Anti War

Blog Post #6    

            There always seems to be talk that America’s society has this fascination with the idea of a free democracy filled with freedom of expression and thought, and yet everywhere we look there is some spin of bias put on information in one way or another. Major news networks across the United States stray from that idea of freedom of thought and expression as these sources we find ourselves using the most are filled with their own bias which takes away the whole point of freedom of thought. It seems as if we only focus on news outlets such as Fox News and CNN. Both of these examples are heavily filled with bias whether it be from a Republican or Democratic perspective and it is very rare that we will find a mainstream news outlet that is bias free. The same idea goes for publication companies that are categorized as major news outlets as well such as The New York Post, New York Times, Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. Of course all of these sources get the same information out for their viewers and readers, they all have their own way of doing so depending on where their bias falls on a specific topic. 

The most obvious opposite news sources we have named are CNN and Fox News. These two news companies have completely different views as one is perceived as the heavily liberal news station and the other, the extremely conservative news station. Although both of these news sources cover the same topics, the way they view them are completely different and because of that it attracts a specific type of audience to their network. Because of the high amount of relevance that surrounds the democratic and republican parties it causes controversy when it comes to these news outlets. This keeps both of these news sources relevant by the bias they bring because as much as people hate to admit it, they like to be fed information in the way they believe it should be heard and they don’t want to hear otherwise. We claim our society prefers unbiased sources but that could not be farther from the truth. If that were the case we would see more biased free news sources in the mainstream news outlet categories instead of the same sources circulating constantly.

Whenever we see other sources release information that seems to be out of our society’s norms they are deemed to become irrelevant and pushed to the side. We see an example of this when looking at the Antiwar and The American Conservative websites. In today’s society, we promote ideas and information that fit in with a certain category of individuals whether we are referring to conservatives or liberals and try to promote ideas and information that correlate with their views and when they do not, we tend to ignore it and pay no attention to the information. Although these ideas are seen to fit with conservatives when it comes to the American Conservatives website, it still is not seen as relevant information for a major news outlet like Fox News to cover because it focuses on a variety of subtopics and not so much on the major ones we see the larger outlets cover more often. We also see other outlets be pushed aside just because of the difference of opinions or solutions they give. We really only focus on the main societal norms when it comes to news sources and anything that strays from that idea becomes irrelevant and therefore forgot about. 

History of Bluetooth

Blog Post #5

 Bluetooth was developed in the late 1900’s and quickly gained mass popularity in consumer devices. After the radio was invented, Ericsson’s MTD company wanted to find a way to expand the functionality of mobile phones since they had been growing rapidly in popularity at the time. Soon after the company decided they wanted to expand that functionality, their manufacturer started to develop a technology for several years that aimed at freeing computers, phones and other devices from the wires required to transfer data between them which Dr. Haartsen was able to actually create.

In 1996, industry leaders from Intel, Ericsson, and Nokia had met to discuss how this protocol could be standardized between short-range radio technology to support connectivity and collaboration. Jim Kardach had suggested that because the wireless protocol needed a name, they should use a code name before formally naming this protocol. Kardach thought of naming the protocol “Bluetooth” after reading about Harold Gormsson who was a famous viking who was given the nickname “Bluetooth” because it was believed that he had a rotting front tooth that had appeared to be a blueish gray. 

Harald Gormsson was famous for uniting Denmark and Norway, and because Kardach thought that was similar to their work, which was trying to unite cellular industries with short- range wireless links which led to Jim Kardach suggesting “Bluetooth” to be the official name for their invention which is what they ended up naming it. 

Two years later, Ericsson assembled a group of computer and electronics companies, known as the Bluetooth Special Interest Group. This newly established group was formed to bring the technology to the consumer market. In 1999 the first hands-free mobile headset was launched along with the first Bluetooth 1.0 specification. Twenty five years after the first ever launch of Bluetooth, we now have Bluetooth 5.0 which is two times faster, has four times more range, and eight times more capacity. 

Bluetooth has changed our society in ways that benefit how we can communicate through technology such as how we talk to one another through mobile devices. Bluetooth has evolved over the years from starting out as a headset to now smartphones, refrigerators, light bulbs, hands free car systems, etc. 

The invention of Bluetooth has revolutionized how people communicate with one another on a daily basis through technology. Without this communication technology in our lives, the world would not be as connected through the internet as we are today.