Diffusion Theory - Video Games

     Because I am both an avid video game player and a game design major, I am very invested in video games.  Thus, I would like to talk about the innovation of video games through the lens of the Diffusion Theory.  

    The first section in the Diffusion theory is the Pioneers.  These are the people who made the first video games back around the mid-to-late 1970s.  These early games were either really simple, like Pong, or were entirely text-based with branching paths (branching "choose your own adventure" style games are debatable whether they count as video games).  The Early Adopters phase would be around the early 80s, when arcades started to become common.  This was still a little bit before and even into the early days when video game consoles could be bought for personal use.  By the mid 80s, a lot of families owned video game consoles or regularly went to the arcade to play, starting the Early Majority phase.  Video games were still fairly niche and were considered "nerdy" and "just a fad."  Well, the nerdy part is still kinda true, but now, video games have certainly proven that they aren't just a fad.  

    I suppose I would say that around the turn of the century is when the Late Adopters section begins.  This is when the people who grew up in the 80s started having their own children and getting games for them and even playing with them.  This is the case for me, as I was born in 1998, and my dad got me into video games from an early age.  We still play some games together, though I've started playing more single-player games, and he is more and more busy with work and thus doesn't have as much time to play with my brothers and me.  Going into the current era, the video game industry is booming, and there are hardly any Laggards who have never and refuse to play video games.  Of course, there are still some, such as those who can't afford them or who stick with the belief that they are bad for you.

    Overall, I think the invention and innovation of video games is a good thing, but I can see that there are some downsides to them.  For one, video games (as well as TV and other electronic media) have contributed to a general lowering of attention span among young people.  There is also the argument that staring at screens has negative effects on your health, namely eye damage and possibly mental health.  Despite that (though I am biased), I think that video games have more positives than negatives.  I think that video games have great artistic value, and they can be used to convey ideas and messages.  They are also a good passtime and method of entertainment, and they can be used to make new friends.  Not all video games are mindless, either.  Some have rich stories and advanced concepts, and some are active and serve as a way to get exercise or improve your reaction time.

Here is the article I got this picture from:

https://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/MPH-Modules/SB/BehavioralChangeTheories/BehavioralChangeTheories4.html

Technology Another Student Talked About

     I forget who it was, but another student talked about the invention of motion picture.  This invention ties in pretty well with the technology I talked about, the TV.  Of course, before the television was invented, the motion picture was.   

    The student talked about the early idea of a moving picture being the flip book.  Flip books are books in which every page has an image, and when you flip through the pages really fast, it looks like one moving image.  The most famous example of this concept is the "Galloping Horse," which contains 16 consecutive pictures and was shown on a "sequential image projector."

    According to the student, the "kinetograph" was invented in 1890.  The kinetograph was able to show images in rapid succession along the style of a flip book to simulate motion.  The first motion picture shown to the public was shown in 1893.  Another progression in motion picture technology was the "cinematographe," which was a projector that could show 16 frames per second.  For reference, most modern video games play at 60 frames per second.

    The continued development of motion pictures led to silent films, talkies, and eventually color films.  The invention of the television was also a huge development for motion pictures because it allowed families to have their own sources of motion pictures in their own houses. 

 Here is one of the sources the group used:
https://www.britannica.com/art/history-of-the-motion-picture

 

"Galloping Horse"

EOTO - Each One Teach One - Television

      For my part of the EOTO presentation, I researched and talked about the history of the television.  I started with the invention of the first television, which was actually harder than in may sound.  For starters, there is a difference between a mechanical television and an electronic television.  The mechanical television came first, but it was incredibly impractical.  It was huge, had a super tiny screen, terrible quality, and wasn't commercially viable.  But it was a start.  It led to the introduction of the electronic TV, which is considered where the invention of the TV really came from.

     The second thing that made it hard to nail down was that multiple people argued (in and out of court) over who actually first invented it.  I found that in 1922, Charles Jenkins send the first still image over radio waves.  Then, in 1926, John Baird sent the first live transmission, using a device he called a "televisor."  The next year, Philo Farnsworth patented the first electronic TV set, which he called the "image dissector."  Then, in 1929, Vladimir Zworykin made improvements to this system.  Because all these people were working on the same thing at the same time in many different places, it was hard to tell who really did it first.  Today, Farnsworth is often credited with the invention of the television.

     There have been many improvements since then, such as sound, color, and quality.  I found that the color TV was invented sometime between 1946 and 1950, but I couldn't find a specific date.  The first successful color broadcast was in 1953.  Now, there are so many different TV companies and innovators making tons of different kinds of TVs.

