EOTO Presentations: Twitch

During our Each One Teach One presentations, one of my classmates (Carmen Fugate) talked about the communication technology Twitch. I was amongst the few people in the room who was familiar with it, and I use this technology on an almost daily basis. However, I didn't know anything about its history. I was very surprised to find out that Twitch started with just one person named Justin Kan. In 2005, Justin decided to live-stream his life 24/7 to the internet. He was inspired by the popular reality TV show Big Brother which, in a similar way, constantly records and broadcasts the activities of a group of people living in a house together. This endeavor turned into Justin.tv (which would eventually become Twitch). He wore a small camera on his hat every single day, and viewers were able to see what the world was like as Justin Kan. 

Justin Kan outfitted with his gear streaming gear.

At first, this was all that Justin.tv was; Justin Kan and those around him and their viewers. After initial hesitation, the website was opened up so that viewers could stream their content. Just six months later, Justin.tv grew to have over 30,000 streamers and several categories were added. It wasn't until 2011, that the gaming category of the website was turned into Twitch.tv. Instantly, Twitch became popular and the site grew to far exceed Justin.tv to the point where the latter was discontinued in 2014. Today, Twitch is home to hundreds of thousands of streamers and millions of viewers who hang out with each other via the internet and "make their own entertainment together" as Twitch puts it. 

The impact Twitch has had on the way we share experiences is astronomical. Now several other social media sites (including Facebook and Instagram) have the capability for users to live-stream whenever they want to. Live-streaming creates a strong sense of community because as viewers are watching the streamers they feel like they're there with them in that moment. However, as with all socialization-based sites, Twitch has problems. There are several cases of cyberbullying and, most recently, hate raids. Besides this, I believe that Twitch is an amazing development in communication technology because it brings people closer together and it has created a new realm of job opportunities for people who wish to entertain others. 

Diffusion of Innovation & The Rise of Google Translate

 The Diffusion of Innovation Theory

In class, we learned about the Diffusion of Innovation Theory. This theory is credited to communication studies professor Everett M. Rogers. In 1962, Rogers showed how his theory can be used to explain the length of time it takes for an idea, product, or behavior to permeate a specific social group or society as a whole. When people start to accept the new innovation, the term "adopted" is used, and this adoption does not happen all at once. Rogers defined five adopter categories which come together to form a bell curve; the Innovators, the Early Adopters, the Early Majority, the Late Majority, and the Laggards. 

The Five Types of Adopters

The Innovators are those who want to be first. They are willing to take the risk of investing in  new things that they find interesting, and it often takes very little to catch the interest of these types of people. The next group, the Early Adopters, are those who are "opinion leaders" meaning they have influence over people. Not only are they open to change, but they recognize that change needs to happen. The Early Majority aren't exactly leaders, but they're quicker to adopt new things after seeing evidence that a new idea is relevant or a new product works. The last two groups are most reluctant to change. The Late Majority will only adopt the innovation after it has been tried out by the majority of the population. They're skeptical, but ultimately decide to adopt it in the end. The last group, the Laggards, are the people that are the hardest to convince to adopt anything drastically new. In reality, no innovation is ever fully adopted by 100% of the community. Those who chose not to, or can't, adopt the latest trend are included in the Laggards category.

Permeation

Because of these different groups of the population, an innovation permeates slowly at first then it quickly gains popularity. If you would like to learn more about the factors behind this theory and what causes people to adopt ideas at different rates, click here.

Comparing to Google Translate

In my previous blog post, "Communication Technology: Google Translate," I talked about the history of translation and the creation of Google Translate. In this blog post, I would like to analyze Google Translate's rise in popularity using the Diffusion of Innovation Theory. So, let's begin. 

When Google Translate launched in 2006, it was only available to use through computer web browsers, but in 2010 it was made available to mobile smartphone users. Therefore, smartphone owners and those with internet access were amongst the first to adopt the technology into their way of life. In 2010, smartphones weren't as widespread as they are today, and this correlates with a lower number of downloads of Google Translate's application. According to the Pew Researcher Center, in 2011, 83% of American adults owned a cellphone, but only 35% had a smartphone. Whereas now in 2021, 97% of adults own a cellphone and 85% are smartphone users. The number of smartphone and cellphone users has increased this way because of advancing technology (which makes devices cheaper and more accessible) and changing social norms (landline phones are no longer common and internet is considered by the majority as a "must have").

