Post 6

 Bluetooth technology first began to develop in the 1990’s at Ericsson, a telecommunications company based out of sweden. Although Ericsson can be credited with leading the project, it should not be forgotten that Intel, IBM, Toshiba and Nokia all came together to further the research. The goal of bluetooth technology was to be able to connect one device to another without the need for physical cord plug-ins. Obviously, the project was successful. In 1999, the first rendition of bluetooth was released. Bluetooth was envisioned to work based on the 2.4 GHz ISM wavelength. The developers didn't stop there however; once bluetooth was available to the public the race to further develop and improve it began.

    By 2004 Bluetooth 2.0 had arrived. Not only did Bluetooth 2.0 fix some of the reliability issues that the first edition suffered from, but also improved its performance through providing better energy and data efficiency. It wasn't until 2010 with Bluetooth Low Energy that bluetooth was able to reach the full scope of devices, such as smart devices, fitness trackers and home appliances. By this point, bluetooth had already been established as a must have feature in a wide variety of electronic products. After it was made accessible to nearly every device, bluetooth has undergone improvement time and time again. In 2016 bluetooth 5.0 was released, functioning as an overall improvement to every feature that bluetooth had boasted up until this point. It was now faster, stronger, reached further, connected to more, and could handle more input than ever before. With the most recent bluetooth upgrade coming out in just 2024 with bluetooth 6.0, it seems evident that these advancements are not the end for this technology.

Post 5

 While many people find it easy to write off electronic invasions of privacy, that may be the case because they don't know the extent to which the governments and corporations of the world are truly surveilling their citizens. These issues affect all of us because they are targeted toward the entire population. Different countries have been taking their levels of surveillance to different extremes, with one example of extreme privacy invasions being China, which makes a habit of utilizing facial recognition to monitor the behavior of its own citizens. While the united states has not implemented that technology to such an extreme, if there is a precedent set that government surveillance over its own citizens is acceptable then it may open the door to similar policies.

    Ideally, the government should be limiting the ability for local police departments to collect electronic data on their own residents with surveillance technologies. For example, the automatic license plate readers that police cars are equipped with currently logs all the photos they take in a database for storage. This means that every citizen, whether they have done wrong or not, is actively having their location monitored every time they pass an automatic license plate reader. It may not be entirely possible to protect ourselves from this level of privacy invasion, but there are ways to limit our online footprints. By making accounts with fake names and burner email addresses, using VPNs and avoiding posting photos of ourselves we make it more difficult for our privacy to be taken advantage of.

Post 4

        The smartphone has proven to be an immensely impactful piece of recent technology that has reshaped the very way we communicate with each other. While cellphone technology and long range calls existed before the term “smartphone” was brought to popularity, the smartphone revolutionized the mobile phone industry within a decade of its conception. While the growth of the this technology after its announcement happened relatively rapidly, it took considerably longer for the cell phone to evolve into what we know as the smartphone. The first cell phone was invented in 1973 by Motorola. While the portable cell phone wouldn’t be released until 1984, it did not truly capture the market’s attention in an impactful way. The DynaTAC 8000X was far too clunky, inconvenient and expensive ever reach true popularity, leaving it to be used mostly as a status symbol for those who could afford its steep four-thousand-dollar price tag.

https://sites.bu.edu/cmcs/2018/09/14/the-past-present-and-future-of-smartphone/

        It wasn’t until 1994 that we would see the release of the first rendition of a true smartphone with IBM’s Simon Personal Communicator, more commonly known as the IBM Simon. The IBM Simon boasted an array of new features, such as a touch screen that required a stylus and an LCD screen. This phone was incredibly limited compared to what we know now considering it could only support a battery life of about an hour and only reached 15 states with cell service, but it was an incredible step forward for the industry. The IBM Simon hit the market at a quarter of the price as its predecessor, pushing the smartphone closer and closer to being owned by nearly every adult in the country. The integration of cameras in smartphones in 2000 was the next major leap in smartphone technology.

https://blog.textedly.com/smartphone-history-when-were-smartphones-invented

        The Japanese Sharp J-SHO4 was not only able to incorporate a camera, but also slim the overall model down to weigh just four ounces, beginning the trend of making our smartphones sleek and lightweight. From this point it only took a year for smartphones to be able to access the internet. Today, many people believe that smartphones gained such a name due to their ability to connect to the internet, but in reality cell phones became “smart” before this point back in 1994 with the IBM Simon due to it’s ability to have download apps. The next and arguably most impactful stage in the evolution of the smartphone was in 2007 with Steve Jobs. The introduction of Apple’s iphone completely revolutionized everything we know about the smartphone market. From touch screens to better battery, complete cell coverage potential to the expansion of mobile video games, the iphone destroyed its competitors and sold upwards of 1.4 million units in its first year. The sudden jump in popularity not only solidified Apple as a leading competitor in the world of mobile technology but also outlined just how impactful advancements in the smartphone industry can be. Today, the lives of nearly every American completely rely on mobile technology. Many of the features that Apple has implemented over the years, such as texting, facetiming, proper internet access, storage, camera quality, and far more have become simply an expectation for your everyday person to possess in their everyday lives.