Audrey's Tech Corner

Have you ever went to call your mom back or text a friend on the long drive home from school/work? I suggest waiting till you get home. According to Boston Globe , Secretary Stephanie Pollack says we need to enforce our laws against phone use in the car. Police Officers are saying its hard to enforce these Texting ban laws due to not being able to tell if drivers are texting and not just changing their music (Vaccaro). Massachusetts just recently joined 20 other states (including the rest of New England) in banning cellphones behind the wheel. Starting in late February, drivers will be not allowed to use their cellphones unless they use hands-free technology and Bluetooth systems (Vaccaro). What happens if I do use a phone behind the wheel? For your first time offense there is a fine of $100. $250 for your second offense. $500 for any offense after that.  What about music or maps? Drivers will still be allowed to use navigation apps such as Waze or Google Maps if...

Your personal data is being sold without you even knowing it. Everything you search tells Google what you want and or what you need. Your location history tells investors what businesses are most visited. The internet builds a profile on you, what you like, where you go, who you are, and companies are selling your profile to other companies. Zeynep Tufekci   mentioned in her Ted Talk "We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads", that everything we search and look up is part of an algorithm. When you're on a website, you usually get a little pop up that tells you, "this website enables cookies". Without reading the fine print we usually click the close button or click enable. But what are exactly cookies? There are different type of cookies, that collect your data in different ways by data brokers. Erik Barajas Different type of cookies: Traditional Cookies:   This type of cookie is mainly used by larger companies such as Facebook,...

Automation is making a big hit in America, and not a positive one. 72% of adults in the United States are waiting for their jobs to be taken, and not from other people. It is predicted that over 5 million citizens will lose their job to artificial intelligence (robots) by 2030, according to Kevin Dickson  . Although these new technological advancements frightens most adults, did this stop us in the past? shutterstock Andrew Arnold , a millennial, believes that robots will in fact not take over our jobs. When the industrial revolution created new advancements other jobs were created. One study from the Gartner Research shows that 1.8 million jobs will be lost by 2020, but 2.3 million new ones will be created, Andrew explains. Chloe Taylor, a reporter for CNBC, expresses that even if robots were boosted to 30% more than the baseline by 2030, than there would be a 5.3% boost in global GDP. Thus adding an extra $4.9 trillion per year to the global economy in 2030. Althoug...