Ericsson. (June 2, 2021). Number of smartphone users from 2016 to 2021 (in billions) [Graph]. In Statista. Retrieved September 22, 2021, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/330695/number-of-smartphone-users-worldwide/ 

In November 2015, the mobile Google Translate app reached 300+ million downloads. At this point in time, 69% of American mobile phone users owned devices capable of running the application. In 2019, Google Translate reached 750+ million downloads, and 81% of mobile devices owned were smartphones. It is easy to see that as more people gained the technology needed for Google Translate more people utilized it. This leads me to think that the main reason people started to use Google Translate is because they were now able to do so. Now more people than ever have access as the global number of smartphone users has reached 6.378 billion in 2021. 

Hence, to categorize the users of Google Translate, I hypothesize the following:

• The Innovators of this innovation were the wealthy and tech savvy who could afford early smartphone models (mainly upper class individuals but perhaps some upper-middle class people as well).
• The Early Adopters were the family members and friends of the Innovators. They may have gained access to smartphones and Google Translate through the Innovators. 
• The Early Majority were members of the middle class who could now afford smartphone technology as time went on. 
• The Late Majority were members of the lower-middle and upper-lower classes who had to wait even longer than the Early Majority for the technology to become affordable to them.
• The Laggards are those who either don't, or can't, use smartphones or computers, so they don't have a way to access Google Translate.

In previous years, owning a smartphone was limited to a ver small portion of the population (the Innovators) because of the cost. There probably would have been more Google Translate users in 2011 if more could afford the luxury of a pocket-sized computer. I think that people wanted to use online translators (especially those who spoke a different language than the majority) but they didn't have the opportunity to. 

Privacy in Today's World

Today, in this digital age, people use the internet every single day. As of April, 2021, 60% of the world's population now uses the internet with an average use time of 6 hours and 56 minutes per day. The internet can be useful, especially when it comes to working or studying, but it can also be dangerous and invasive. 

Internet Immortality

As Juan Enriquez said in his TED Talk, everything that is willingly posted to the internet is permanent. He compares the effect to a tattoo. These digital tattoos reveal details about you whether you intend for them to or not. Because of contracts of adhesion social media users loose the rights to what they post, and companies, like Facebook and Instagram, can do almost anything they want with users' information. This information is sold over and over again to marketing companies, and (as Enriquez mentions) facial recognition is even used all in the name of profit. This invasive data mining (the collection of information on users) is completely legal although it doesn't feel like it should be because of the contracts mentioned earlier. Most people don't read the "Terms of Services" agreements before signing up for things (I know I'm guilty of doing this), but if they were to read through them, they would understand that they essentially signed up for their privacy to be invaded.  

Tracking and Attacking

This is only one way that technology is used to snoop around in people's personal lives. The government also actively monitors the general public (Catherine Crump goes into detail in her TED Talk). With GPS devices in our phones and cars, it seems impossible to get away from prying eyes. For those who are concerned about this (some people don't mind, and that's perfectly okay), just going about their daily lives could be causing excess levels of stress and anxiety. 

Someone's post from 10 years ago (which in now way represents who they are today) could be used against them even if they thought they'd deleted it. Personal messages can be leaked which can lead to a decline in the victim's mental health and irreversible damage to their social lives. Darieth Chisolm shared her experience of someone posting intimate photos of her without her consent, also known as "revenge porn." All of these things are terrible, but what makes them worse is that there are few laws to protect people. The government has to do something to keep people's privacy intact.

Government Responsibilities

First, the government needs to be open about how much such surveillance they carry out on citizens. Without transparency there cannot be accountability. The government also has to be transparent because people have the right to know when and how much they're being watched. Second, the government needs to put laws in place with the power to limit the use of contracts of adhesion, protect victims of things like revenge porn, and proper persecute those who violate others' privacy. This is an ongoing battle, and there's no telling how long It will take for the government to step up to the plate. This is why it's vital that we, as internet users, protect ourselves as best we can.

Keeping Yourself Safe on the Internet

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has some tips for protecting your privacy online. The main thing users have to do is limit the amount of information they're giving out. This video from FTC shows just how much information the average person gives out on a daily basis.

Sharing Information: A Day in Your Life from Federal Trade Commission on Vimeo.

The second thing you can do is learn more about online tracking and change your browser settings. Every browser has a section in their settings, usually called "Privacy," under which you can limit how much websites track you and delete cookies. Cookies are files placed on your computer by websites. They are used by the websites to enhance a user's experience. By deleting cookies, you keep websites from studying you in order to learn your preferences. Other ways to increase your privacy online include: 

• Using privacy browsers like DuckDuckGo
• Browsing using only private or incognito tabs
• Opting out of personalized advertising
• More

The subject of online privacy is a concerning one, and keeping yourself safe can seem tedious. It is easier to just use default settings and click "I Agree" without reading lengthy contracts, but safety always comes first. The extra work is definitely worth it, and learning about these issues brings us closer to solving them. 

