Alexandra Jimenez
There was a case in Arkansas regarding a crime scene that involved James Bates murdering his friend at his home. Bates had people over to watch football, and the following morning one of his friends was found murdered in his hot tub. The local police obtained a search warrant for the Amazon Echo Bates own to try and collect more evidence on the case. The police were able to obtain the Echo, but also requested from Amazon that they give them previous voice recordings in hope that on the night of the murder, someone in the house had asked Echo to search or do something that could give them a glimpse of what exactly happened that night.
Amazon decided not to hand over the recordings to the police, the history of that night has not been released, but all that was known was that the Echo was used to play music that night. But they wanted to see if the device could have potentially recorded any clues, however, the device can only be activated when someone says the key word “Alexa,” it is not always recording its surroundings. But there has been situations where the devices turns on without anyone saying the key word, and it is believe that the device misinterprets situations and think it has heard a person say “Alexa.” Which is why the police though there could potentially find something. This was a request that would have justified a murder being put behind bars, would have eased the family by knowing the murder was behind bars. They could have found evidence to further incriminate this man who is clearly guilty as they had found evidence that he used 140 gallons of water at one in the morning, which is suspicious, and the police came to the conclusion that it was to wash away his patio to get rid of all the blood. The writer brings up the question as to how far situations like this will go, in the future. Will our own devices be used against us? Will they hold up in court? Because this was recorded without consent, will it be able to be used in court? I personally think that amazon should have given the police the history. I know it is an invasion of privacy, but if by law, citizens have to hand over their phones, and finger prints to open the phones, then why could they not have handed over the information? 5/20/2017 0 Comments Blog 7: Playtest Black mirror I am a huge fan of series on Netflix Black Mirror, the episodes have mind blowing technology that is more than likely going to be available in the next coming years. The story starts off with the main character Cooper, who has been traveling around the world while trying to deal with the recent death of his father. He finds himself with no money in his account, and looks up quick cash jobs. He then finds an ad from Saito Game Team, to be a playtester for a new Artificial Reality game they are working on.
The Saito Game Team is known for their horror ways and was rumored to be developing a new system. What they were actually working on is an implant that “layers lifelike images and sounds” into the main character’s perception without using any wires or glasses. The first game he plays in a whack a mole game to test him, but he is then approved to move onto the horror house game that generates in real time horrible characters based on Cooper’s fears and thoughts he has while playing. They start of the game by walking him into this old horror house. This game is basically a haunted house that you created on your own. Being a horror enthusiast, and being the person at movie that always figures out what cliché the movie will throw at you, I would die playing this game. At the end of the game, he tells the person “helping and recording” that he is done and want to end the game. So they tell him to go upstairs into the room and that it will end, but he starts to doubt the situation and says no I know there is something bad in there, and then the lady asks “like what” and he said “some personal fucked-up shit.. I can feel it digging around my head.” which if I was in his position I would think the exact same thing. Little does he know that his worse fear was about to be manipulated. He walks into the room and when he turns around the door is gone and the person talking in his tells him that there is no way out, that they wanted to see if they broke him down enough to get him to follow instructions. She then continues to ask a lot of personal questions, which he cannot answer and he yells out “its taking my memories!” and she corrects him by saying “overwriting them, technically.” But it was all in his head, the game has taken over his mind and over the program, not even the developer could stop it or remove the technology from his neck. What shocked me the most is him saying “ I can feel it digging around my head, it is going to be something with my mom, … dead. It knows!” He can feel this game going through his memories and picking the worst. How scary would it be to have this type of technology that can pick and choose through your memories? This is all just for a game, but as to how far could this technology be used? Will we live in a world where fake memorize can also be implanted into our brain? What will this type of technology lead too? As much as I am excited for all the new technology, I am at the same time scared for what is to come, for technology to consume us. 5/20/2017 0 Comments BLOG 6: Cheating the app storeWhile looking for articles to write about, I came across one about a Public Relations company called Reverb Communications. The firm represents many Apple game developers and publishers. This firm is believed to have huge success among its clients in the App Store, but there is one detail that is crucial to this success. They hire a team of 10 interns to pretend to be real accounts and write 5-star rating on iTunes apps. This is not the first company to use these unethical tactics to gain success and to buy in developers. Reverb Communication claims to have a personal relationship with Apple, while they have been representing App developers like Pangea Software, Harmonix, and many other iPhone App developers.
One of their clients leaked a document from Reverb Communications that the company sends to clients stating how they will gain a following and high ratings on apps. The companies interns are the ones writing reviews and giving 5 star reviews. There is a whole process as to how the “Internal User Reviews” are done. The reviews are prewritten by writers at the company, the reviews are made to be “positive but not over the top, while still endorsing the game as a good product, … within age ranges.” according to the writer. The writer of the article did more research to see if their source was right, and they found that the users that reviewed a game and the user has also reviewed 6 others developers that were clients of Reverb Communications. There was a lot of 5 star reviews on games of clients of the company which only further confirmed what their sources said. I agree one hundred percent that this is an act of fraud. This company is faking reviews to boost sales while lying to users about the apps they are about to buy. The worst part is how openly they are to their clients about how they are not even building real followers, they are gaining them by false advertisement. The company later contacted the writer saying that “they were sure [he] was speaking with one of [their] former employees.” They claimed to not know what “unethical practices” he was speaking about. The fact that companies have to go as low as creating fake reviews just to make money, shows how many issues there are with the tech world. The real issues is after this article being posted, why Apple did not do anything about it? If the marketing company is so close in relation to Apple, why did they not do something in response? Apple needs to keep a closer look into reviews to stop companies from doing this. For a company who’s main purpose are for the benefit on the user, I would have thought that they would be doing something to prevent this sort of situation from repeatedly happening. |
AuthorHello! I'm 19 years old. i'm a 3rd year Communication Design major with an emphasis is visual design and a minor in Business Marketing. Archives
May 2017
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