week 4

 Dave Sholler

     This past week in class we had the opportunity to talk to someone that graduated from Stockton and has learned a lot about life and the real world.  The guest speaker was Dave Sholler and he is the Vice President of Communications for the Philadelphia 76ers.  Dave told us his origin story and how rough things were for him growing up, but he was determined and worked his butt off to get to where he is now.  There were a lot of great things to take away from his conversation with the class.  He really stressed the importance of gaining experience from all different types of people.  He explained that if we learn about all the different types of careers, that it will only benefit us in the end and allow us to figure out what we really want to do in life.  The most important thing he talked about was social media etiquette.  He stressed over and over again that CEO's and companies always look at your social media when hiring, and that social media plays a big part in there decision process.  It doesn't matter how smart or how amazing your degree is, you have to make sure that your social media makes you look professional.  Overall, it was great talking to Dave and he gave all of us some really good advice.  I will surely use his advice in the future. 

Light, Bright and Polite

    Chapter two is a very interesting chapter and its about something I never really thought about.  Chapter two is about responding to negative posts on social media.  I don't. really use social media that much so I've never really experienced any negative posts about myself.  At the same time, I also have to realize that there are thousands of negative posts being published about people every day.  The author gives some great advice in this chapter on how to deal with the negativity that some people might throw your way.  One interesting point. the author brings up is that the way you respond to people is far more important than what they actually say to you.  For instance, if you fire back at some person for being negative, that post you sent to them regardless if it is good or bad, will be on the internet forever. You never want to make yourself look bad on social media because it stays with you forever.  The author says that the biggest thing you can do while combating negativity on social media, is letting it go.  Too many harmful things can occur from posting on social media and trying to defend yourself against negative attacks.  I thought the chapter was very good and it really got me to think about something that I never really thought of before.

The Social Dilemma

    The Netflix Documentary "The Social Dilemma", was a very unique and eye opening movie.  The main purpose of the documentary is to raise awareness of the psychological and ethical corruption that is going on in the tech industry.  Since the time Google was created, tech companies have been writing algorithms and trying to advance their systems.  The problem with this is that the computers start becoming smarter and smarter on their own and they learn how to collect data in new ways.  Our data is very important and the more time we spend on social media, the more data they have on us.  They save this data and use it to. make money giving you suggestions based on your interests to keep you locked in on social media.  They also talk a lot about polarization and how its increased since social media became a staple in society.  They showed a graph of data that was collected since 2009 and social. media has drastically caused polarization on political parties.  Social media also enables a lot of toxic content to be shared and posted throughout the internet.  They said that fake news and false information travels around social media at an average rate of six times faster than accurate information.  That means that millions of people around the world are highly susceptible to false information every time they log in to their social media.  Social media has advanced so much and so fast that it. is almost impossible to fix the damage thats already been done.  The up and coming generations will never experience the world without access to millions of tools and functions.  This is very concerning because it is causing these generations to advance at rapid pace and the result is that they will continue to make these platforms better and smarter.  By the time we realized that we crossed the line with these platforms, it will be too late to fix what we have caused.  Ultimately, I thought the documentary was amazing and it really gave me a new perspective on social media.  I would highly recommend this documentary to everyone.