Communication Technology: Google Translate

Introduction

There is a long list of things that function as barriers when people try to communicate with one another. One of these is language. When two people speak different languages it can seem impossible at times to get even the simplest ideas/thoughts across. Trying to ask where the bathroom is can turn into a frustrating, confusing event. These sorts of problems have been present throughout human history, and for hundreds of years, people have yearned for easier and more efficient ways to translate. 

History

The first record of an attempt to make translating all languages easier goes back to France during the year 1629. The philosopher Rene Descartes theorized that a universal alphabet, which could be applied to all languages, would make it easier to translate material. However, this was never accomplished. It wasn't until the mid 20th century that scientists and engineers started making serious attempts at "computer translation" (as it was dubbed in 1949 by Warren Weaver).

A replica of the Enigma

This increase in effort was fueled by nothing less than war. During WWII, top-secret messages and sensitive information were sent via ciphers. To make encoding and decoding messages faster, the Germans created the famous Enigma. This machine was extremely complex and solely mechanical (if you would like to learn more about how it worked click here), but it inspired scientists to pour more resources into researching machine translation. Scientists, like Warren Weaver, helped to spur others' interests in translation machines by writing about their potential and future goals for the field. By 1954, IBM created one of the first computers capable of basic translation.

How it Works

Fast forward 40 years and machine translation is still a challenge we have yet to tackle, but Google Translate (and other similar services) has come a long way. Now you're probably wondering, "How does Google Translate even work?" Back in 2006, Google Research announced the launch of the software. At this time, the main method used by the software was Phrase-Based Machine Translation (which breaks the entered phrase down into smaller segments before translating). Before this, word-based translation algorithms were used until they were proven to be less accurate by a team of researchers. 

An example of an older machine translators' process

Now, Google Translate uses its system called the Google Neural Machine Translation (GNMT) system (if you would like to learn more about its creation click here). GNMT is a form of AI (artificial intelligence) that takes the entire phrase entered into consideration when translating. The system relies on data sets of known translations between several languages. Unfortunately, it is impossible for me to explain in detail how this technology works because it is far too complex for me to understand fully in the time span of a week. I can, however, detail the steps it takes to reach its end goal. 

Let's say you're trying to translate something from Spanish to English. The first thing GNMT does is it uses an Encoder to transform the entered Spanish words into a list of vectors. Google's blog describes this action as "reading" as GNMT moves along the sentence(s) entered. Once all the words have been turned into values, a Decoder then "reads" the sentence(s) and gives the English translation of each Spanish word one at a time. As the Decoder moves along the sentence(s), it "pays attention" to the current word being translated and the ones following it. Then, through the power of advanced statistics and linguistics, it chooses the most relevant English translation. And there you have it, a basic explanation of machine translation. 

A representation of the GNMT Translation Process (found here)

The capabilities of GNMT are by no doubt amazing and a technological feat. Yet, this does not mean that the translations are perfect. Often Google Translate doesn't choose the right translations in context to the content, and sometimes original meaning can be lost. At this point, human translators still remain better than machines. 

Its Impact

Machine translators have forever changed the way we view language. It can be easy to forget that there are no perfect translations between languages because each one is unique. Each language has different grammar rules and ways of ordering subjects and verbs. The best way to learn all these complexities is to just submerge oneself into the world of the language they are trying to learn. They have to speak with native speakers, learn cultural references, and more on top of studying vocabulary words. 

Alexander Satola points out in their article that it is important for students, especially, to think through a translation before resorting to Google Translate. If a student immediately turns to use machine translators when presented with a question, they will become dependent on it. In the long run, students who are dependent on Google Translate (and other translators) won't retain the language in the same way that students who are not dependent will.

Although there are some negatives to Google Translate's success, overall, it has greatly increased people's ability to communicate with one another. Now, with just a few taps on your phone, you can easily "talk" to anyone no matter what language you speak. I believe this is very important because, in theory, the more we can talk to one another, the more we can understand each other. 

The Value of Free Expression

While I was reading through the values of free expression, several of them stood out to me. However, values six and three stood out to me the most. Value three, referred to as Stable Change (or Safety Valve), caught my attention because this value is currently "playing out" in the protests centered around the new abortion bill in Texas. The sixth value, Promote Tolerance, also stood out because I believe tolerance is something that the world lacks and needs more of. 