     Next, I went over the top eight TV manufacturers in the world.  Only one of the eight is from the United States, with all the rest being from Asian countries.  Samsung was started in 1969 in South Korea, LG started in 1958 also in South Korea, Sony and Panasonic were started in 1946 and 1918, respectively, in Japan, Hisense (1969), TCL (1981), and Skyworth (1988) are Chinese manufacturers, and Vizio is the only American one and is also the most recent one, having started in 2002.

     Lastly, I went over some of the pros and cons of the television.  For the pros, I noted that TV is a great form of entertainment, and that it is a great repository for art.  TV shows, dramas, plays, and musicals are all art forms that have been enhanced by the invention of the TV.  It also provides a source of mass communication.  Ideas and stories can be shared to myriads of people, as well as news.  As for the cons, I said that the rise of television has led to a decline in attention span.  It also poses possible risk of eye damage.  Finally, there is the potential for inappropriate material to be spread through TV, and there are many rules and regulations put in place for that. 

https://www.thoughtco.com/color-television-history-4070934 

https://wonderopolis.org/wonder/Who-Invented-the-First-TV 

https://blog.technavio.com/blog/largest-tv-manufacturers-by-market-share

 I like this picture because it shows a lot of different video game consoles that can be played on the TV, and, in case you didn't know, I'm a huge fan of video games.

Eight Values

     I would like to talk about the mainstream media and their relationship with the idea of "Participation in Self-Government" and with the truth.  In the past, before internet was widely available, people mostly relied on the news to get information on what's happening outside their communities and around the world.  Before news on TV, there were newspapers.  News organizations had a vested interest in telling the truth, as they still should.

     Nowadays, however, because of the creation of the internet and forwarded by the invention of the smart phone, regular people can research news topics on their own very easily and don't have to rely solely on what they hear on the news.  As a matter of principle and to help the average citizen be able to effectively participate in self-government, we need to know the truth.

    This is where I think the media has run into problems.  Americans' trust in the media is at an all-time low, and more and more individuals are taking it upon themselves to fact-check the news and deliver it on their own, such as on YouTube channels or in podcasts.  And this lack of trust in the media is not undue, nor is it particularly surprising.  

     To the point of it being fair to distrust the mainstream media, they have been found time and time again releasing faulty, misleading, or outright false reports.  This has been especially exacerbated with the 2016 Presidential election.  It's no surprise that the media has a political bias; everyone has a worldview.  But before President Trump took office, the media did a better job hiding these biases.  Now, however, ranging from their relentless pushing of the Russian collusion narrative for 3.5 years (which turned out to be a total hoax) to them claiming that the BLM riots are no more than "mostly peaceful protests" (all while erroneously claiming that most political violence stems from the right) to them saying over and over that Trump refuses to condemn white supremacy (despite him doing so over and over again), the media has been shown to push (whether through ignorance, incompetency, or outright malice) lies.  

      The thing is, the media is perfectly able to categorize reports stemming from their political opinions as such while categorizing reports that consist solely of the facts under "news," but they've blurred the line between them so much that they are often found reporting nonsensical opinions as fact.  And as the old adage goes, "If you say something loud enough and often enough, people will eventually accept it as true."

     I don't want to assign motive to anyone, and what I can attribute to ignorance or neglect I would rather not attribute to malice, but given that such an overwhelming majority of "mistakes" the media makes in reporting favor one political side and hardly ever favor the other, there's some point where it's not just an "honest mistake."  And the thing that makes me the most angry about this is that when the media jumps ahead, doesn't wait for the facts (or outright ignored them), reports a false story, and are then called out on it, their correction doesn't seem to get 1/100th of the attention.  People have already heard the story, drawn their conclusions, and dialed up their outrage to the point where the truth hardly matters anymore.  From stories like the Jussie Smolett case to the Covington Catholic case to even George Floyd, Jacob Blake, and Breonna Taylor, the media has spread lies, mistruths, and propaganda for too long.

     This is the big problem I have with the media.  As a conservative, I believe that the government should stay out of as much as they can, but on the other hand, I'm sick and tired of the media getting away with this.  It goes against my belief of the role of government, and I know that if this were to happen, it would be just a matter of time before this sword is wielded against me, but I think the media needs to be held accountable for their actions.  If citizens aren't given the truth, how are they supposed to participate in self-government?  How are we supposed to pursue better lives for ourselves and individuals, members of a community, or even as humans if we can't tell what's true or false?

Here is an article reporting on the false coverage of the Jussie Smollett story and the fact that Smollett was prosecuted for making a false police report:

https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-jussie-smollett-indicted-by-special-prosecutor-in-chicago

I can't say for certain completely how accurate this graph is, but it seems pretty accurate to me: