Apple and Google literally can't hack their own phones

Article: Barret, Devlin, and Danny Yadron. "New Phone Protections Alarm Law Enforcement." Wall Street Journal 23 Sept. 2014: A1,A4. Print.

Privacy has been an issue that has really escalated in the last couple years. Especially since the Edward Snowden and the NSA incident, people are getting more and more worried about keeping their affairs private. People are trusting the government less and less, and tensions could never be higher with how the government has reacted to Ferguson. Companies are jumping on this opportunity to win some PR points with consumers. That is why Google and Apple have come out with these technologies that make it impossible for anyone, including law enforcement, to access information from phones. This, of course, does not include information saved to "the Cloud," including celebrities' risque photos, which always seem to be hacked and leaked onto the internet. This might give people a false sense of security, because it seems everything gets automatically synced with the "Cloud" anyway. This announcement is simply a way to get consumers to trust Apple and Google again, by riding the wave of public opinion about privacy.

Scottish Independence

The independence vote for Scotland is quite a historic event. Scotland has been a part of the United Kingdom for centuries and if this vote had been done back 300 years I think the results might have been a little bit different. I think that it is a good thing that Scotland is still part of the UK. An independent Scotland would have an uncertain future especially economically. It's possible that they could make it work, but with the economy in Europe like it is right now, it is a risky thing to change what isn't broken. Scotland already has a good amount of control over its own affairs and I do not believe that what they would gain would outweigh what they would lose if they were to stay tied to the rest of the UK.

Smallish Post 1

The article by Neil Postman made some very great points, but a couple of his opinions I found straight up incorrect. His first point states that culture always pays a price for technology. I strongly disagree. First, technology has made it possible to spread culture everywhere easily and readily. Normal, non-professional artists, musicians, poets, or creative writers can easily share their work with the world and their work actually gets seen. Websites like Deviantart, Reddit, YouTube, and many others make it possible for us to see truly talented people we wouldn't have before. Technology has also given our generation the most free time then any other time period, allowing us to become amateurs at whatever we want. Now it's not only the geniuses that rule the arts, but there are now many capable people. Technology has widened and diversified culture, not hurt it.