EOTO: Terms & Concepts

Mediasphere

 A whistleblower is someone who informs a group about a corrupt activity. Oddly, it's not what the whistleblower chooses to expose, but who the person is, that interests me the most. I mean what kind of a person ignores war crimes, invasion of privacy, or any illegal activity in hopes of not breaking out of group conformity? They decided rather to not say anything at all to preserve the secrecy and safety of the act to protect those who would suffer if the information was disclosed to the public, freely. 
A couple of scenarios in history that were exposed by whistleblowers include MKUltra and more recently, Operation Phoenix. MKUltra occurred during the cold war when the government wanted to test the possibility of brain control using human puppets drugged with LSD. Operation Phoenix was in the Vietnam War as a collection of war crimes with the goal of pacifying the Viet Cong. Over sixty thousand people were imprisoned with another twenty-one thousand killed with various torture methods like mauled by dogs, starvation, rape and electric shock. The infamous whistleblower was Anthony J. Russo who interviewed the prisoners and observed the effects of torture. He then wrote a detailed report exposing the entire operation. 

Another idea to think about is why some shame whistleblowers to deem them as a tattletale rather than an unsung hero? Has our naiveness to their bravery overthrown our inner monitor of ethical morality? Other than Snowden, why are most whistleblowers often forgotten about and left as targets for those who were harmed by the truth (just something to think about)? Something I would think about if I were a whistleblower would be if I would want to be remembered for the thing I exposed for the rest of my life; including if what I did expose was serious enough to be targeted. If I had to answer, I'd say yes because it's better to help others than save yourself. On the other hand, it's important to think about if I exposed something, like if the government had a secret weapon, even worse people now know about it and could steal the technology to use for means of mass destruction. Some whistleblowers who are now tied to what they exposed include John Marks, Cathy O'Brien, and Whitey Bulger. Bulger's case reminded me of this scene from the movie RED where a character played the role of paranoia and deception as he believed the government subjected him to LSD testing. In the film, the audience can see how the decade-long period of LSD testing affected the character as he chooses to stay off the grid, is constantly paranoid and can break out into bursts of violence. 

Theories

The illusory truth effect is when we hear or repeat false information that causes us to believe it's true, despite our initial better judgment to know it's false. This effect is what allows advertising to be so successful. For someone whose majoring in communication, specifically advertising, I have to thank this effect for making the market so successful. On the downside, the illusory truth effect is what makes fake news and controversy in political relationships. In the Netflix apocalyptic production Don't Look Up, this effect is used to divide America in two. The current president played by actress Meryl Streep convinces her party everything will be okay to the point where nothing gets done to try and save humanity from their impending doom because they were so sure everything would be okay-repeating that mantra to themselves, their friends, and the media. With the recent pandemic, misinformation seemed to spread faster than the virus seemed to! Despite science refuting such claims, social media, blogs, and news outlets would take false information then share it with the public and be there to cover whatever mayhem ensued to the public. It's a weird system to drum up things to report, but it's effective nonetheless. 

AGE OF AI 

Deep Fakes are used to replace one subject with another in digital media. A video that has been edited using an algorithm to replace the person in the original video with someone else is a better explanation of it. This technology allows movies to continue with stand-in actors to model for the real person if they've left the film, passed away, or want their privacy protected. Deeps fakes advanced technology and have gotten almost too good; computer software AI engineers (the very people who created the deep fake software) can't tell the difference between what's fake and what's real. If you can't tell what's real from what's fake, then what can you really believe? The eyes deceive us to make sense of all the randomness in the world and organizes it in familiarity. With deep fakes that are slightly off, the mind can still trick the eyes into believing it's the real deal when it's not. The negative impacts of deep fakes include the spread of misinformation, compromised national security, and defamation of character. It's scary to think about how someone could work their entire lives building a good and credible career and reputation, just to have the possibility of a deep fake unraveling it all. 

Transhumanism is the theory that the human race can evolve beyond its current physical limitations by employing science and technology. Meaning that your physical body could die, but your brain could be uploaded and used to power machinery. Hollywood depicts it as putting a person in an everlasting machine by uploading their consciousness to something robotic, like Transcendence. It's also thought of as homo sapiens being superseded by humanity 2.0 where humans have short lifespans with their final years characterized by a drop in physical and cognitive capacity while the machines get even keener and more intelligent as the years' progress. I have to wonder if we're far from this. I like to think of how crazy it was when the hard drive came out and people couldn't believe that a device so small could carry so much information on it. I feel like if some secret government agency has done this already, we wouldn't know about it unless a whistleblower came forward.