was “established in 1789 by Article Three of the U.S. Constitution, which also granted Congress the power to create inferior federal courts” (History.com).  The first Supreme Court justices were sworn in my President George Washington. The original Court only had six justices including Chief Justice John Jay and were to serve until they retired or died.  It wasn’t until 1869 that Congress set the seat number to nine and it has remained that way until today. Their first meeting was on February 2nd, 1790 and were only tasked to work on organization procedures.  They made their first decision on a case on August 3rd, 1971 in West v. Barnes . It was a dispute between a “farmer and a family he owed a debt to” (History.com).  Over the last 200 years, the Supreme Court ...

  Cord-cutting is defined as “the practice of canceling or forgoing a cable television subscription or landline phone connection in favor of an alternative Internet-based or wireless service.” (Oxford dictionary) Basically, it involves moving from live TV services to streaming services. Since the 2020 pandemic, cord-cutting is up by 23% (fortune) and more and more people have been buying internet services.  eMarketer shows that advertisements have dropped over $10 billion and they have projected that it will climb back but won’t reach the original $70.59 billion until at least after 2024. That drop is almost 15% and it hasn’t been this low since 2011 (Tech Crunch).  The math is there if you are wanting to save a buck here and there. With internet costing around $60 a month plus subscription services adding around $30-40, that's still nowhere near what an average cable cost would be. Spectrum offers just internet for $49.99 a month and you can add cable to that for an ...

 Jada's blog post taught me a lot about the beginnings of Youtube. I didn't realize that the site was meant to be used as a dating website at first! That really goes to show what all can change in ideas in a very short time. When people think of these ideas, some of the downfalls of them are that they are too stubborn to significantly change their idea. For these creators, changing their idea to adapt to how people were using it worked out for them big time!     Many startups think that they need a shiny new office space with high-tech equipment to get started. What these people don't realize is that many of the big companies started off way smaller than that! Youtube was founded in a garage and was later sold for 1.65 Billion dollars. They needed very little to get their idea off the ground. Of course, once they grew they probably needed a lot more, but at the start, many ideas don't need grand foundations!