There will never be a time when everyone in a community, country, state, etc. will agree with one another completely. This is simply the consequence of free thought. We all have different beliefs and moral compasses, and this is one of the reasons I believe that the sixth value is important. As I mentioned before, people have been protesting in Texas. By doing this they are presenting their differing perspective on this controversial issue. 

Picture taken by Evan L'Roy with The Texas Tribune

In the explanation of his theory (the sixth value), Lee Bollinger focuses on a Neo-Nazi march that was scheduled to take place in Skokie, Illinois in 1977. Protests and marches are typically protected by the First Amendment, but this particular march grew rise to wide protest because there was a considerable population of Holocaust survivors living in Skokie. In the end, the courts ruled that the march was protected under the constitution even though hate speech and discrimination fueled it and the judges disapproved of nazism. Essentially, Lee comes to the conclusion that extremist events such as these (although upsetting) are important to increasing society's general tolerance of individuals' views and opinions. 

Although the protests taking place today aren't as extreme, they are centered around a sensitive subject and have led to heated arguments. These protests also help to bring awareness to the situation as a whole. People, who may or may not be neutral towards the situation, are exposed to both sides' opinions and the reasons behind their stances, and with more exposure comes more understanding. Overall tolerance can even grow through secondary contact with an event. For example, someone could've been in Skokie when the Neo-Nazis were attempting to protest and not have liked what they heard/saw. Then they might share their opinions (as the Neo-Nazis shared theirs) with another person while using the Neo-Nazis as an example of intolerance. Therefore, spreading and promoting tolerance. 

Earlier I talked about how the third value is "playing out" currently in Texas (and some other areas). I think this is a perfect example of why Stable Change is so important. When making laws, politicians sometimes lose sight of the effects they have on everyday people. Without the right to protest and make their voices known disgruntled citizens wouldn't have an outlet, and the government wouldn't know the effects of their actions. This theory also says that by allowing people to show their discontent keeps them from becoming violent. However, I'm sure that if someone was constantly ignored (although they've been protesting publicly) violence could still become a problem. 

Overall, I think protests (of any kind) are a part of societal change and transformation. I'm glad that we have the First Amendment to protect them because sometimes they're necessary for a better future. 

Learning About the Supreme Court

It's not uncommon for people to recognize the words "supreme" and "court" when put together in a sentence, but I wonder how many people truly understand the power the Supreme Court has. I certainly didn't understand fully until today. After watching the two part video (part 1 & part 2) detailing what the Supreme Court does, I was surprised by how much I didn't know. 

The United States Supreme Court Building

What did you learn about the Supreme Court that you didn't already know? 

Right off the bat I was learning new things while watching the first video. I knew that the Supreme Court is very powerful within the US, but I didn't realize that it is also considered the most powerful court in the world. The second thing I learned was how independent the court is. In order to become a Justice, the current president has to nominate someone for the position. It is known that residents will try to control some of the decisions that the Supreme Court makes by nominating specific people. However, once the new Justice is confirmed by the Senate, they are primarily concerned with what is considered right by the constitution. Thus meaning the President, nor the general public, has any direct influence on the rulings the Supreme Court comes to.  

I also learned that when it comes time to make a decision about a case the nine Justices gather alone in their conference room. The public part of the case only consists of the two opposing sides getting their opinions heard and questioned. It is in private where the Justices argue amongst themselves and decide which side they are on. 

What is the most important take-away point about the Supreme Court? 

I think the most important take-away from the videos is the fact that the Supreme Court is a public court. I was under the impression that only the highest level lawyers or officials could bring a case to the Justices, but that isn't true. Anyone who feels that their constitutional rights have been violated by the government can write to the Supreme Court and they will review it. 

Current Supreme Court Justices
Back Row (left to right): Brett Kavanaugh, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch,  Amy Coney Barret
Front Row (left to right): Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John Roberts,
Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor

What was the most surprising thing you learned?

The thing that surprised me the most was the number of cases the Supreme Court receives every week; approximately 100. This comes to a total of 7,000 a year, but they usually only take on 100 out of those 7,000 cases each year. I was also baffled at how long the written opinion documents can be after a case is settled; they can be up to 80 pages long! However, I would think that only a very controversial or ethically difficult case would result in an opinion that long. 

How did the video change the way you thought of the Supreme Court?

Watching the video definitely brought the Supreme Court "closer to home" in my mind. Beforehand, it was a powerful, government entity that I was nowhere near. Now, I realize that the Supreme Court is there for the people (mostly), not the government. Overall, now I think about the Supreme Court as my rights top line of defense.